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technollama.co.ukWhy does AI in science fiction so often miss the mark?A few days ago there was an interesting post by Andrew Curran that got a lot of responses which was discussing why AI in science fiction often does not have the capabilities that AI already has in reality. I thoroughly agree with that take, but I think that there is much more going on in why AI in science fiction often feels wrong, and I think that it has to do with the reasons why we have artificial intelligence in media in the first place.

I was inspired to try to answer the question posed in this post's title (even if that title was meant to be rhetorical). 2/ bsky.app/profile/tech...

Andres Guadamuz@technollama.bsky.social

Why does AI in science fiction so often miss the mark? A few days ago there was an interesting post by Andrew Curran that got a lot of responses which was discussing why AI in science fiction often does not have the capabilities that AI already has in reality. I thoroughly agree with that take,…

Short answer is that storytellers care about story. Story, story, story. This is especially true in movies and TV. Story drives everything, not accuracy. And we care about stories about people. So AI characters are modified people; just like other movies have talking animals, talking cars, etc. 3/

One case where movies/TV have "gotten it right:" where humans have personal relationships with AI, but you don't need to interpret the AI as conscious. I enjoyed "Her" without believing that Samantha was conscious, and now it seems prescient. Black Mirror's "Be Right Back" as well. 4/

This suggests a fun exercise: watch fictional sympathetic robots, but imagine them as mere chatbots: Data providing simulated relationships to humans; C-3PO + R2-D2’s bickering as generative performances of personality; WALL-E mindlessly following its programmed behaviors long after humans left. 5/

One thing I've noticed when writing on this topic is that my reference points skew pretty old; most examples in my essay are more than two decades old. (Plus the obvious gender imbalances.) Are there recent AI depictions with similar cultural or discourse presence to Skynet, HAL, C-3PO, Samantha...?

6/8/26, 4:23 pm0 reposts0 likes