Comment by Razengan
2 days ago
Yeah, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, most science fiction depicted the world of the future as dominated by Japan… Look at Robocop 3 :)
That's just what the zeitgeist of the time was.
Computers were then just appearing (or increasing) in the public discussion, along with fears that they'll make humans less human somehow.
Like in this Computer Chronicles video about word processing [0] from 1983 at 4:08: "Some writers are concerned that computer assistance may promote dry bland writing."
Terminator appeared in 1984, and the first Alien movie in 1979 had an antagonist android. 2001 A Space Odyssey with a disagreeable AI came out in 1968. All way before the real world had anything remotely close to today's AI: It was a reaction to the appearance of computers themselves.
That just shows that humans have the same reactions whenever a new world-changing technology appears.
On the other hand, Star Trek had Data.
Ironically, the tech that people and media were mostly optimistic about turned out to be more dystopian than predicted: The internet :')
"Humans have the same reactions whenever a new world-changing technology appears" is one way to see it. The other way to see it is that the current AI boom is part of the same computer revolution that writers in the 70s and 80s were afraid of, and some things happening today really do retroactively justify their fear.
Yeah, it seems absurd to be afraid of computer-assisted writing in the WordStar era, but the Turing test was proposed in the 50s. Everyone knew that human fields of endeavor would only become "more computer" as time went on. Only, if a time traveller could tell a 70s-era sci-fi writer that artists and designers were some of the first to have their livelihoods threatened by 20s-era AI, they'd probably think it was too on the nose to incorporate into their fiction.
Don't forget earlier media like the movie Desk Set in 1957 or the ST:TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer" in 1968 or Colossus: The Forbin Project in 1970.