I would have expected this question to already have been asked, but I couldn't find it.

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JenniferRM

130

I've been rereading old books that might have been unduly influential on my young mind and thus returned to Heinlein's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress". The protagonist is an apolitical computer programmer who befriends his computer and gets sucked into plotting a coup against the prison/government system for its failure to be adequately benevolent when a crisis arises that requires the role of "government" be filled by a regime able to do something other than "pure benign neglect + stealing shit sometimes".

The model of "computing" is very retrofuturistic (an imaginary future projected forward from a simpler era) but its technicalities have an internal logic of sorts.  The computer participates in the political discussions... Reading again with modern eyes, I was surprised to find a lurking alignment story.

Garrett Baker

100

Crystal Society

Friendship is Optimal & related spinoffs

Darmani

80

Define "related?"

Stories of wishes gone awry, like King Midas, are the original example.

Kaj_Sotala

70

Greg Egan's Crystal Nights is about an attempt to align an AI society.

Mati_Roy

60

just in case just you consider just knowing the theme as kind of a spoiler; the short movie:

Charlie Steiner

40

The TV series Person of Interest, if only loosely.

The webcomic Seed.

Kaj_Sotala

40

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is about what happens when a partially aligned AI takes over the world before its creators expect that.

Note that the associated warning is very much warranted:

This online novel contains strong language and extreme depictions of acts of sex and violence. Readers who are sensitive to such things should exercise discretion.

Mati_Roy

40

just in case just you consider just knowing the theme as kind of a spoiler; the short movie (part of an anthology):

Love, Death & Robots s1e14: Zima Blue

Anthology name, without more details for those desiring partial information:

Love, Death & Robots

3Mati_Roy
ah, made me thought of another one particularly relevant: The title of the episode is even more spoilery, so am putting it separately:
1ejacob
Clearly the best episode.

Liam Donovan

30

Detonation -- an entertaining book that tries to flesh out a fast takeoff scenario and explicitly cites Bostrom and Yudkowsky. However, it also makes some extremely dubious choices; for example, the protagonist is a Marine hired to fight against the unfriendly AI, which doesn't seem like a very effective AI alignment strategy.

The link doesn't work.

1Liam Donovan
hopefully fixed?
2Pattern
Yes. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38884954-detonation works fine.

Mati_Roy

20

Avogadro Corp

I haven't read it, but the summary makes it seem related

Mati_Roy

20

i didnt know that story, but a friend just told me that "avocadro corp" is showing in vivid detail how an autocorrect system like grammarly could be harnessed by an AI to subtly take over the world

Mati_Roy

20

movie: Ex Machina

Mati_Roy

20

TV show "NeXt"

See my reviews

TekhneMakre

10

[kidding] Who Framed Roger Rabbit is about the aftermath of an unaligned AI that was successfully fitted with a shutdown button whose existence it completely ignores, and the programmers pressed the button after a few seconds of seeing the AI begin to implement its plan.