“Amazing Stories Quarterly,” Vol. 3, No. 3 (Summer, 1930). Cover art by Leo Morey for “Paradise and Iron” by Miles J. Breuer.
Ruled by a “hideous thing of tangled, oily machinery, and black, snaky arms” on a motorcycle, machines of all imaginable shapes and sizes from passenger cars to tractors have gone mad. And the thing wants to rule the world! – AI’s worst nightmare.
“When Davy Breckenridge stowed away aboard a mysterious cargo ship, he sought to solve the enigma of John Kaspar. The richest man in the world, John Kaspar and his fortune had disappeared 40 years before. Arriving on Kaspar's secret island, Davy found a paradise on Earth. The people of the City of Beauty were graceful and artistic; pampered with automatic houses, self-driving cars and every conceivable luxury. But there was a mechanical snake in this idyllic Eden.
“Beneath the surface, this supposedly carefree people lived in nameless terror. The best and the brightest among them were disappearing. A net of total surveillance entrapped the community. Who was behind this sinister control? Davy Breckenridge knew that the answers lay in the forbidden City of Smoke, the industrial complex on the other side of the island. No one who had tried to discover its secrets had ever returned. Davy was willing to risk it. But should he risk his new love - and his very life - to save a people too lazy to save themselves?” www.goodreads.com/book/show/55825736-paradise-and-iron
[Note 1: Hard to believe the story is over 90 years old. The possible danger of artificial intelligence is only now making news.]
[Note 2: Then there's HAL, the artificially intelligent, homicidal computer onboard the Jupiter space mission in the 1968 film 2001: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."]
[Note 3: The 1970s gave us "Colossus: The Forbin Project" in which an impenetrable supercomputer is given total control over nuclear missile launches. Guess what it does with that power?]
“Amazing Stories Quarterly,” Vol. 3, No. 3 (Summer, 1930). Cover art by Leo Morey for “Paradise and Iron” by Miles J. Breuer.
Ruled by a “hideous thing of tangled, oily machinery, and black, snaky arms” on a motorcycle, machines of all imaginable shapes and sizes from passenger cars to tractors have gone mad. And the thing wants to rule the world! – AI’s worst nightmare.
“When Davy Breckenridge stowed away aboard a mysterious cargo ship, he sought to solve the enigma of John Kaspar. The richest man in the world, John Kaspar and his fortune had disappeared 40 years before. Arriving on Kaspar's secret island, Davy found a paradise on Earth. The people of the City of Beauty were graceful and artistic; pampered with automatic houses, self-driving cars and every conceivable luxury. But there was a mechanical snake in this idyllic Eden.
“Beneath the surface, this supposedly carefree people lived in nameless terror. The best and the brightest among them were disappearing. A net of total surveillance entrapped the community. Who was behind this sinister control? Davy Breckenridge knew that the answers lay in the forbidden City of Smoke, the industrial complex on the other side of the island. No one who had tried to discover its secrets had ever returned. Davy was willing to risk it. But should he risk his new love - and his very life - to save a people too lazy to save themselves?” www.goodreads.com/book/show/55825736-paradise-and-iron
[Note 1: Hard to believe the story is over 90 years old. The possible danger of artificial intelligence is only now making news.]
[Note 2: Then there's HAL, the artificially intelligent, homicidal computer onboard the Jupiter space mission in the 1968 film 2001: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."]
[Note 3: The 1970s gave us "Colossus: The Forbin Project" in which an impenetrable supercomputer is given total control over nuclear missile launches. Guess what it does with that power?]