Sci-fi imagined superintelligence, but not today’s weird AI behavior
emollick · x · 2026-07-27
The post argues that science fiction got the broad idea of superintelligence, but not the actual technology or its odd edges.
The reply says the current wave of AI is stranger than most speculative fiction predicted: language models behaving in ways that feel useful, brittle, and unexpected at the same time. The point is less about whether sci-fi imagined powerful AIs, and more about how poorly it captured the real-world mechanics and failure modes of today’s systems.
Related event: Reality Outpaces Sci-Fi: The Unpredicted Form of Modern AI(2 posts)→
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