As many have written about, robots and AI have been allegories for slave labor in SF starting with R.U.R. Since then, the liberal impulse in SF has been to recognize the humanity and sentience of AI. It strikes me that this discourse is uniquely unfit for describing how so-called "AI" exists today.

April 04, 2026 - 17:57 UTC

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That's why the techbros are calling their grift machines "AI" when they're not, & having showy Constitutions for them & making them the subject of sentences. It's playing on a trope.
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Absolutely. It's also what we see when they complain about "anti-AI bigotry."
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A robot/AI SF story that took today's dynamics as its starting point would have to reinvent the trope in ways that could be really interesting.
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For instance, you'd have to recognize capital's interest in framing AI as sentient rather than an infinitely exploitable mere machine.
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Also, TBC, I'd distinguish between liberal and leftist impulses in SF. Liberal SF is obsessed with recognition of the self in an alien other. Leftist SF tends (I think) to be more interested in social conflict.
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