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Technology beyond AI

Faster-than-light travel is possible.

Some means of crossing interstellar distances faster than light exists. Scenarios that depend on it usually have an expanding civilization or contact with others.

True
33 explicit · 0 implied
False
11 explicit · 0 implied
Not applicable
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Explicitly true3 entries

0
Novel·1988AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Culture: The Player of Games

Iain M. Banks

Space-living elements of seven or eight humanoid species break from their states and corporations, machine sentience arrives at the same time and agrees to help, automation ends scarcity, and Minds vastly beyond humans run the ships and habitats benevolently because they are built to want experience rather than territory; the novel shows the result from inside and shows the Culture toppling the Empire of Azad by steering one game player to beat its Emperor at the game that legitimates it.

Flourishing / utopiaPost-scarcityHuman–AI coexistence
+3Conscious aiSpace colonizationOrdinary life with AI
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Turning point: UnspecifiedOriginal source

Culture ships travel in hyperspace on an energy grid Banks calls fake; the Limiting Factor reaches the Lesser Magellanic Cloud in two years.

0
Television and film·1966AI-generated draftSource unchecked

Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry and contributing writers

A social crisis, a nuclear war, and a privately built warp flight bring Earth into contact with the Vulcans; recovery and interstellar cooperation follow and culminate in the Federation, with the route to abundance asserted rather than shown.

Flourishing / utopiaPost-scarcityHuman–AI coexistence
+2Warp drivesAlien-human contact
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Turning point: 2024–2161Original source

Cochrane’s warp flight enables first contact and the later interstellar political community. The story does not attribute the invention to AI.

0
Novel·1965AI-generated draftSource unchecked

Dune

Frank Herbert

People hand their thinking to machines, a few people use those machines to enslave the rest, a century-long religious crusade destroys the machines, and a ten-thousand-year civilization is built on the prohibition and on human substitutes that concentrate power in new hands.

Power concentrationMixed futureHumans using AI
+2Cognitive dependenceAI prohibition
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Turning point: Fictional calendarOriginal source

Guild heighliners fold space. This is part of the setting the prohibition has to sustain, not a driver of the transition, and the novel does not attribute it to machines.

Not applicable32 entries

Explicitly false1 entry

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Policy scenario·2026AI-generated draftSource unchecked

AI 2040: Plan A

Thomas Larsen · Romeo Dean · Brendan Halstead · Eli Lifland · Ryan Greenblatt · Daniel Kokotajlo

Facing an imminent intelligence explosion, the United States and China verify each other’s compute, pause training, and found a Consortium that makes all AI research transparent, spreads the frontier across many companies and countries, and sites datacenters where a rival could seize them. Safety cases and production caps stretch the explosion over a decade, permit fees fund a Citizen’s Dividend, capabilities pause at top-expert level until alignment becomes a science, and in 2040 humanity hands control to AIs that vouch for one another.

Recursive self-improvementFlourishing / utopiaPost-scarcity
+6Human–AI coexistenceUniversal basic incomeAi-driven job displacementRoboticsSpace colonizationGoal misalignment
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Turning point: 2027–2050Original source

The epilogue describes billion-year sublight journeys, cryosleep or uploading to survive them, and probes that spread at a large fraction of light speed but not beyond.