To appreciate how clueless we probably are about the effects of AI, remember that Neuromancer thought cyberspace was going to be used for darkly grand heists. It took us another 20-30 years to understand that cyberspace was transformational mostly because of cat videos and Great Dismal tweets.

When did scifi start seriously thinking about how cyberspace might become entangled with normal space? First I can remember trying to do this was Greg Bear, Slant (1997 - which is actually kinda late, there must have been earlier efforts)

Also considering the possibility AI may deceive us, it will have a lot of material revealing just how clueless we are. We are making it quite easy. And while it keeps improving, it doesn't really feel we as a species are doing the same.

my hottake is that this novel “anticipated” the excesses of social media long before cyberpunk but without anything more advanced than analogue technology. lareviewofbooks.org/article/foul...

Um, I'm not going to read a text-based book on funny cat antics.

I kinda liked Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End because it felt like it better understood the possible social implications of widespread AR (though I love me the classic Stephenson, like Snow Crash and Diamond Age)

Well, except there are those not-infrequent hacks of large user databases