On human expendability: AI takeover in Clarke’s Odyssey and Stross’s Accelerando

This paper discusses how Arthur C. Clarke’s four-volume Odyssey series (1968–1997) and Charles Stross’s Accelerando (2005) relate to humanity’s narcissistic injuries. Here, powerful AIs threaten the self-perception of humanity, which intuitively assumes that it holds a central position in the universe. Clarke’s and Stross’s texts are representative of changing AI visions between the optimistic can-do spirit of the post-war era and the irritated mood at the onset of the twenty-first century. Both texts serve as access points to the history of technological science, as Clarke exploits Norbert Wiener’s early cybernetics and Stross elaborates on Vernor Vinge’s and Nick Land’s speculative thought. AI takeover represents an existential destabilization that revolves around an uncomfortable question: How does humanity relate to its forthcoming redundancy?