Evil AI has been a theme in scifi at least since I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream came out in 1967 (probably earlier, that’s just the earliest example to come to mind). 2001: A Space Odyssey came out the next year. So I don’t really think it’s a bandwagon effect, just a tried and true formula.
Not that I particularly care about this, but my original point was that concern over AI is topical right now, and the film in question seemed to make small but deliberate effort to tap into that topicality, beyond simply having an AI as the villain. I wasn’t claiming that Avengers: Age of Ultron had invented an amazing new fictional concept of antagonistic intelligent machines.
Evil AI has been a theme in scifi at least since I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream came out in 1967 (probably earlier, that’s just the earliest example to come to mind). 2001: A Space Odyssey came out the next year. So I don’t really think it’s a bandwagon effect, just a tried and true formula.
Not that I particularly care about this, but my original point was that concern over AI is topical right now, and the film in question seemed to make small but deliberate effort to tap into that topicality, beyond simply having an AI as the villain. I wasn’t claiming that Avengers: Age of Ultron had invented an amazing new fictional concept of antagonistic intelligent machines.