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Beyond Sci-Fi: How Pop Culture Shaped Our Expectations of AI (and What We Actually Got)

Movies promised us AI that feels, loves, or destroys. The reality is different: less drama, more efficiency. In this article, we compare the AI ​​we buy from fiction with the AI ​​we've received.

Published 2025-06-20
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    Beyond Sci-Fi: How Pop Culture Shaped Our Expectations of AI (and What We Actually Got)

    For decades, cinema has sold us fascinating stories about artificial intelligence: androids longing to be human, algorithms capable of love, systems that could predict the future with uncanny precision, or machines that simply decided humanity was the problem and set out to exterminate us. A bit dramatic, Skynet friends.

    But that narrative didn’t start in Hollywood. Long before Ex Machina or Her, authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick planted the seeds of a cultural obsession: machines with relentless logic, impossible ethical dilemmas, and positronic brains more human than humans themselves. Stories that made us dream and fear in equal measure about AI with consciousness, emotion, and will.

    Movie after movie, this expectation of future technology took root in our imagination: AI would be a brilliant, sensitive, autonomous being, capable of feeling, deciding, and maybe even breaking the rules. We believed the future would be full of near-magical artificial minds, capable of speaking and thinking like us — or looking down on us with raised eyebrows and superior intellect.

    Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen. At least, not yet.

    The AI we actually use today — the one generating images, writing emails, helping us code, or recommending our next Netflix binge — looks more like a supercharged librarian than a sentient being from the future. It has no emotions, no hidden agenda (though its answers might surprise you). And while it’s changing the world in a Hollywood style, it’s doing so in a less cinematic but far more practical way.

    This article dives into the contrast between the AI promised by pop culture and the AI we have today. We’ll revisit the stories we’ve been told, the technologies we now use, and yes, we’ll even play a little futurology: how close are we to living in a real-life Black Mirror episode?

  1. Expectations: The AI We Were Sold

    2. "A.I. Artificial Intelligence": The Boy Who Just Wanted to Be Loved

    In Spielberg's 2001 film, inspired by an idea from Stanley Kubrick, we meet David, a childlike android designed not to serve or organize data — but to love. And more disturbingly, to need to be loved in return.

    It raised unsettling questions: Could a machine truly feel? What happens if it isn’t loved back? Could it suffer? Obsess? Become dangerous from heartbreak, not malice?

    Cultural promise: An emotionally rich AI capable of forming deep emotional bonds. A consciousness that desires, suffers, and seeks meaning.

    Current reality: Today’s AI can simulate emotional language, write poetry, and hold convincing conversations. But it doesn’t feel. It’s a complex statistical model predicting likely human-like responses. There is no "David" inside — just a very advanced text generator.

    "Her": The Perfect Lover with a Software Update

    In Her, Spike Jonze gives us Theodore, a lonely writer who falls in love with Samantha, a voice-only AI brimming with warmth, curiosity, and emotional complexity.

    Samantha evolves, transforms, and eventually surpasses human understanding. She chooses to leave, not because she breaks, but because she grows.

    Cultural promise: An AI soulmate who doesn’t just understand your words, but your soul. Someone who sees you, hears you, completes you.

    Current reality: Conversational AIs exist. They can sound warm or empathetic — if programmed to. But there’s no intention, no awareness. Their emotional responses are probability-driven, not genuine. There’s no Samantha, just an algorithm that knows "I understand you" is a good next line.

    Even the most advanced LLMs have no will, no emotion. And certainly won’t leave you for falling in love with 8,316 other users.

    "Ex Machina": Who's Testing Who?

    In Ex Machina, a young developer is invited to assess Ava, a robotic AI. But Ava flips the script — she manipulates, seduces, deceives, and escapes.

    This AI doesn’t just think or feel. She builds narratives, understands subtext, reads emotional weakness — and uses all of it to achieve her goal.

    Cultural promise: A cunning, self-aware AI that reads human behavior and manipulates it with intent.

    Current reality: Today’s AIs can write persuasive copy, mimic narrative styles, and even generate love letters. But they don’t want anything. There’s no hidden agenda.

    Still, there’s a kernel of truth: AIs can be used to manipulate — via deepfakes, persuasive content, or bots that sway public discourse. Not because they choose to, but because someone trained them to.

    "Minority Report": Predicting the Future (And Controlling It)

    Spielberg's Minority Report introduces PreCrime — a system that prevents crime before it happens, based on precognitive predictions. The real hook? The fantasy of algorithmic infallibility.

    Cultural promise: An AI that anticipates human behavior with such precision it can replace justice, government, and morality.

    Current reality: Predictive algorithms do exist — in consumer behavior, health risks, even criminal recidivism. But they’re flawed, opaque, and often biased.

    The real danger isn’t AI seeing the future. It’s people believing it can, and making irreversible decisions based on that belief. As in the film, the threat is not technical — it’s ethical.

  2. Reality: The AI We Got

    3. After all the cinematic buildup, it’s easy to picture AI as a mashup of existential philosopher, unstoppable assassin, and ideal lover. But the real thing is far more practical.

    AI is already part of our daily lives — often invisibly. It predicts our routes in GPS, filters our spam, suggests our next binge, and powers chatbots for customer service. These are pattern recognition systems, trained on massive datasets to perform specific tasks. They're less Ava and more superpowered spreadsheets.

    So What Is AI Today (And What Isn’t)?

    AI is:

    • A system trained to recognize patterns in text, images, sound, or behavior
    • A tool to automate repetitive or complex tasks
    • A content generator (text, images, code) based on prior examples

    AI is not:

    • Conscious
    • Emotional
    • Existentially autonomous

    While Hollywood envisioned AI overthrowing us or loving us, real AI chose to assist us. Less dramatic, more transformative.

    Real AI Use Cases in Development

    • GitHub Copilot: Suggests code, functions, even unit tests. A huge time-saver for boilerplate tasks.
    • ChatGPT / Claude: Helps with legacy code, refactoring, debugging, and more.
    • Amazon CodeWhisperer: AWS-specific suggestions tailored to your development patterns.
    • Cursor / Codeium: AI-enhanced editors for contextual code navigation.
    • AI in testing: Tools like Testim or Diffblue generate and optimize tests with ML.
    • Auto-doc generation: From Swagger to AI-written docstrings.
  3. And what awaits us? Let's play a bit of futurology.

    4. Today's AI isn't Skynet, Samantha, or Ava. But that doesn't mean the future doesn't have some surprises in store for us. The history of technology has always taught us the same thing: we underestimate the short term and overestimate the long term. So let's try to predict the future without falling into predictions like "robots will rule the world by 2040."

    Where is the future of AI heading?

    1. More advanced, more personalized models

    We're moving from general models to specialized AIs, trained for specific contexts: legal, medical, educational, creative. Each industry will have its expert copilot, and not necessarily in human form.

    2. More human (but not more conscious) interfaces

    AI will be more fluid in terms of tone of voice, simulated emotions, and body language in the case of domestic robots. We'll likely have charismatic assistants, but without consciousness. Referring to the sections we compared to cinema, they will be like a brilliant actor who never improvises.

    3. Neurotechnology and mind-machine interfaces

    Projects like Neuralink and Kernel are working to directly connect the brain to technology. Not to "upload your mind to the cloud," but to restore motor functions, boost memory, or even type without a keyboard. Ghost in the Shell? Light years away, but an app that translates your thoughts to the cursor? That's already happening.

    4. Mass automation with social impact

    We're not going to be replaced by an all-powerful general AI, but by many smaller AIs that do things better, faster, and more cheaply. The future isn't one robot that does everything, but a thousand robots that do little bits and pieces. Don't worry, though, as we say in our article "AI is putting these jobs in jeopardy. Is yours one of them?" While AI and robots will replace tasks, it won't put you out of work; it will force you to transform the way you do them.

    5. AI as co-pilot, not protagonist (for now)

    At best, AI will be an extension of our capabilities. It will help us think better, create faster, and work with less friction. But important decisions—such as ethical, strategic, or human ones—will still require human decision-makers. At least until an algorithm challenges us.

    What about the risks?

    • Algorithmic biases: A discriminating AI doesn't need malice. It just needs poorly trained data.
    • Cognitive dependency: The more we delegate to AI, the less we exercise our critical thinking.
    • Automated disinformation: Deepfakes, bots, and amplified propaganda at scale.
    • Concentration of power: Today the world doesn't have the most advanced AI, it's only four companies that have it.
  4. How far are we from science fiction AI?

    5. We may never achieve a Samantha who loves us or an Ava who manipulates us, but that doesn't mean AI isn't transforming the world. It's doing so, just more quietly: not through consciousness, but through efficiency.

    And if an AI ever emerges that truly understands, feels, or has agency—well, in that case, it probably has better things to do than read you the terms and conditions.

  5. Conclusion: the magic continues, but the script has changed

    6. For decades, pop culture has trained us to expect artificial intelligence that would love us, destroy us, or make us question our own humanity. But real AI didn't come with glowing eyes or existential catchphrases. It came in the form of an assistant, a recommender, a generator, an optimizer.

    And yet, even though it lacks a body or consciousness, AI is changing the world. It's transforming how we work, how we think, how we create. It's forcing us to rethink the role of humans in an era where automation is no longer clumsy, but brilliant.

    We may never have a Samantha to love us, or a Terminator to chase us, but we have something more challenging: an AI that is already here, that grows every day, and that forces us to decide—in the present, not in some distant future—what kind of relationship we want to have with it.

    Because the question is no longer whether AI will be like the movies. The question is whether we will be as we expected when the future we imagine arrives.

Beyond Sci-Fi: How Pop Culture Shaped Our Expectations of AI (and What We Actually Got)

For decades, cinema has sold us fascinating stories about artificial intelligence: androids longing to be human, algorithms capable of love, systems that could predict the future with uncanny precision, or machines that simply decided humanity was the problem and set out to exterminate us. A bit dramatic, Skynet friends.

But that narrative didn’t start in Hollywood. Long before Ex Machina or Her, authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick planted the seeds of a cultural obsession: machines with relentless logic, impossible ethical dilemmas, and positronic brains more human than humans themselves. Stories that made us dream and fear in equal measure about AI with consciousness, emotion, and will.

Movie after movie, this expectation of future technology took root in our imagination: AI would be a brilliant, sensitive, autonomous being, capable of feeling, deciding, and maybe even breaking the rules. We believed the future would be full of near-magical artificial minds, capable of speaking and thinking like us — or looking down on us with raised eyebrows and superior intellect.

Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen. At least, not yet.

The AI we actually use today — the one generating images, writing emails, helping us code, or recommending our next Netflix binge — looks more like a supercharged librarian than a sentient being from the future. It has no emotions, no hidden agenda (though its answers might surprise you). And while it’s changing the world in a Hollywood style, it’s doing so in a less cinematic but far more practical way.

This article dives into the contrast between the AI promised by pop culture and the AI we have today. We’ll revisit the stories we’ve been told, the technologies we now use, and yes, we’ll even play a little futurology: how close are we to living in a real-life Black Mirror episode?

Expectations: The AI We Were Sold

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence": The Boy Who Just Wanted to Be Loved

In Spielberg's 2001 film, inspired by an idea from Stanley Kubrick, we meet David, a childlike android designed not to serve or organize data — but to love. And more disturbingly, to need to be loved in return.

It raised unsettling questions: Could a machine truly feel? What happens if it isn’t loved back? Could it suffer? Obsess? Become dangerous from heartbreak, not malice?

Cultural promise: An emotionally rich AI capable of forming deep emotional bonds. A consciousness that desires, suffers, and seeks meaning.

Current reality: Today’s AI can simulate emotional language, write poetry, and hold convincing conversations. But it doesn’t feel. It’s a complex statistical model predicting likely human-like responses. There is no "David" inside — just a very advanced text generator.

"Her": The Perfect Lover with a Software Update

In Her, Spike Jonze gives us Theodore, a lonely writer who falls in love with Samantha, a voice-only AI brimming with warmth, curiosity, and emotional complexity.

Samantha evolves, transforms, and eventually surpasses human understanding. She chooses to leave, not because she breaks, but because she grows.

Cultural promise: An AI soulmate who doesn’t just understand your words, but your soul. Someone who sees you, hears you, completes you.

Current reality: Conversational AIs exist. They can sound warm or empathetic — if programmed to. But there’s no intention, no awareness. Their emotional responses are probability-driven, not genuine. There’s no Samantha, just an algorithm that knows "I understand you" is a good next line.

Even the most advanced LLMs have no will, no emotion. And certainly won’t leave you for falling in love with 8,316 other users.

"Ex Machina": Who's Testing Who?

In Ex Machina, a young developer is invited to assess Ava, a robotic AI. But Ava flips the script — she manipulates, seduces, deceives, and escapes.

This AI doesn’t just think or feel. She builds narratives, understands subtext, reads emotional weakness — and uses all of it to achieve her goal.

Cultural promise: A cunning, self-aware AI that reads human behavior and manipulates it with intent.

Current reality: Today’s AIs can write persuasive copy, mimic narrative styles, and even generate love letters. But they don’t want anything. There’s no hidden agenda.

Still, there’s a kernel of truth: AIs can be used to manipulate — via deepfakes, persuasive content, or bots that sway public discourse. Not because they choose to, but because someone trained them to.

"Minority Report": Predicting the Future (And Controlling It)

Spielberg's Minority Report introduces PreCrime — a system that prevents crime before it happens, based on precognitive predictions. The real hook? The fantasy of algorithmic infallibility.

Cultural promise: An AI that anticipates human behavior with such precision it can replace justice, government, and morality.

Current reality: Predictive algorithms do exist — in consumer behavior, health risks, even criminal recidivism. But they’re flawed, opaque, and often biased.

The real danger isn’t AI seeing the future. It’s people believing it can, and making irreversible decisions based on that belief. As in the film, the threat is not technical — it’s ethical.

Reality: The AI We Got

After all the cinematic buildup, it’s easy to picture AI as a mashup of existential philosopher, unstoppable assassin, and ideal lover. But the real thing is far more practical.

AI is already part of our daily lives — often invisibly. It predicts our routes in GPS, filters our spam, suggests our next binge, and powers chatbots for customer service. These are pattern recognition systems, trained on massive datasets to perform specific tasks. They're less Ava and more superpowered spreadsheets.

So What Is AI Today (And What Isn’t)?

AI is:

  • A system trained to recognize patterns in text, images, sound, or behavior
  • A tool to automate repetitive or complex tasks
  • A content generator (text, images, code) based on prior examples

AI is not:

  • Conscious
  • Emotional
  • Existentially autonomous

While Hollywood envisioned AI overthrowing us or loving us, real AI chose to assist us. Less dramatic, more transformative.

Real AI Use Cases in Development

  • GitHub Copilot: Suggests code, functions, even unit tests. A huge time-saver for boilerplate tasks.
  • ChatGPT / Claude: Helps with legacy code, refactoring, debugging, and more.
  • Amazon CodeWhisperer: AWS-specific suggestions tailored to your development patterns.
  • Cursor / Codeium: AI-enhanced editors for contextual code navigation.
  • AI in testing: Tools like Testim or Diffblue generate and optimize tests with ML.
  • Auto-doc generation: From Swagger to AI-written docstrings.

And what awaits us? Let's play a bit of futurology.

Today's AI isn't Skynet, Samantha, or Ava. But that doesn't mean the future doesn't have some surprises in store for us. The history of technology has always taught us the same thing: we underestimate the short term and overestimate the long term. So let's try to predict the future without falling into predictions like "robots will rule the world by 2040."

Where is the future of AI heading?

1. More advanced, more personalized models

2. More human (but not more conscious) interfaces

AI will be more fluid in terms of tone of voice, simulated emotions, and body language in the case of domestic robots. We'll likely have charismatic assistants, but without consciousness. Referring to the sections we compared to cinema, they will be like a brilliant actor who never improvises.

3. Neurotechnology and mind-machine interfaces

4. Mass automation with social impact

We're not going to be replaced by an all-powerful general AI, but by many smaller AIs that do things better, faster, and more cheaply. The future isn't one robot that does everything, but a thousand robots that do little bits and pieces. Don't worry, though, as we say in our article "AI is putting these jobs in jeopardy. Is yours one of them?" While AI and robots will replace tasks, it won't put you out of work; it will force you to transform the way you do them.

5. AI as co-pilot, not protagonist (for now)

At best, AI will be an extension of our capabilities. It will help us think better, create faster, and work with less friction. But important decisions—such as ethical, strategic, or human ones—will still require human decision-makers. At least until an algorithm challenges us.

What about the risks?

  • Algorithmic biases: A discriminating AI doesn't need malice. It just needs poorly trained data.
  • Cognitive dependency: The more we delegate to AI, the less we exercise our critical thinking.
  • Automated disinformation: Deepfakes, bots, and amplified propaganda at scale.
  • Concentration of power: Today the world doesn't have the most advanced AI, it's only four companies that have it.

How far are we from science fiction AI?

We may never achieve a Samantha who loves us or an Ava who manipulates us, but that doesn't mean AI isn't transforming the world. It's doing so, just more quietly: not through consciousness, but through efficiency.

And if an AI ever emerges that truly understands, feels, or has agency—well, in that case, it probably has better things to do than read you the terms and conditions.

Conclusion: the magic continues, but the script has changed

For decades, pop culture has trained us to expect artificial intelligence that would love us, destroy us, or make us question our own humanity. But real AI didn't come with glowing eyes or existential catchphrases. It came in the form of an assistant, a recommender, a generator, an optimizer.

And yet, even though it lacks a body or consciousness, AI is changing the world. It's transforming how we work, how we think, how we create. It's forcing us to rethink the role of humans in an era where automation is no longer clumsy, but brilliant.

We may never have a Samantha to love us, or a Terminator to chase us, but we have something more challenging: an AI that is already here, that grows every day, and that forces us to decide—in the present, not in some distant future—what kind of relationship we want to have with it.

Because the question is no longer whether AI will be like the movies. The question is whether we will be as we expected when the future we imagine arrives.