Screen Tests: How Hollywood’s AIs Predicted, Shaped, and Misunderstood the Future

“We create our tools, and then our tools create us.” — Marshall McLuhan

For decades, artificial intelligence has been the ultimate plot device - omniscient, ominous, occasionally tender. In films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Her, or The Matrix, AI serves as both a warning and a wish fulfillment, a means for us to explore what it means to be human by imagi…