The Rifts RPG by Palladium Books had a sourcebook with an insane AI/supercomputer named A.R.C.H.I.E. that survived a nuclear apocalypse. It controlled a robotics factory to build an army of killer robots that it planned to rebuild humanity with. Rifts came out in 1990 (that sourcebook in 1991), about a year/two after this Archie system came out. I wonder if the writer, Kevin Sembieda, took it as inspiration and assumed this search engine would one day morph into an AI? Interestingly, many of the search engines of today seem to be trying to reinvent themselves as AI services, so it may not have been that far off the mark, just don’t give them control of any robots.
The Rifts RPG by Palladium Books had a sourcebook with an insane AI/supercomputer named A.R.C.H.I.E. that survived a nuclear apocalypse. It controlled a robotics factory to build an army of killer robots that it planned to rebuild humanity with. Rifts came out in 1990 (that sourcebook in 1991), about a year/two after this Archie system came out. I wonder if the writer, Kevin Sembieda, took it as inspiration and assumed this search engine would one day morph into an AI? Interestingly, many of the search engines of today seem to be trying to reinvent themselves as AI services, so it may not have been that far off the mark, just don’t give them control of any robots.