There’s something darkly funny about all the crackpots breathlessly declaring that “Writing science fiction about the near future is impossible now, because soon superintelligent AIs will change everything!” when the actual reason that writing science fiction about the near future is difficult is the range of uncertainty in just how thoroughly the current US experiment of putting all decisions of the Federal government in the hands of the people least qualified to make them will trash the country and wreak havoc across the rest of the planet.
