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Anime’s first ever star was an A.I. character, Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. While the series stressed the boy bot’s Kryptonian-level powers – 100,000 horsepower, in Tezuka’s phrase – the anime also made clear his mind, his personality, compassion and principles are entirely artificial. Like most A.I. characters in anime, Astro Boy is embodied in anthropomorphic form. He’s in humanity’s image, only cuter.Astro Boy debuted in anime in 1963. Three years later, 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted the most iconic A.I. in Western cinema – the camera lens, red dot, and lethally calm tones of HAL 9000. HAL is the archetypal computer that says no (or, with a word-perfect courtesy to resonate in the age of ChatGPT, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”) That image is in tune with our perceptions of A.I. now, something which transcends humanity and will destroy us like a digital Frankenstein’s monster.