There are good analogies to be had in mythologies and folklore, too! Before there was science fiction - hell, even before there was science - people still occasionally thought of these things[0]. There are stories of deities and demons and fantastical creatures that explore the same problems AI presents - entities with minds and drives different to ours, and often possessing some power over us.

The arguably most basic and well-known example are entities granting wishes. The genie in Alladin's lamp, or the Goldfish[1]; the Devil in Faust, or in Pan Twardowski[2]. Variants of those stories go in detail over things we now call "alignment problem", "mind projection fallacy", "orthogonality thesis", "principal-agent problems", "DWIM", and others. And that's just scratching the surface; there's tons more in all folklore.

Point being - there's actually decent amount of thought people put into these topics over the past couple millennia - it's just all labeled religion, or folklore, or fairytale. Eventually though, I think more people will make a connection. And then the AI will too.

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As for current generative models getting spooky, there's something else going on as well; https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-claude-bliss-attractor has a hypothesis I agree with.

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[0] - For what reason? I don't know. Maybe it was partially to operationalize their religious or spiritual beliefs? Or maybe the storytellers just got there by extrapolating an idea in a logical fashion, following it to its conclusion. (which is also what good sci-fi authors do).

I also think the moment people started inventing spirits or demons that are more powerful than humans in some, but not all ways, some people started figuring out how use those creatures for their own advantage - whether by taming or tricking them. I guess it's human nature - when we stop fearing something, we think of how to exploit it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Fisherman_and_... - this is more of a central/eastern Europe thing.

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Twardowski - AKA the "Polish Faust".