Kim Stanley Robinson appears to me to be doing this. Even Arthur Clarke was, if the ultimate outcome was sometimes a bit messianic, the pathway to the end was the "best of all possible worlds" -which in some ways is what you are evoking.

We've been on this pathway since the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.

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oersted an hour ago | parent [-]

> We've been on this pathway since the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.

What an intriguing thing to say :)

What are you referencing?

	▲	ggm an hour ago \| parent [-]
		it's the root of "best of all possible worlds" -the secular humanists bootstrapped thinking around doing the best we can here and now, instead of some belief in a future paradise, from the skepticism of gods magninimity which emerged from the Lisbon earthquake: "If god is so good, why did he allow this to happen" blossomed into a range of branching paths amonst the european savants. The pathways are all there in search. You won't need AI to find them. It's often mentioned in histories of philosophy from Lebnitz onward, he was the last great religious optimist in some ways. Not that there aren't any, but they don't exactly come to mind the way Kant, Voltaire & Rousseau do.