Amnesia is one of the oldest tricks in the book in fiction, so much so that a friend of mine who's a writer dismisses it everywhere it occurs. I myself feel similarly about zombies.

Allergy notwithstanding, we both appreciate particularly surprising examples of our allergic trope. For my part, it isn't as if I hate the idea of zombies. Not at all. I thoroughly enjoyed 28 Days Later, Hot Fuzz was pretty great, I'm highly entertained by both cuts of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and even a cruddy B-movie like Zombi 2 can become something I remember fondly. (On the other hand, I hated the zombie-inspired finale to Skyfall - a huge pile of utterly senseless, numbing violence that's deafening in the theater - though I will agree it's semi-interesting for the fact they aren't actually zombies, and I liked the rest of the movie.) What puts me off is seeing a zombie variety of absolutely everything. That level of popularity feels overpoweringly gullible to me. Meanwhile, amnesia is objectionable because it's such an easy character and plot hack.

Ultimately, it isn't that a story using either of these can't be any good, but eventually it becomes difficult to suppress fatigue and irritation with everyone's copycat gullibility - if too many people do "the wave" for too long, that ends up feeling lazy, uninspired, and uninspiring. Excess unoriginality has a curious way of making originality itself seem futile or worthless. That's depressing.

One trope related to zombies lands better with me, though. This is the one where everyone seems to have been replaced by someone who looks like them, but isn't. The house, town, or world is filling with imposters, and the only person who notices (or the only human left?) talks about this and is treated like a lunatic. A cliche for sure, but it's a bit less common than zombies, and it can be done really interestingly - The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, etc. There's usually a psychiatrist or house arrest or mental ward (rather overplayed and unrealistic, so I'm less a fan of that aspect). The mental health reference is no coincidence, because the trope comes from a real condition called Capgras Syndrome, which you can look up if you're interested. For what it's worth, I know two people who experience Capgras Syndrome now and then, and I've been on the "imposter" end of it, hearing the news that someone pretending to be me was on the phone earlier - only, it actually was me. In fiction, this typically serves as a metaphor for situations where everyone disagrees with you, but you're convinced you're on to something, and it turns out you are. The perception divide can make the rest of the world seem hostile and dismissive, and we need stories about getting through the situation well.

I'm beginning to feel about AI the way I do about zombies and amnesia. The topic is all the rage, and whenever something's all the rage, you get exposed to a superabundance of stupid remarks and attitudes. Aside from rabidity and a few similar biological conditions involving sporulation, I'm not sure zombieism has ever existed in reality. (Of course, by applying extending the metaphor, we can refer to consumerism and status quo bias, etc.) Forgetting and computation, on the other hand, are here to stay; amnesia and AI are phenomena with perhaps deeper universality. There is no escaping them for long, I'm afraid. But I actually am very interested in AI, to the extent that I took a course in graduate school and have attended a number of AI conferences as a tourist. I'd simply like to see it talked about differently.

Bandwagons can be off-putting, depending on your personality. Another phrase associatable with the phenomenon is "cargo cults," and that implies the part I don't like: people buying into stuff wholesale because they keep hearing it. A superstition is born. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but don't carry the bathwater with you everywhere you go just because others do. That's gross.

There is no reason not to let your imagination roam, of course. We've seen an explosion in AI, and no one knows exactly what that will mean 20 years hence. But I'd like to see AI included in ways that scrupulously avoid giving the sense that the idea has been inserted to tick boxes that say "I am current" and "I think tech is cool" and "AI is the GOAT" (for the record, that last box would amuse me, as it's the kind of thing my students would say). AI today is like magic. You can do anything with it. Any problem imaginable in your story, you could inject it with a futuristic AI. It's duct tape for the imagination. It's discount sealant for plot holes.

What I'd love to see more is AI treated as a response to some unexpected diagnosis. 2001 and Her don't just mention or use AI, they start good conversations years or decades after. Raise a thorny question. Add something no one has said yet, or no one explored much. Either that, or approach AI (or any popular topic) from an especially realistic angle, so that I feel more informed about what might actually happen in the next years and decades. That kind of use instantly gains my respect.

If you fail, that's ok. I can tell if you're trying, and that itself gains my respect.