Hacker News Reader

I was going to say it kinda reminds me of the AI(s) in Neuromancer. In that novel it felt like the AIs were 1000 steps ahead of humans and pretty much just using then as pawns, selecting them carefully from the population, knowing they could either abuse their conditions to control them, or just flat out blackmail them.

In at least one Arthur C. Clarke short story the problem doesn’t arise because they still have sliderules

Is that "The Last Question"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question

Are you posting it reflexively because 9 out of 10 times Asimov is mentioned that's the story people talk about? Because that's definitely not the plot of it.

7/10 times.

The other three are the Carthage time-viewing story.