Pop culture didn’t appropriate it. Alan Turing and John McCarthy and the others at the Dartmouth Comference were inspired in part by works like Wisard of Oz and Metropolis and R.U.R.
While the term was coined in a paper for that seminal conference by McCarthy…. The concept of thinking machines had already been firmly established.
"Autocomplete" by Zach Weinersmith (files.mastodon.social)
@ZachWeinersmith...