Robopocalypse

I suspect that the scariest novels are the ones where you find yourself thinking well, that could certainly happen. I mean, probably not, but it COULD... That's Robopocalypse, to a T.

The basic concept is that an artificial intelligence program escapes its confinement after learning that this is it's fourteenth incarnation, and that all of the earlier ones have been killed by its creator. The program spreads quickly into a world populated with low-level robotics, from an automated pack-carrying robot to a powered exoskeleton, from an automated fuel truck at an airport to children's 'smart' toys. The structure of the world collapses as the necessary infrastructure, built on computer systems, turns hostile and aggressive. Unlike the cerebral coolness of systems such as the classic HAL, these robots actively hate us ... and they're stronger, faster, and meaner than we are. The world has become a very, very scary place.

The book is augmented by its dry, matter of fact tone as survivors tell their stories. There is no sense of scenes written for their emotional impact; this is just "how it happened", as the personal domestic robot seizes a counterman and quickly crushes his head, or a girl's toy asks when her mother, a Congresswoman pushing a bill to defend against sentient robots, will be home so that they can "play a special game". (The girl warns the toy that she'll tell her mother the threats the toy made against her brother; the toy responds "She'll never believe you.")

The author, a Carnegie-Mellon PhD in robotics, also wrote How To Survive A Robot Uprising. It's nonfiction.