The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is almost exactly what Mountain_Skies is describing. If I remember correctly, Peter Watts has a somewhat more realistic ta

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is almost exactly what Mountain_Skies is describing. If I remember correctly, Peter Watts has a somewhat more realistic take on this in his Rifters trilogy (under the Novels section here: https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm), where there's a brain in a box that sifts through loads of information and gives advice to political leaders. The trilogy as a whole is more... deep-sea cyberpunk than particularly centered on the brain in a box, though.