I read a fairly compelling Doctorow short (possibly I, Rowboat?) which posited that that origin of AIs was spam filtration. By creating an ongoing cat-and-mouse

I read a fairly compelling Doctorow short (possibly I, Rowboat?) which posited that that origin of AIs was spam filtration. By creating an ongoing cat-and-mouse game between spambots and anti-spambots, a selective pressure was accidentally created from which intelligent language-using agents emerged.