Preferably stand alone books, not series!
I know culture series is going to be one of the first answers, I'm already on to it, you can skip that recommendation! Also read Neuromancer as well!
Currently reading Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.
Recommendations can be stories/books with doomed future, but what I really want is clever or cool AI related stories and not just how super powerful AI will kill us all.
Something that doesn't involve interstellar space travel gets extra points because that's the default theme state for many such stories.
Related questions
It's a series, but I'll put it anyway. The first book is perfectly fine to read stand alone.
The long earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.
It's a multiverse, new frontiers, travel book with one of the main characters being an AI who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman.
And instead of space ships there are airships which are much cooler anyway.
In order of my favorites:
Robopocalypse" by Daniel H. Wilson: global robot uprising. <3
"All Systems Red" by Martha Wells: self-aware AI security unit character. coool
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang: yes This collection of short stories but they are soooo good.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein: self-aware computer named Mike <3. [consciousness and political revolution ]
"Sea of Rust" by C. Robert Cargill
I recommend blindsight by Peter Watts.
It features spaceflight, but only within the solar system, so not interstellar.
It features a genetically engineered super intelligent human subspecis, super intelligent AI and super intelligent aliens. The aliens are actually terrifying, not in a spooky horror way, but in an existential sense. I don't want to spoil the story but for the purpose of this recommendation I think the aliens are going to fullfill the role of cleverly thought out AI that you are looking for (although they are definitely going to kill us all).
The prose is very dense with a lot of information per sentence, and it's an early work of the author, but I think you'll like it. It is definitely one of my favourite books of all time. I recommend it every time I can.
The Adventure by Stewart Armstrong; it's his attempt at writing a story of a post-Singularity utopia "on hard mode", which he describes as:
Writing needs challenges for the characters, and that's trivially easy in a dystopia (everything is a challenge), a fake utopia (the challenge is to to look beneath the facade, and fight the secret enemy), or even imperfect utopias (the challenge is to solve the remaining problems). Iain M. Bank's Culture illustrates another way you can write about utopias and keep them interesting: by having an external foe as a challenge.
I avoided all those tricks. The challenge then was to write about a genuine utopia, one that people would enjoy living in, without any hidden flaws or enemies, internal or external. And these had to be real people doing things they wanted to do, rather than idealised people doing things they should do. Basically a real utopia has to contain internet trolls and various fanatics, and still be a great place for everyone.
For non doom post singularity a great classic is "diaspora" by Greg Egan. It is more about transhumanist sentience post singularity than about AI specifically, although most characters are indeed AI while some are uploaded humans. It does have interstellar travel, plus the alternate physics that are a trademark of the author, so if that puts you off maybe avoid this one, but I think the focus is more on the effects of post scarcity on sentience and society and it's well worth the read.
You probably have read this, but whether or not this counts as non-doom is ambiguous/debatable: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal is an interesting read. (For those who feel weird about reading a My Little Pony fanfic, you have my encouragement to check it out 😅)
Unfinished fanfiction, involves space travel, and cheats the AI issue by using magic, but I’m still going to drop a rec for To The Stars here
https://archiveofourown.org/works/777002?view_full_work=true
My favorite is I Robot by Asimov, the superintelligent AI is barely at one part of the book, but the cool thing is you see how the AI evolves step by step, from barely a functional ductaped robot to a superintelligent AI, the themes and the purpose of the AI is different in each stage.
May not be what you're looking for, though, but for other people I recommend it.
This might be a stretch for your definition, but “A Psalm For The Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers is very cute, hopepunk without being too over the top in my opinion. There’s a sequel but I think it’s reasonably stand alone.
Oh this book is so amazing (Recommended by George Hotz on Lex's podcast) : https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphosis-Prime-Intellect-novel-singularity-ebook/dp/B014TMUFX6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=peachspeak-20&linkId=e9a10f802e9accb81032d5b7e9dbb098
