This made me think of William Gibson's 1984 novel, *Neuromancer*. I read it right when it came out, so my memory of it is vague, but I remember that there were powerful AIs that had their own community in cyberspace, which is the global network that is central to the novel. The protagonist tries to get help from these AIs, and has a hard time because most of the AIs are much more interested in their own community than the affairs of humans.