Satyajit Ray’s short story “Anukul” (1976) represents one of the earliest textual engagements with artificial intelligence from the Global South, anticipating ethical questions that have since become central to contemporary debates on human–machine relations. Departing from many dominant Western science fiction traditions that foreground technological spectacle, rebellion, or catastrophic failure, Ray imagines a courteous, efficient, and ethically responsive mechanical assistant whose presence quietly unsettles established social, moral, and economic hierarchies. This paper argues that “Anukul” displaces anxiety surrounding artificial intelligence from fears of technological autonomy to the moral dispositions and responsibilities of the human beings who design, employ, and coexist with intelligent systems. Drawing on Luciano Floridi’s framework of information ethics and N. Katherine Hayles’ theorisation of posthuman subjectivity, the study examines how the short story and its 2017 film adaptation stage artificial intelligence as a site of ethical reflection rather than technological threat, exposing contradictions in human behaviour, particularly in relation to labour, care, autonomy, and moral authority. Through textual and cinematic analysis, the paper demonstrates how Ray’s understated narrative anticipates contemporary concerns surrounding AI caregiving, automation, and affective labour. The film’s fatal conclusion does not signal machine rebellion but instead emerges from an unreflective delegation of ethical judgment, revealing the risks inherent in translating care, loyalty, and responsibility into computational efficiency. Ultimately, “Anukul” suggests that the ethical consequences of artificial intelligence depend less on the sophistication of machine intelligence than on the moral preparedness of the human societies that deploy it