They aren't generally potrayed as bad, either, just as things which are not as simple as they first appear. Even in the story where the AIs basically run the economy and some humans figure out that they are surreptitiously suppressing opposition to this arrangement (with the hypothesized emergent zeroth law of not allowing humanity to come to harm), Asimov doesn't really seem to believe that this is entirely a bad thing.

The Foundation series is arguably that, but you only find out in book 14 or so.

The 0th law worked out pretty good for Daniel and humanity

c'mon now you know not everybody made it all the way to Foundation and Earth. :D

for some reason that one wasn't even included in the list of books in the series on the inside jacket of the other books that I had.

I remember I had to really hunt for it and it was from a different publisher. never knew why.

Well, "everything worked out according to plan and nobody got hurt" doesn't make for a very interesting story ;)

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip That started from this tropic port. Aboard this tiny ship. They got lost but they called for help, and now they're totally fine. And now they're totally fine.

And obviously all these stories have already been fed into the machine.... :-)