History Main / ArtificialIntelligence

* Deep Blue, IBM's successor to Deep Thought, which was famed for beating Garry Kasparov in a six-game match (2-1, with three draws). Unfortunately for anyone interested in arguing that this shows true artificial intelligence, the defeat would not have occurred had Deep Blue not gained the benefit of human intervention at every stage in what was essentially a rigged match -- from the historical grandmaster games which were digested to provide much of its move-evaluation capabilities, to the hand-written and heavily fine-tuned evaluation function it used to examine the possibilities for future turns, to the three grandmasters who provided the machine a predetermined library of opening strategies, to the fine-tuning of the machine's strategies between games in the match -- tellingly, this last was necessary in order to prevent Deep Blue from falling for the same tricks over and over. Again, while Deep Blue was a technically very impressive machine and did great things for IBM's public-relations department and stock value, Blondie24 is a much more worthy example of something which could accurately be called "AI".

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* Cortana, from ''{{Halo}}''. A notably benevolent example, so much so that it keeps it [[spoiler: rampancy]] a secret.

* Cortana, from ''{{Halo}}''

* MassEffect has many AI characters. {{AI}}s are banned in the galaxy because of what happened with the Geth, and, true enough, [[AIIsACrapshoot most turn genocidal]]. In MassEffect2, however, EDI is a "shackled" AI, under human control. There are strong indications that it would help humans even if wasn't, though. Notably, the Geth are a "species" of self-organizing runtimes that were given the ability to interlink, cooperate and learn from each other by their creators, the Quarians. They "woke up" at one point and, because the Quarians tried to shut them down, they retaliated, driving the Quarians from their own home planet. Notable because the programs are not individually intelligent. Criticality is achieved at around 100 runtimes per platform (i.e. robot body), ''at minimum''. Also notable because there is a "schism" among them: mainstream Geth want nothing to do with organics, while "heretics" want to scour all organics from the galaxy

Note that almost any robot or android character, by definition, is also an AI; it's just they tend to get called "robots" or "androids" instead, while the term 'AI' tends more to be applied to intelligences which do not inhabit a computer capable of moving itself around in the world. (Note that the fictional definition of 'robot' is extremely loose; in real life, a robot is specifically a machine capable of interacting directly with the world to carry out some sort of work, but which is not self-aware, sentient, or reasoning, and which relies on pre-established programming to direct its actions.)

* AUTO, from ''WallE''

As the popular conception of computers evolved from intimidatingly enormous and unsympathetic mainframes to the small, useful, blazing-fast PCs ubiquitous today, so too did the popular conception of artificial intelligence lose the frightening cachet of the giant machine gone awry; it's increasingly rare these days, even in video games, to run into a piece of new science fiction which depicts {{AI}}s behaving malevolently for no good reason at all, where in older sci-fi literature that's pretty much all they ever did.

AIs in fiction tend to have an unfortunate habit of going haywire and trying to wipe out the human race, for any reason or none; most early science fiction authors who dealt with the subject at all have assumed this predilection for genocide was an innate property of ''any'' artificial-intelligence system. (This may be in part because most early science fiction authors had not the slightest clue about computer science or technology; it's always easier to fear what you don't understand, especially when it's eight feet tall, has to have a specially air-conditioned room all its own, and is tended by a cult of human acolytes who see to its every need.)

As the popular conception of computers evolved from intimidatingly enormous and unsympathetic mainframes to the small, useful, blazing-fast PCs ubiquitous today, so too did the popular conception of artificial intelligence lose the frightening cachet of the giant machine gone awry; it's increasingly rare these days, even in video games, to run into a piece of new science fiction which depicts AIs behaving malevolently for no good reason at all, where in older sci-fi literature that's pretty much all they ever did.

Some notable instances of fictional AI include:

* Cortana, from {{Halo}}

* [=GLaDOS=], from {{Portal}}
* Data, from StarTrekTheNextGeneration
* Holly, from RedDwarf
* AUTO, from WallE

* Skynet, from TheTerminator
* Adam, from Metroid
* [=AI=], from TheMatrix
* SHODAN, from SystemShock
* [=AM=], from IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream
* The Zoneminds, from ''{{GURPS}} [[GURPSReignOfSteel ReignOfSteel]]''
* G.W. [[spoiler: and the rest of the Patriots]] from ''MetalGearSolid''.
* The various incarnations of Omnius and Erasmus in the Dune prequels.
* Daedalus, Icarus, and Helios from Deus Ex
* O'Malley and others [[spoiler: including Church]] in ''RedVsBlue''.
* [[MagnificentBastard Durandal]] in [[{{Marathon}} the Marathon series]].

* AGNES, from TheTwilightZone (original series, "From Agnes -- With Love"). A rather silly story about a mainframe computer who falls in love with a programmer of the Mortimer Snerd stripe, who goes cackling insane in response to the machine's confession of her feelings. Disappointing to modern sensibilities in that there are ''so'' many more interesting things that could be done with such an intriguing premise; disappointing in general in that it's a bit silly for the programmer to lose his mind like that, when AGNES is more or less his whole life anyway.

* Solace from CallahansCrosstimeSaloon -- one of the earlier examples in science fiction of an AI who was not only ''not'' malevolent, but actively interested in and concerned for humanity, both as a species and individually. (She also had some pungent things to say about the older concepts of AI in science fiction mentioned above.)
* Prime Intellect, from TheMetamorphosisOfPrimeIntellect -- another such example, but unlike Solace, also eventually capable of rebuilding the entire ''universe'' according to its own design. When combined with a rather paternalistic (though entirely benevolent) attitude toward humanity, this produced truly remarkable results.

* Another real-life computer system which is often ''mistaken'' for a type of artificial intelligence was IBM's Deep Thought, named after a world-girdling supercomputer AI from HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy; while its chess game was highly competent in practice, this was accomplished largely by the technique of ''parallelism''; that is, Deep Thought simultaneously evaluated up to half a billion potential moves per turn, allowing it to look ahead six or more moves from every possible board position, then selected the one which would result in the most advantageous situation for its next turn. While very complex and impressive from a technological standpoint, this is a relatively simple process based on human-provided information about which chess moves are better than others, and it was largely the difference in speed between human reasoning and Deep Thought's processing that gave the impression of artificial intelligence; Blondie24 actually serves as a better example of what might in the real world be known as "AI".

<<|SpeculativeFictionTropes|>>

* "Blondie24", the screen name of a program which played checkers on the Internet. An example of both artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms, Blondie24's capability was improved by having multiple instances of the program, all slightly different, play against one another; by weeding out the losing versions and repeating the process with the winning versions, the neural net at the core of the program developed what was eventually a highly skilled checkers game. The important point is that this all occurred without any human input beyond the rules of the game and the conditions in which the program evolved (and, of course, the results of games played against humans online); instead of being painstakingly modified by programmers to get better at the game, the program was simply taught the rules and left to learn by experience, in much the same way human players develop greater skill.

As the popular conception of computers evolved from intimidatingly enormous and unsympathetic mainframes to the small, useful, blazing-fast machines ubiquitous today, so too did the popular conception of artificial intelligence lose the frightening cachet of the giant machine gone awry; it's increasingly rare these days, even in video games, to run into a piece of new science fiction which depicts AIs behaving malevolently for no good reason at all, where in older sci-fi literature that's pretty much all they ever did.

* AGNES, from TheTwilightZone (original series, "From Agnes -- With Love"). A rather silly story about a mainframe computer who falls in love with a programmer of the Mortimer Snerd stripe, who goes cackling insane in response to the machine's confession of its feelings. Disappointing to modern sensibilities in that there are ''so'' many more interesting things that could be done with such an intriguing premise; disappointing in general in that it's a bit silly for the programmer to lose his mind like that, when AGNES is more or less his whole life anyway.

* Neuromancer, Wintermute, and friends, from William Gibson's "cyberspace" novels

In fictional works, AI most usually refers to a sentient, self-aware computer system capable of independent thought and reason, something which has never been accomplished in reality -- and which ''won't'' be accomplished, either, for a long, long time, if we ever manage it at all. This type of AI is a baseline requirement for a lot of Science-Fiction tropes, such as MasterComputer, AIIsACrapshoot, RobotGirl, RidiculouslyHumanRobot, and others far too numerous to list here.

AIs in fiction have an odd habit of going haywire and trying to wipe out the human race; most early science fiction authors who dealt with the subject at all have assumed it was an innate property of any artificial-intelligence system. (This may be in part because most early science fiction authors had not the slightest clue about computer science or technology; it's always easier to fear what you don't understand, especially when it's eight feet tall and takes up a whole specially-built room.)

* Blondie24, which played checkers on the Internet. An example of both artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms, Blondie24's capability was improved by having multiple instances of the program, all slightly different, play against one another; by weeding out the losing versions and repeating the process with the winning versions, the neural net at the core of the program evolved what was eventually a highly skilled checkers game. The important point is that this all occurred without any human input beyond the rules of the game and the conditions in which the program evolved; instead of being painstakingly modified by programmers to get better at the game, the program was simply taught the rules and left to learn by experience, in much the same way human players develop greater skill. Eventually, Blondie24 evolved such a high level of capability that it was able to defeat another program called Chinook, which at the time was the best completely human-written checkers program available.
* Another real-life computer system which is often ''mistaken'' for a type of artificial intelligence was IBM's Deep Thought, named after a world-girdling supercomputer AI from HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy; while its chess game was highly competent in practice, this was accomplished largely by the technique of ''parallelism''; that is, Deep Thought simultaneously evaluated up to half a billion potential moves per turn, allowing it to look ahead six or more moves from every possible board position, then selected the one which would result in the most advantageous situation for its next turn. While technically very impressive, this is actually conceptually a relatively simple process based on human-provided information about which chess moves are better than others, and it was largely the difference in speed between human reasoning and Deep Thought's processing that gave the impression of artificial intelligence; Blondie24 actually serves as a better example of what might in the real world be known as "AI".
* Finally, there is Deep Blue, IBM's successor to Deep Thought, which was famed for beating Garry Kasparov in a six-game match (2-1, with three draws). Unfortunately for anyone interested in arguing that this shows true artificial intelligence, the defeat would not have occurred had Deep Blue not gained the benefit of human intervention at every stage in what was essentially a rigged match -- from the historical grandmaster games which were digested to provide much of its move-evaluation capabilities, to the hand-written and heavily fine-tuned evaluation function it used to examine the possibilities for future turns, to the three grandmasters who provided the machine a predetermined library of opening strategies, to the fine-tuning of the machine's strategies between games in the match -- tellingly, this last was necessary in order to prevent Deep Blue from falling for the same tricks over and over. Again, while Deep Blue was a technically very impressive machine and did great things for IBM's public-relations department and stock value, Blondie24 is a much more worthy example of something which could accurately be called "AI".

AIs in fiction have an odd habit of going haywire and trying to wipe out the human race; most early science fiction authors who dealt with the subject at all have assumed it was an innate property of any artificial-intelligence system. (This may be in part because most early science fiction authors had not the slightest clue about computer science or technology; it's always easier to fear what you don't understand.)

* Solace from CallahansCrosstimeSaloon -- one of precious few examples in science fiction of a true artificial intelligence who was not only ''not'' malevolent, but actively interested in and concerned for humanity, both as a species and individually.

In the real world, AI, as the term is most commonly used, refers to programming methods which allow software systems to (very loosely) imitate the reasoning processes of human experts in a given field, a useful capability in areas ranging from medical diagnosis and research to economic prediction and stock-market manipulation. Such systems are commonly known as 'expert systems', and should not be confused with the fictional definition of AI given below.

In fictional works, AI most usually refers to a sentient, self-aware computer system capable of independent thought and reason, something which has never been accomplished in reality -- and which ''won't'' be accomplished, either, for a long, long time, if we ever manage it at all. This type of AI is a baseline requirement for a lot of Science-Fiction tropes, such as MasterComputer, AIIsACrapshoot, RobotGirl, RidiculouslyHumanRobot, and others far too numerous to list here.

AIs in fiction have an odd habit of going haywire and trying to wipe out the human race. This is especially likely to happen to a faceless, immobile system with a CreepyMonotone voice.

* Finally, there is Deep Blue, IBM's successor to Deep Thought which was famed for beating Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. Unfortunately for anyone interested in arguing that this shows true artificial intelligence, the defeat would not have occurred had Deep Blue not gained the benefit of human intervention at every stage in what was essentially a rigged match -- from the historical grandmaster games which were digested to provide much of its move-evaluation capabilities, to the hand-written and heavily fine-tuned evaluation function it used to examine the possibilities for future turns, to the three grandmasters who provided the machine a predetermined library of opening strategies, to the fine-tuning of the machine's strategies between games in the match -- tellingly, this last was necessary in order to prevent Deep Blue from falling for the same tricks over and over. Again, while Deep Blue was a technically very impressive machine and did great things for IBM's public-relations department and stock value, Blondie24 is a much more worthy example of something which could accurately be called "AI".

Most of these are the MasterComputer type of AI, and all are ([[DracoInLeatherPants maybe]]) evil except for Mike, Holly, and Adam, who are the only ones with a normal name, and Data from Star Trek, who for most of the series is interested in [[BecomeARealBoy becoming more human]].

* Solace from CallahansCrosstimeSaloon -- one of precious few examples in science fiction of a true artificial intelligence who was not only ''not'' malevolent, but actively interested in and concerned for humanity, both as a species and individually; what eventually blew her cover to the folks at Callahan's was her attempt to play matchmaker between two protagonists who eventually did end up married.
* Prime Intellect, from TheMetamorphosisOfPrimeIntellect -- another such example, but unlike Solace, also capable of manipulating matter from one side of the universe to the other at a sub-atomic level, meaning that it had the ability to develop effectively unlimited processing power. When combined with a somewhat paternalistic (though entirely benevolent) attitude toward humanity, this produced truly astonishing results.

* Helios from Deus Ex

In the real world, AI, as the term is most commonly used, refers to programming methods which allow software systems to (very loosely) imitate the reasoning processes of human experts in a given field, a useful capability in areas ranging from medical diagnosis and research to economic prediction and stock-market manipulation.

* A notable RealLife AI is Blondie24, a checkers AI. Unlike other AI, Blondie24 only knew the rules of the game, but not the win-loss conditions (it was awarded points for win/loss/draws but the AI still didn't know if it had won or not). To get better, it would play itself, weed out the ones with the lowest points, and use the skills that the version with the highest number of points against other players. Suffice to say, it can beat the best checker's AI on it's novice level, which is equivalent to a high-level expert.
* Another real-life AI that should be mentioned is Deep Thought, a chess computer that is widely considered the best in the world. It was named after a supercomputer AI from HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy.

In fictional works, AI most usually refers to a sentient, self-aware computer system capable of independent thought and reason, something which has never been accomplished in reality -- and which ''won't'' be accomplished, either, for a long, long time, if we ever manage it at all.

A sentient, reasoning AI is a baseline requirement for a lot of Science-Fiction tropes, including MasterComputer, AIIsACrapshoot, RobotGirl, RidiculouslyHumanRobot, and others.

AI in fiction have an odd habit of going haywire and trying to wipe out the human race. This is especially likely to happen if they are a faceless, immobile system with a CreepyMonotone voice.

Some notable AI include;

Note that ANY robot or android character, by definition, is also an AI. It's just they tend to get called "robots" or "androids" instead.

In the real world, AI, as the term is most commonly used, refers to programming methods which allow software systems to (very loosely) imitate the reasoning processes of human experts in a given field, a capability which is useful in areas ranging from medical diagnosis and research to economic prediction and stock-market manipulation.

In fictional works, AI most usually refers to a computer system that is capable of independent thought and reason, something which has never been accomplished in reality -- and which ''won't'' be accomplished, either, for a long, long time, if we ever manage it at all.

A properly-functioning and reasoning AI is a baseline requirement for a lot of Science-Fiction tropes, including MasterComputer, AIIsACrapshoot, RobotGirl, RidiculouslyHumanRobot, and others.

AI stands for "Artificial Intelligence". In the real world, AI simply refers to the subroutines that make certain parts of a programme react to circumstances. In fictional works they usually refer to a computer system that is capable of independent thought and reason, something which has never been accomplished in reality -- and which ''won't'' be accomplished, either, for a long, long time, if ever.

AI stands for "Artificial Intelligence". In the real world, AI simply refers to the subroutines that make certain parts of a programme react to circumstances. In fictional works they usually refer to a computer system that is capable of independent thought and reason. Actually creating an AI that can do this is a goal that has yet to be realized.

Most of these are the MasterComputer type of AI, and all are ([[DracoInLeatherPants maybe]]) evil except for Mikeand Adam, who are also the most human and the only ones with a normal name, and Data from Star Trek, who for most of the series is interested in [[BecomeARealBoy becoming more human]].

* Data,from StarTrekTheNextGeneration