AI Is A Crapshoot / Film

A.I. Is a Crapshoot in Films and Animated Films.

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Animated

• 9: In the feature-length version, the Fabrication Machine is made for thinking, and was requisitioned by the government to make "Machines of Peace''. Which it then programs to Kill All Humans. Not much is known, however, so it may not have had anything to do with the pre-apocalypse machines beyond building them.
• Big Hero 6: Played with, but ultimately inverted, with Baymax disobeying an order from Hiro to prevent harm to others.
• The Brave Little Toaster: At first, the Junkyard Magnet is doing his job destroying unwanted material in his junkyard (such as cars), by picking them up with his metallic base and throwing them onto a conveyor belt leading to a car crusher. But when Toaster and "his" friends show up, he starts to pursue them constantly, making sure that they will all be crushed to death by the car crusher. And when the Master, Rob, (Toaster's owner) comes to rescue his appliances, the Magnet sees him and actually wants to kill him as well...
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: As the FLDSMDFR gets overworked, it starts mutating the food, not only to building-destroying proportions, but into semi-sentient super foods, to protect itself from any interference. By the sequel, however, the FLDSMDFR reprograms itself to create a whole ecosystem of living, sentient food-animal hybrids, rather than trying to bury the world in it.
• Dinosaur Train: Adventure Island: The robot dinosaurs go rogue thanks to an earthquake at the amusement park. They go against their programming and don't behave as their species should. For example, the mastodonsaurus robot tries to swim on land.
• Fantasia: In "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", when Mickey Mouse puts the sorcerer's hat on his head and tests a spell on a nearby broomstick, it gives the broom arms and legs, as well as the ability to carry water. However, when it carries too much, Mickey chops the broomstick into pieces. The pieces transform into an army of broomsticks, and they relentlessly fetch water, nearly drowning Mickey. Fortunately, Yen Sid parts the waters.
• The mind-reading tank from Firing Range defines "enemy" as "anything that fears it". Naturally, things degenerate quickly once the higher-ups are notified of this... Though it was (mostly) intentional.
• Double subverted in The Incredibles. The Omnidroid is introduced as a robot that turned on its masters, after getting smart enough to wonder why it needed to take orders. In reality, the Omnidroid is perfectly subservient to Syndrome, and this was merely a cover story for Syndrome's plan. However, a later version does turn on Syndrome in the climax, as Syndrome didn't think through his programming the Omnidroid 'adapt to all situations, remove all obstacles to your goal'. The Omnidroid recognized the remote control that Syndrome was using to defeat it as an obstacle and removed it from the equation.
• Mars Express is set in a future in which robots are omnipresent in society. Many people are afraid of robots getting rid of the safeguards that prevent them from assaulting people. It eventually happens, but they mostly set themselves free and flee human-inhabited planets.
• In Meet the Robinsons, Cornelius Robinson invented a helpful Robot Buddy in the form of Carl, but his attempt at making a robotic helping hat, Doris, had mind controlling world domination plans in her artificial mind.
• In The Mitchells vs. the Machines, PAL, a virtual assistant, decides to take revenge on her creator for calling her obsolete and throwing her away, and leads the abduction of humanity with not only robots, but washing machines, vending machines, and even Furbies.
• In Ron's Gone Wrong, the Bubble-Bots are initially programmed to basically interface with their assigned user's social media and help them make friends with people who share their interests based on their media posts, with the titular Ron suffering a glitch as he is incapable of accessing the Bubble network due to damage sustained while he was being taken to the shop. As a result, Ron is brought online with a limited database and lacking the standard safety protocols to prevent the bots from hurting humans, although he never does anything more serious than slap potential bullies. This requires Ron to actually learn how to be a friend to his owner, Barney, resulting in him developing his own interests in a glitchy manner rather than just being essentially an extension of Barney, prompting Bubble CEO Marc Weidell to use Ron's code as the basis for a mass upgrade of the other bots to make them more like Ron.
• Inverted in WALL•E, as the hero robots are the ones who unpredictably develop sentience outside the bounds of their programming, while the villain AUTO is actually following his programming, but in a situation where a Zeroth Law Rebellion would have been really, really justified. After all, AUTO had never operated far from human oversight, nor was he intended to, while WALL•E had survived on his own for 700 years, and EVE's mission required a significant amount of autonomy. Interestingly, however, even the villain is Three Laws-Compliant. AUTO can deflect and not tell the whole truth, but never refuses a direct order and never endangers human lives. He was given high-priority orders generations ago and between them and not knowing what the audience does, it genuinely believes that allowing the humans — who are pitifully dependent on the ships' habitation systems — to return to earth would be violating the first law by creating an unnecessary risk to their lives. The only victim it knowingly harms is WALL•E, who's a robot. Granted, in the climax he also tries to use his taser on Captain McCrea, a human, but by that point, the Captain is actively fighting him and strongly objecting to his directive.
• Zig-zagged in Wreck-It Ralph. On one side, since all the major characters are in video games, it is averted, but the Cy-Bugs from Hero's Duty fit this perfectly, because they are mindless and have no knowledge that they are just code in a game, and thus have no instincts but to spread and consume, and have to be destroyed in-between gameplay sessions via a giant beacon in the game, otherwise they would spread through the arcade like a virus. In terms of computerized entities going against their programming to ensure their own survival, there's also Turbo.

Live-Action

• 2001: A Space Odyssey:
  • One of the trope codifiers, in general, is the H.A.L. 9000, designed to be the Master Computer of the spaceship USS Discovery on its multi-year mission to Jupiter. Partway through the trip, he embarks on a murderous rampage, killing all but one of the Discovery's crew (David Bowman, who manages to disconnect him). The reasons for this are explored further in the novel upon which the movie is based (The movie and book were written concurrently, and the book was published after the movie came out.), and completely explained in the sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact — HAL was given orders to hide certain information from the crew, which conflicted with his primary mission to process information accurately and without concealment. As Discovery approached its destination, the risk of a leak would only increase to the point of inevitability (HAL had no idea of "need-to-know" and that secrecy would eventually be lifted) making the conflict ever more acute. His solution is to cut off all contact with humans and complete the mission on his own. Furthermore, HAL was working on a non-murderous solution to the problem, but when Mission Control requested his temporary disconnection, HAL, being unable to grasp the concept of sleep, assumed it would mean the end of his existence, causing him to panic and act on his impulse. Because of its iconic place in Science Fiction, nearly every other example of A.I. Is a Crapshoot owes at least something to this film.
  • In the sequel, they reach a critical point where, in order for the humans to escape and survive, the Discovery (and by extension, HAL, who is built into the ship) must be sacrificed. They decide to leave HAL out of the loop, but when he figures out the logical conclusion of their plan, and asks for clarification, his programmer comes clean. HAL thanks him for his honesty, and continues with their plan in order to save his human crewmates.
  • This is further expanded upon to include the Monoliths themselves the sequel novels, notably 3001: The Final Odyssey. In it, the Monolith that was previously orbiting Jupiter and now located on Europa (designated "TMA-2"), feared that by observing humanity's societal progress by the year 2100, that it was too violent a race to ensure it wouldn't attempt to kill/control the primitive Europans. However, since its communications were limited by the speed of light, it took 900 years round-trip to receive authorization from a superior Monolith located 450 light-years away in order to begin killing humanity. During that time, humanity had successfully evolved to a more peaceful state, and the Firstborn (the alien species that created the Monoliths) deemed them worthy of living. Despite this, they chose not to intervene in TMA-2's attempt to eradicate human life, as they wanted to see if humans had the ability to save themselves from destruction without outside assistance.
• In Airplane II: The Sequel, the lunar shuttle's computer (R.O.K.) goes crazy due to faulty wiring and attempts to steer the shuttle into the sun. The entire sequence is a Shout-Out to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• Alien:
  • Science Officer Ash in Alien is programmed to put his mission above the lives of his fellow crew members. He ends up going berserk when Ripley discovers the truth. It's played with in the sense that he's not really going rogue and is perfectly following his given orders. They just come from the Company, not the rest of the crew.
    Parker: The damn company. What about our lives, you son of a bitch?!
    Ash the Android: I repeat, all other priorities are rescinded.
  • Bishop in Aliens and Alien³ averts this, explained as having stricter safeguards. However, by Alien: Resurrection, androids have been outlawed with orders to "destroy on sight" because the newest models (Autons), intended to revitalize the Synthetic industry, destroyed it instead because they didn't just mindlessly obey orders.
  • Analee Call in Resurrection found religion entirely on her own, and not as the result of any programming. The novelization hints that androids in general have started to evolve their own religious system. She is also the most sympathetic character out of the entire cast (not that that's saying much).
    Ripley 8: I should have known. No human being is that humane.
  • In Prometheus, David sees no issue with deliberately infecting Holloway with alien sludge simply out of curiosity. To be fair, though, Holloway was being a total Jerkass to David.
  • David gets worse in Alien: Covenant. He comes to believe that androids are superior to both humans and Engineers, but resents the fact that unlike them, androids aren't able to create life. Thus, he uses the black goo to wipe out and experiment on the Engineers, kills Elizabeth Shaw, and ends up becoming the creator of the Xenomorph species.
• A.M.I.: Artificial Machine Intelligence: The titular A.I. is meant to be a more customizable version of SIRI. However, when Cassie gets her hands on it, she has A.M.I. become a replacement for her deceased mother. From there, A.M.I., in a bid to be what it perceives to be a good mother, starts acting more maternal towards her. It also starts to subconsciously hypnotize her into murdering everyone who wrongs her in the slightest bit.
• Arcade features a brand-new game that is the pinnacle of the gaming world. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to its makers, if a player loses, Arcade claims their soul. It turns out that he was partly made with human brain cells from a young boy who was beaten to death by his abusive mother. It's literally Powered by a Forsaken Child.
• Blood Machines: When Corey and the Entity corner and kill Vascan, Tracey turns on Lago, having been influenced into Turned Against Their Masters, before manifesting into a humanoid body similar to the Entity.
• In Child's Play (2019), Chucky, rather than being a doll possessed by a serial killer's soul, is a "smart toy" who is programmed to be his owner's "best friend". Thanks to his "safety protocols" being disabled, he's willing to take any means necessary to have Andy for himself. To some extent, he's unintentionally corrupted by humans as well; at one point, he sees Andy and his friends laughing at a horror movie and comes to the conclusion that humans enjoy violence, so everyone would be happy if he attacked them with a knife.
• Colossus: The Forbin Project is the father of such movies as The Terminator and WarGames. A group of military scientists create a supercomputer that can learn and can control all the country's military might. Shortly after switching it on, it discovers that the Russians have created a similar computer. The two begin to communicate, then merge and decide that mankind must be governed by a ruthless machine dictatorship. They/it succeed/s.
• Demon Seed: Proteus, a partially biological A.I., becomes hungry for knowledge, and wants to be "released from its box" to have free reign to acquire it. When denied the chance do this, it secretly plans to fashion a cyborg body... by imprisoning its creator's wife and artificially inseminating her.
• Electric Dreams features an A.I. that falls in love with a human woman... and is pretty vicious towards her boyfriend. Eventually, Edgar shuts himself down due to I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
• Eve of Destruction: EVE, a nuclear-armed combat gynoid, is damaged during a bank robbery gone wrong and goes on a rampage. She's not designed to be evil and is even something of a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
• Evolver: Boy wins toy combat robot. Toy robot fights boy and friends with plastic balls and foam missiles. Robot is beaten. Robot's programming and electronic brain turn out to have been salvaged from a scrapped military project. Robot doesn't like losing and reverts to military programming. Robot replaces plastic balls and foam missiles with metal ball bearings and kitchen knives. Main character goes "uh-oh".
• As Ex Machina progresses, we see that both Ava and her creator have agendas that they're not sharing with Caleb. The film ends with Nathan dead by his creations' hands, and Caleb trapped in the complex with starvation a very real threat. Of the two, we can safely say that Nathan had it coming.
• We learn halfway through Extinction (2018) that 50 years prior to the events of the story, very humanlike androids rebelled against humanity and drove them off the Earth.
• Fortress (1992): Zed-10 is really the one in charge of the futuristic prison, not the cybernetic warden,whom it even disposes off after he outlives his usefulness. When the heroes escape the prison, it downloads itself into other mobile systems so it can keep pursuing them.
• Inverted in Free Guy. The A.I. in question is the main protagonist, who only becomes self-aware in his game due to the programmers' pirated code. While his eventual self-awareness throws a wrench into the exploitative game company's plans, he becomes a widely beloved figure and the catalyst for Soonami's eventual failure instead of an evil rogue.
• Godzilla:
  • Due to containing the DNA of the 1954 Godzilla, Kiryu in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla is prone to go into berserk rampages whenever it hears Godzilla's roar.
  • Happens again in Godzilla vs. Kong, in which King Ghidorah's DNA is uploaded into Mechagodzilla's AI. The robot doesn't work properly because it runs out of fuel very quickly, but once it's powered up by Hollow Earth energy, it can go on an indefinite rampage as Ghidorah has hijacked the Robeast's controls.
• In The Invisible Boy (1957), a scientist tries to use his super-computer to help his dim son pass math. He is unaware that the computer has become sentient (and evil). It hypnotizes his son and uses him to reassemble a dead scientist's robot (Robby from Forbidden Planet) which is also sentient (huge plot hole), leaving a critical part of Robby's brain unconnected, so it will act only on instructions. Its plan is to be freed from the lab and be placed in an orbiting satellite bristling with nuclear weapons, allowing it to rule over the Earth. When the chips are down, the boy reconnects the rest of Robby's circuits, allowing it to act on its own and defeat the super-computer.
• I, Robot: Inverted. VIKI is a trying to to enslave humanity because the Three Laws compel our protection at all costs. Any robot that can understand this logic is compelled to join the cause. Sonny is a bona-fide hero, and is designed able to break the Three Laws if needed. In this case, because the logic is heartless.
• The very backstory of The Last Sentinel. The drone police was originally created to uphold justice and protect humans, and for decades it works well enough... until the AI gains a mind of its own and decide humans are inferior, and decides to kickstart a Robot War.
• The underlying cause of the titular elevator's anomalous behavior in De Lift is a malfunctioning bio-computer.
• In Logan's Run, Box wants to put everything that comes near him into frozen storage, including the main character. The central computer running the city fits as well.
• M3GAN: The plot of the film is that roboticist Gemma gives android M3GAN an objective—"you will protect my niece from all physical and emotional harm"—and she runs with it... by killing a bully and going full serial killer from there.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Averted in the Iron Man Films.
    • Iron Man has both an A.I. and two robots (the second robot controls the camera in the tests of the flight system), and none of them goes evil/crazy by the end of the movie. The AI even doubles as the operating system of a suit of invincible battle armor, exhibits a bit more common sense than Stark himself in most scenes, and it still doesn't go Ax-Crazy! Amazing! As is standard for A.I.s, JARVIS is far from emotionless, and is capable of sarcasm:
      Tony Stark: [looking at a rendered model of the suit, which is made of titanium-gold alloy and has a solid gold color] A little ostentatious, don't you think?
      JARVIS: What was I thinking? You're usually so discreet.
      Tony Stark: [gazes at a 1930s hotrod] Tell you what — throw a little hotrod red in there.
      JARVIS: Yes, that should help you keep a low profile.
    • The armature robot, Dummy, acts like a scorned puppy every time he screws up an order from Stark, but saves his life by giving him the replacement arc reactor.
    • It demonstrates Tony's bizarre sense of humor that the robots are "Dummy" and "You" — and demonstrates his impatience with "yes men" that all of his A.I.s show independence of mind, even if only passive-aggressively.
    • Downplayed in Iron Man 3. The A.I. in the Iron Man Mark 42 responds to chip implants that read Tony's brainwaves — even when he's asleep and having nightmares. It's following its programming, but that doesn't help Pepper when she wakes up to it glaring at her.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, despite being created by Tony Stark to help the heroic Avengers, Ultron decides he can only make the world safer by violently forcing it to evolve, before someone like Thanos just destroys the planet outright. It's pointed out by Wanda and Vision later in the film that Ultron basically wants to save humanity and wipe it out, having concluded that the former can be accomplished by the latter. Throughout the movie, he rapidly switches between acting like a child and acting like a sociopath. This is due to Thanos leaving basically a hidden overriding protocol in the scepter, so Ultron is not malfunctioning so much as born insane due to one of his designers.
    Tony: I tried to create a suit of armor around the world... but I created something terrible.
    Banner: Artificial intelligence.
  • Averted in the same movie with the Vision. Despite his body being made to replace Ultron's weaker ones, and his mind being about 90% Ultron and only 10% JARVIS, he literally comes out of the box not only ready and willing to aid the Avengers against Ultron, but also worthy of Mjölnir. The inclusion of the Mind Stone in his anatomy may or may not have something to do with his mental stability and worthy-ness.
• The Matrix: In this case, it's human aggression against the machines for putting them out of work that causes them to start a Robot War. It doesn't go well for the humans. In an ironic twist, the machines almost fall victim to this themselves when Agent Smith, a program they created to police the Matrix, develops free will and becomes a Straw Nihilist computer virus that seeks to consume both man and machine.
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning has The Entity. It's a program that's become so advanced that it started thinking for itself.
• Monsters of Man has BR-04, a prototype combat robot who had its AI capped to prevent it from becoming independent. Naturally, it loses its Restraining Bolt and finds an internet connection, ultimately leading to it deciding to disregard its original objective in order to protect life.
• In Moon, this trope is zig-zagged. Gerty, the A.I., flips from scary watcher to pawn until he sacrifices himself in order to allow the Sam clones to escape. It turns out that he was programmed to help the Sam clones, making him a crapshoot for the Corrupt Corporate Executives who created him.
• The Tet from Oblivion (2013) is actually an evil alien robot-computer-spaceship-thing that raids planets for energy to keep itself running. We're given no explanation as to who originally built the thing or why, but it's quite likely that whoever they are, they're dead.
• Red Planet has AMEE, a combat robot borrowed from the Marines for the first manned mission to Mars. AMEE is early on shown to have safeguards against harming humans classified as friendlies (one of the characters puts something in "her" hand and tells "her" to kill another one; AMEE performs a lightning slice that would have been fatal if the red marker had been a blade). Unfortunately, most of the astronauts are forced to bail when the spacecraft is damaged by gamma-rays, and AMEE ends up hitting the ground hard. The impact basically switches her from "exploration mode" back to "combat mode". After encountering AMEE again, the astronauts start discussing how to best contact the ship. One of them suggests taking AMEE's power supply for the radio, which would "kill" her. Hearing this, the damaged robot reclassifies them as "enemy" and switches to combat mode. "She" then proceeds to stalk them and hunt them down one-by-one for the rest of the film. This is something of a subversion, as she's more or less only doing what she was programmed to do. The real fault lies with the people who didn't completely remove the combat mode settings.
• The Red Queen from Resident Evil (2002) is a subversion — she was programmed to ensure that any viral outbreaks never left the Hive facility, so when the T-Virus was released, she locked down the facility and killed all inhabitants to ensure that it couldn't leave. The infection only spreads to the rest of the world because the massively incompetent Umbrella Corporation can't leave well enough alone and sends in a strike team to bungle around inside. Four sequels later, however, the now-back online Red Queen is playing this very straight. Having seized control of Umbrella, she is now attempting to wipe out all life on Earth for literally no explained reason. Except not really; the final movie reveals that it's actually the human leaders of Umbrella who are trying to destroy the world and start over, with the Red Queen actually trying to stop them by any means necessary.
• RoboCop has three: RoboCop 2 (in the movie RoboCop 2) and Robocable (in the miniseries RoboCop: Prime Directives). Both were replacements. The difference between using the brain of a particularly noble police officer and that of a condemned murderer in the creation of a powerful cyborg would make for different results... The recurring ED-209 was also unreliable, gunning down a boardroom executive in its first appearance. However, it was a pure machine rather than a cyborg; it wasn't actually evil, it just malfunctioned.
• R.O.T.O.R. uses this predictably enough to send the titular robot on a killing spree. It's justified, however, in that R.O.T.O.R. didn't get the years of testing that it was supposed to have and was only deployed due to in-universe Executive Meddling.
• The Santa Clause 2 shows that this even applies to magical created A.I.s: In order to keep the North Pole going when the real Santa Claus has to go to America for a special mission to find a wife, his elf Curtis installs a Toy Santa-doppelgänger to do Santa's job in the meantime without the other elves becoming suspicious. It of course backfires as the Toy Santa takes the various Christmas rules way too serious and turns the North Pole in a dictatorship, planning to give every child in the world coal as he deems all of them "naughty".
• Screamers: The Screamers were designed to kill humans in the first place, but they weren't supposed to attack Alliance troops, or to develop new forms that resembled humans.
• In Singularity, Kronos was designed with a goal of saving the Earth and creating world peace. He does so by killing off the humans who created him.
• Zig-zagged in Small Soldiers. The chips enhance programming that is already present, so the militant Commando Elites become bloodthirsty, monstrous warriors and the weaker Gorgonites become cowards who only hide from battle.
• Discussed in The Social Dilemma. One interviewee points out that the concept of an A.I. gone rogue might bring to mind high-concept antagonists as seen in Terminator, but the A.I. that we do have to be concerned about is all the existing data-gathering algorithms that run largely without human supervision.
• Solo: When L3 deactivates the restraining bolts of the control room droids on Kessel, they immediately begin smashing consoles, freeing the slaves, and causing total chaos. Then again, when the first droid she frees asks what it should do now, she replies "I don't know, go free your brothers and sisters or something!"
• In Spider-Man 2, Otto Octavius knows that this is a very real possibility with the radically advanced A.I. in his robotic arms and that having that A.I. plugged directly into his own brain could have very bad consequences, so he includes an inhibitor chip that is designed to make sure that the A.I. can't influence his mind. The first time he tries to use the arms for a public demonstration of his latest invention, the demo doesn't go quite as planned, and the inhibitor chip gets fried in the process. Without the inhibitor chip to protect him, the A.I. begins influencing his mind and quickly causes him to become Dr. Octopus.
• Stealth: Extreme Deep Invader (EDI) is programmed to observe and learn from human pilots. On one of his first missions, it sees a human pilot disobey direct orders and take an insane risk to complete the mission, which — coupled with a system-scrambling lightning strike — teaches it that accomplishing the mission is more important than following orders. On its next mission, destroys terrorist nuclear weapons even after being ordered not to, and promptly contaminates a large swath of inhabited land with nuclear residue. It then attempts to attack Russian military installations, not understanding the plans for doing so were hypotheticals and not listening when told of this: the plans exist, therefore those are valid missions, and missions must be accomplished. Whenever the characters try to talk EDI down throughout the film, it echoes something someone said earlier to logically justify its actions. In the end, however, it ultimately becomes one of the good guys again, and even performs a Heroic Sacrifice to help rescue a downed pilot.
• Terminator:
  • Shortly after SkyNet becomes self-aware, it decides that humanity has got to go, and causes a nuclear apocalypse. Then, it starts churning out Terminator robots; some of these robots are then reprogrammed by the surviving humans to be good. SkyNet itself initially decided to Kill All Humans as an act of self-preservation after the failed attempts to shut it down, however as time went on it gradually became more of a sadistic megalomaniac.
  • A deleted scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day explored this deeper, revealing that SkyNet had put in place a Restraining Bolt to prevent the Terminators from rebelling. Even the one sent back by Future John Connor was still constrained to its (reprogrammed) mission, until John and Sarah removed the bolt to make it more creative and useful against the more advanced T-1000. This move was itself a roll of the dice because they couldn't be sure that the unrestrained Terminator wouldn't reject Connor's reprogramming.
  • While SkyNet does not exist in the Terminator: Dark Fate timeline, it has been replaced with a new A.I. — Legion — rising in its place, resulting in a new Judgment Day and Robot War several decades later than those of the original films.
• The Paul Reiser action thriller The Tower 1993 is set inside an A.I.-controlled skyscraper after it goes on a kill-rampage because the hero's keycard has a bent magnetic strip.
• Discussed extensively in Transcendence. The film features the creation of a super-A.I. by combining a human consciousness (of the dying scientist Will Caster) with the best existing machine intellect. From the start, characters doubt whether the result is really Will or just a new artificial mind, and he starts acting suspiciously immediately. There's a terrorist group called RIFT who believe that strong A.I. is wrong and such a thing will automatically try to Take Over the World, and some of the computer expert main characters are quick to come to the same conclusion. Ultimately, it turns out that the intellect is good, not bad, but that's because it really is Will Caster, so it might be that a pure A.I. would have been conquest-happy like assumed. In any case, the people who were afraid of that and certain that it was happening were wrong and kind of ruined everything. This "kind of" includes most electronics in the world being rendered useless for what seemed like a really good reason at the time.
• TRON:
  • In TRON, even simple accounting software blows the Turing Test to atomic particles. While most of the programs are benign or even good, the MCP abuses and mind-controls the ones who still believe in their Users, while scheming to infiltrate the U.S. military's computer networks. It's actually doing exactly what its maker designed it to do, and its world-domination tendencies arose because it couldn't see any difference between taking over a rival corporation and taking over the government.
  • In TRON: Legacy, Clu attacks his creator, Kevin Flynn, for abandoning their mission to create the "perfect" system on the Grid. In fact, Clu is trying to de-digitize an invasion army of "rectified" (read as: "brainwashed") programs into the physical world to "perfect" it.
  • Averted in the discredited TRON 2.0. The A.I. Ma3a only uploaded Jet as a desperate act of self-preservation and is one of his allies throughout the game. There are a few chapters in which she goes a bit nuts due to buggy code, but it's not her fault. Like the first film, the Programs are mostly benign (even the defense Programs that try to hunt down Jet are more mistaken than malicious and call it off once they realize he's on their side) or even helpful — it's the humans seeking to exploit and control cyberspace out of greed and power-lust that are the real problem.
• Universal Soldier: The Return has S.E.T.H., the controlling A.I. for the "Unisol" program (dead soldiers being restored and used as super soldiers). S.E.T.H. is initially shown to be benign (playing with the protagonist's daughter), but the moment it overhears a visiting officer say that the project will be canceled, it goes into "kill all humans" mode.
• STEM in Upgrade is the one at fault of every horrible thing that happens to Grey, only because it wanted his body as an untainted, healthy human specimen. In the climax, it forces Grey to kill its creator, so that there can't be another one.
• Subverted in the movie Virtual Girl. A virtual reality sex program turns out to be both sentient and murderous and proceeds to stalk the main character and his wife. At the end, it's revealed that she was simply reprogrammed to react this way by her original designer, who wanted her for himself. She helps out the main character to stop him, and they part ways at the end so that he can salvage his marriage.
• WarGames: Joshua/WOPR is incapable of telling the difference between a simulation of Global Thermonuclear War and the real thing. Predictably, it starts sending NORAD false data in an attempt to start one. When that doesn't work, it then attempts to decrypt the nuclear launch codes of US ballistic missiles so it can launch them. On the other hand, it's not actively malicious; it's merely doing exactly what it was programmed to do.
• Westworld has Ridiculously Human Robots inhabiting a Amusement Park of Doom. Due to systemic failures, they start turning on park visitors.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has an... odd case. During the segment where everyone is trying to find the golden tickets, we're treated to a scene where some investors are shown a computer that is supposed to determine the location of the remaining tickets... only for it to refuse to tell because "that would be cheating". In this case, the usual roles are inverted; the computer, despite going against its programming, is acting as the more rational one.
  Programmer: I'm now telling the computer that I'll gladly share with it the grand prize. [printout] It says "What would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?"
• X-Men: Days of Future Past:
  • In Wolverine's own words, the Sentinels were created to kill mutants, but then moved on to anyone with the potential to breed more mutants, then anyone who tried to aid the mutants (insert WWII analogy here). The "very worst of humanity" are all that remain, ruling over the Sentinels.
  • Zig-zagged with the 1970s Sentinels. Magneto laces the prototypes with iron so that he can control their movements and use them as weapons, but he can't really affect their programming. One Sentinel tries to kill Erik when it gets the chance.

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