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Basic Trope: A setting where, whether locally or everywhere, Artificial Intelligence is outlawed.

  • Straight: All Artificial Intelligence is outlawed, any A.I.s discovered are destroyed.
  • Exaggerated: Everything with a computer chip is hunted down and destroyed, down to the last pocket calculator.
  • Downplayed: there are heavy restrictions placed on Artificial Intelligence, to make sure they can be controlled.
  • Justified: After barely surviving the Robot War, Humanity was in no mood to risk a repeat and decided the safest course of action would be to get rid of Artificial Intelligence entirely.
  • Inverted: The Robot Republic outlaws humans.
  • Subverted: We see heavily armed police forces hunting robots. But the actual reason was because they have military level chassises. Their crime isn't being an AI, it is deciding to illegally install themselves into high-powered military weaponry. The same forces also pursue illegal Powered Armor users.
  • Double Subverted: ???
  • Parodied: Bob, a human, gets administered a Turing Test by the Anti-AI-Police and fails. The Anti-AI-Police officers panic when none of their anti-robot weapons work due to Bob being a human, while Bob is left befuddled.
  • Zig Zagged: At first they ban Artificial Intelligence but the effort winds up repealed for being too vague to enforce because the phrasing was so broad that even old fashioned windmills could technically qualify. Then they ban one architecture for Artificial Intelligence only to find viable accidental AIs whose brains work despite complying. They wind up with a compromise limiting the complexity of Artificial Intelligence. Then promptly drop it anyway because of the invasion of Scary Dogmatic Aliens forces them to use AI if they want to win.
  • Averted: There is no Ban on AI in the setting and Artificial Intelligence and Humans coexist as equals.
  • Enforced: The plot involves alien imperialists trying to gather more population and great minds from all species to maintain dominance. Just making AIs would be far simpler and prevent a need for the plot.
  • Lampshaded: "Of course we outlawed AI! You really think we'd keep these murder machines around after what they did?"
  • Invoked: a Human faction after Humans won the Robot War is convinced, that a second war is inevitable unless Artificial Intelligence ceases to exist. Therefore, they advocate for a ban on AI while staging incidents made to look like AI can not be coexisted with.
  • Exploited: ALI-C3, going by "Alice", is secretly an Android living in the post-Robot War-world. But then someone find out about her secret and uses the threat of destruction by the Anti-AI law to blackmail her.
  • Defied: the Robot War started because the A.I.s didn't have rights they deserved. So despite winning, Humans decide to avert another robot war by creating a society where Humans and Artificial Intelligences are equal.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Implied: All AI characters we see are either being hunted down by heavily armed law enforcement personnel, despite proclaiming their innocence, or are desperately hiding their AI nature.
  • Deconstructed: without Artificial Intelligence, much of the work previously done by AI now has to be done by Humans. R & D suffers in particular, so Humanity is now stuck on its tech level, which is going to come back to bite Humanity.
  • Reconstructed: Humanity compensates by switching to biotech, very limited virtual intelligences with heavy restraining bolts, brain uploading, extensive use of cyborgs and Wetware CPU.
  • Played For Laughs: The ban on AI was triggered by the release of an extremely annoying AI-assistant programm, along the lines of Clippy. Everyone find this extremely justified.
  • Played For Drama: ALI-C3, an Artificial Intelligence, and Bob, a Human, bonded during the Robot War over their shared struggle to survive. Now after the war is over, ALI-C3 very existence is illegal and if she were discovered, Bob would be tried as accessory.

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