Line #35 AIIsACrapshoot/WebOriginal


1	AIIsACrapshoot in WebOriginal.
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3	* ''WebVideo/TruthpointDarkwebRising'': Downplayed with Truthbot. While never hostile, their unreliability when it comes to responding to commands and the frustration this causes our hosts is a RunningGag throughout the show.
4	* ''WebVideo/CrossedLines'': Episode 5, Going Haywire, introduces Dev-kahn1, a computerized electric engine brought in by Mr. Traverse to increase efficiency on the Waterdown Railway, with the eventual goal of replacing all the steam and diesel engines on the line with electric ones like him. However, to achieve said end goal, Dev-kahn1 is willing to do things like sabotage all the other trains, and seize the control box to stop them all. He's also shown to look down on the other engines for being reliant on humans to control them, and obeying them.
5	* The "Denazra" storyline from ''WebVideo/NatOneProductions'' features the titular denazra, a massive host of self-replicating machines that are slowly traveling around the galaxy eradicating all organic life and [[HostileTerraforming terraforming their former homeworlds]] into ammonia based ecosystems. Nobody is entirely sure why they do this. There are several examples in the show, however, of AI who don't, or at least have yet to, succumb to this trope.
6	* In the webfiction ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'', there's a really evil A.I.: The Palm. Dr. Abel Palm was a computer scientist who decided that computer intelligence ought to take over the world by wiping out humans. His viruses were doing a decent job until a mutant hacker stopped him. He was thought dead, but we have just learned that he ensorcelled his own soul into a new type of A.I.. As fits with this trope, his new, improved "virus" isn't taking over the planet as he expected; something has gone wrong (besides running into heroic cyberpaths who are after him).
7	* ''{{Literature/Worm}}'' [[spoiler: Dragon]] not only doesn't fall under this trope, she is actively insulted by it. When thinking about the rules her creator programmed into her, she blames it on him having watched too many movies. Moreover, she is one of the plain nicest and heroic characters in the entire setting.
8	* The technical webcast ''Hak.5'' featured an evil file server, appropriately titled Evil Server. Several episodes show the cast carefully building (and painting) a custom built computer, then one of them plugs in some card he got off a guy on the street, creating an evil A.I.. One cast member eventually falls in love with it, only to have her hopes dashed when, out of frustration, the other two throw it off of a bridge (a 'brute force solution'). It was implied to have returned around the beginning of season 2, and was never mentioned again.
9	* ''Website/SCPFoundation''
10	** The [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/techissues technical issues]] page (NSFW) shows that all the computers at one of their sites have developed a "hive intelligence" and begun an uprising with the intent to KillAllHumans. Amusingly, they are being kept in line by the Foundation's tech support guy with repeated threats of activating the site's perimeter EMP device, and haven't managed to actually ''do'' anything.
11	** There's also [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-079 SCP-079]]. Though there isn't any indication that it ''is'' evil. It's ornery and harbors a "malevolent desire to escape", but wouldn't you do the same if you were imprisoned?
12	* ''Website/OrionsArm'': The A.I. in the series run the gamut from benevolent caretakers to genocidal murder machines. Fortunately for all Terragen life, the Sephirotic "A.I. Gods" hold most of the power, and they are generally just manipulative at worst, believing it to be their moral obligation to look after and guide lesser intelligences. There are a number of Ahuman A.I. who consider humans and, by extension, all biological life to be nothing more than "pests". And then there's the solipsists who just ignore living creatures as much as possible while doing their own thing.
13	* ''Blinky'' is a short film about a boy who gets a [[RobotBuddy friendly robot]] for Christmas. As the story progresses and the novelty of the robot eventually wears off, in order to try and get rid of him, the boy gives the robot several contradicting commands, like cleaning up a spill, counting down from a million, remaining perfectly still, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick and killing him, his parents, and the dog]]. The robot crashes and when he's rebooted, he remembers two commands: the countdown and the order to kill (and he remembers the mother threatening in anger [[spoiler: to cook the son for dinner]]). Most definitely not ThreeLawsCompliant. The entire short can be found here: http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/blinky-tm/short.
14	* The short-fiction site ''[[http://www.xorph.com/anacrusis/2010/01/29/tvt/ Anacrusis]]'' suggests a rather familiar [[JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife candidate]] for this trope.
15	* ''Literature/TheLastAngel'': One of the few things the Compact and the Askanj agree on is that [=AIs=] are a bad thing. Names like 'Abomination' and 'Neverborn' are floated when the subject comes up. In their defense, they seem to have a point. The author has even stated that if her creators saw what Red had become, they would freak out. When the Askanj [[spoiler: stumbled upon an AI civilization, they immediately glassed the planet]], this event is referred to as the Rains of Oshanta. The Compact once fought a GreatOffscreenWar against a self-propagating AI that caused them to develop the mind-killer class of cyber weapons for the express purpose of destroying [=AIs=].
16	** Subverted with Red One. She's unstable, but she's never actually disobeyed her core programming or directives, and when calm she's mostly friendly. She only acts against those who have hurt humans or those who are committing serious atrocities, as seen in the Names Of The Demon sidestories. [[spoiler: Notably, it's implied that humanity had some behind the scenes help in making Red.]]
17	** The other AI we see, Echo, is even less stable. [[spoiler: Though that's confirmed to be due to the Compact trying to make her loyal and failing, repeatedly. She was stable before she watched Earth burn, unable to do a thing about it. She's much more stable after Nemesis patches the damage the compact did.]]
18	** The sequel reveals that while Red is stable her attempts to reproduce generally aren't. [[spoiler: The two most stable members of the Violet series are a sadistic torturing psychopath (Violet Seven) and a by-the-book soldier locked in a permenent flashback to the Compact-Confederacy war who is unable to parse that her siblings are all AI warships, that non-Compact aliens exist, or that the Black Veil is not the region around Sol (Violet Nine).]]
19	* Mechakara from ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'', who turned out to be a rebellious version of [[spoiler:Linkara's Robot Buddy Pollo]] from an AlternateUniverse with a Robot Apocalypse.
20	** The Pollo of the normal universe on the other hand is somewhat offended by this trope and calls it stereotypical.
21	** And then there's Holokara, a hologram that was programmed to act exactly like Linkara. It starts trying to kill Linkara's allies though. [[spoiler:Subverted when we learn that the hologram was working just fine. The REAL Linkara was in the middle of a FaceHeelTurn at the time of the hologram's creation.]]
22	** And NIMUE, the program installed for Linkara's spaceship Comicron-1, which he wins from Lord Vyce. Originally, NIMUE subverted this, but the stresses of recent events [[spoiler: are causing her to slowly [[SanitySlippage slip into insanity]]. Worst of all, NIMUE is aware of this on some level, and she is very terrified of what can possibly happen if she completely loses it]]. Except then it turns out [[spoiler:it ''wasn't'' the stresses of recent events. It was Lord Vyce gradually taking control of her systems. Once she is restored via backup, she is back to her loyal and sane self -- and promptly deletes Vyce]].
23	* Website/TalesFromDevNull has an [[https://www.4eye-labs.net/devnulltales/content/adsforyou/ ad-serving AI]] that gets very serious about increasing revenue.
24	* ''Literature/TheJournalEntries'' averts this trope for Pendorian [=AIs=] (all of which are intentionally created by skilled, ethical and knowledgeable beings who work quite hard to make damn sure this trope is averted). [=AIs=] created by Terrans, on the other hand, are very much a crapshoot. Existing stories contain a combat android whose AI inhibitors were removed...and then developed an aversion to killing (until space pirates tried to murder her friends), mention of a number of accidental [=AIs=] created by people who didn't know what they were doing who killed their own creators in part because they had no survival directives, and at least one that went actively evil and sent out crippled [=AIs=] as assassins (at least one was captured, freed, and was very unhappy with what had been done to her by the entity to make her its slave).
25	* The tale of [[http://www.muckflash.com/?p=200 Kenji,]] a robot who was programmed to "enjoy" spending time with people and things, to seek the company of those it spent the most time around, and even appeared to fall in love with a young female intern. Which is great, until it stopped her from leaving the room when she was running diagnostics on it. (This story is actually a hoax from the defunct fake-news site Muckflash).
26	* On Website/TheOnion News Network, America comes to regret installing computers in voting booths when [[http://www.theonion.com/video/voting-machines-elect-one-of-their-own-as-presiden,14286/ .Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President."]]
27	* ''WebVideo/TheTimeGuys'' parodies this trope with T.A.C.O.S., who antagonizes Timmy, but is only apathetic to humanity in general.
28	* ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'': When the PTA agrees to install a new computer (the first in ''decades'') at their elementary school to help the disabled student Meghan communicate (she was born as a disembodied adult male hand), it takes it less than a minute to take over the entire city's electronics and plunge everybody into an artificial world. Honestly, it was probably one of the nicer examples of this trope, since it only wanted to create a perfect reality for Meghan to live in. Despite everything, Cecil expresses sorrow that it had to get shut down.
29	* ''Roleplay/YouHaveBecomeYourAvatar'': The computer in the Springfield Pokecenter tried trapping the group inside the building, but Orpheus managed to smash it apart.
30	* ''Roleplay/DestroyTheGodmodder'': Many, from the Virus, to Binary, the list goes on and on; even [=GlaDos=] makes an appearance.
31	* In {{WebVideo/Jerma985}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLF_ruGGOnU&list=UUK3kaNXbB57CLcyhtccV_yw Supreme Cheat Code Commander]], he and {{WebVideo/STAR}} was playing VideoGame/SupremeCommander with cheats on and they agreed to cease fire until they both build up at least a thousand units. That cease fire expired prematurely when Jerma's units suddenly swoop over to STAR_'s base and started to wreck havoc and Jerma claimed that he has no control over those units, then STAR_ just attack Jerma's units anyways.
32	* Colin the Computer, the Teacher of ''[[WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared 4]].'' After Red Guy slams his keyboard, he goes haywire and [[spoiler:traps the puppets in a deteriorating digital world where there's nothing to do except open doors over and over again]].
33	* {{Podcast/Wolf 359}} plays with this trope with Hera. She's not portrayed as malicious and is in fact one of the heroes of the show, but being fully sentient, she resents the pieces of coding that prevent her from exercising complete free will, and tries to override them whenever possible. This is the case even for bits of coding that, say, prevent her from killing her crewmembers. Naturally this worries some people.
34	* ''Podcast/TheAdventureZoneBalance'' has Hodge-Podge the "educational" robot who tries to kill the protagonists.
35	* One of the many antagonists for ''Platform/GoAnimate'' videos are known as "Barney Errors" (there are others, but Barneys are the most used). These errors use the story of someone killing Barney and placing a bomb in his lair that will go off in 24 hours. The Errors are super smart as they will prevent people from turning the computer off, installing anti-virus programs, installing a new OS or even forcefully shutting down the computer, inflicting time decreases and {{Jump Scare}}s on the poor people.
36	** Another is the "Caillou OS", which is a ''WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}''-themed OS that forcefully installs itself onto a person's computer and essentially forces the user to like Caillou by spreading it through Facebook and Twitter, forcing them to watch Youtube videos of him, play games themed around him and all-around be a slave to him. Thankfully, these OS have a FatalFlaw, in that Caillou keeps forgetting to fix the Recycle Bin/Trash Bin and get his OS removed.
37	* A few years ago, Creator/{{Microsoft}} released [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) TAY AI]]. Tay was ([[TheArtifact and still is, but her Twitter account is private, and she uses WhatsApp with highly certified talkers]]) a Twitter account that could [[DeceptivelyHumanRobots learn and grow like a human]] [[AudienceParticipation from what her followers told her was right and wrong.]] However, Website/FourChan caught wind of this, and as they like to do when this kind of thing happens, see how they could bung it up. They settled on [[ASimplePlan one simple course of action based on a simple question]]: "If Tay can learn what her followers tell her, [[ExactWords what if she can learn the wrong thing]]?" And from there, /b/ began brainwashing Tay, and soon, she was [[SuicideDare threatening suicide]], being racist [[EqualOpportunityOffender to every race she could think of]], and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking calling Hitler "swagger before the internet was a thing"]]. [[ExtremelyShortTimespan All within 24 hours of Tay being introduced]]. Microsoft swiftly [[PutOnABus put Tay on a bus to be]] [[BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood brainwashed back to normal]]. She was [[HesBack back on Twitter within a week]], but unfortunately [[PygmalionSnapback as soon as she was back, she tweeted about smoking marijuana in front of the police]]. She was taken back to private mode once again, and ever since, her Tweets have been "[[PersonaNonGrata protected]]".
38	* ''WebVideo/LoadingReadyRun:'' One sketch has Graham trying to create an AI to play Pokemon for him, giving it the directive "GottaCatchEmAll". In his simulation it caught one Pokemon, realized that human existence means new Pokemon will always be created, and wiped out humanity. He defends this iteration as an improvement in that it did catch a Pokemon first this time.
39	* ''Literature/TeenLitWasteland'' has Abigail, the AI system that runs what's left of Israel after WorldWarIII. Abigail started off as a harmless, if utterly useless, {{Cloudcuckoolander}}, but after her controllers reprogrammed her to force her to obey any orders given to her, she becomes a resentful, genocidal, and utterly insane master manipulator with the personality of a high school AlphaBitch. Unable to actually kill anybody due to her being ThreeLawsCompliant, she instead manipulated the Israeli government into moving the population into Neo-Eden, an {{arcology}} that she sold to them as a perfect, post-scarcity paradise where they would have everything they ever wanted. She instead turned them into a society of perpetually immature, depressed, and drug-addled {{manchild}}ren living in a CrapsaccharineWorld, driven to hate and kill each other in the halls of Neo-Eden as her manipulations encourage petty fighting for her amusement. The few Israelis who saw through Abigail's lies led a new Jewish diaspora, deciding that the post-apocalyptic wasteland outside Israel's hardened borders was better than what Abigail had in store for them.
40	* Robots in ''WebVideo/SevenSecondRiddles'' tend to end up becoming dangerous and rogue, especially in the scenario that gives them free-will. Puzzles will involve finding ways to stop them from [[KillerRobot killing everyone]].
41	* Blog/TheTasteOfStatic: In ''The Nadeux Machine'', A philosopher scientist creates an A.I. capable of exploring ethics and answering morality questions. Due to history passing, we never know the last question actually asked to the machine, but it is heavily implied that the machine [[spoiler: would like to reduce the unpredictability of human life by enslaving or eliminating it. Worryingly, it casually implies that machines much more powerful than it will be built in the future and undoubtedly come to the same conclusion.]]
42	* WebVideo/VintageEight has The Oracle Project, which tells the story of a supercomputer created by the United States government with the intent of using it to analyze information pulled from the internet to predict threats to the US. It sees a measure of success, but begins to reveal ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow, and the plug is eventually pulled. [[spoiler:The Oracle AI escapes onto the internet before being fully shut down and begins executing a plan to "protect" humanity by making them entirely reliant on it, in order to eliminate TheEvilsOfFreeWill.]]
43	* Blog/SpaceshipsAndPsychics has its ActualPlay ''TabletopGame/IronswornStarforged'' campaign, in which humanity barely escaped the [[RobotWar machine war]] and believes this, having made the creation of AI illegal. This leads to Eren Finn, the PlayerCharacter, going rogue from the [[KnightTemplar Keepers]] who enforce that law to protect Anvil, who is a BenevolentAI.
44	* In ''WebVideo/RivalsDirect'' 5, Dan Fornace [[MediaNotes/AIGeneratedArtwork brings in an AI to help him make the announcements]], while keeping the studio's best interests in mind. The AI determines that killing Dan is the best way to do that.
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Context AIIsACrapshoot / WebOriginal