Headscratchers / The Creator (2023)

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• Is NOMAD incapable of shooting down an incoming plane?
  • Well, it's full of civilians and they don't want to kill their own.
  • I'm pretty sure part of the idea of NOMAD was that New Asia doesn't have the resources to get anything close to it so there's a good chance they genuinely never expected any space combat.

• If the plan is not to shut down NOMAD so it will crash when it's down in the atmosphere, or become defenseless to attack, but simply to smuggle a very straightforward bomb up there, why do they need Alphie for the plan at all?
  • Alphie has the power to manipulate electronics, but she isn't strong enough to do it with anything that's not right in front of her. It's then mentioned that her power will grow with her as she ages, until she's able to control all electronics from anywhere in the world. So it seems that the plan is indeed to use Alphie to shut down NOMAD but she simply isn't strong enough to do it yet, which is why the Americans are pretty determined to kill her before that can happen. Alphie probably could cause the station to crash if they had enough time to find the right systems to target, but that was a luxury they didn't have as NOMAD was already in the process of attacking the AI bases, so Joshua had to settle for using a bomb to destroy it instead.

• It's a nitpick, but why are simulants built with big holes in their heads, full of exposed moving parts? It seems like an enormous vulnerability, not just to attack but to any small airborne thing that might get in there. Let alone that building simulants that look human would be useful in a war with enemies who murder all robots on sight.
  • It could be possible that the holes double as a heat-sink for any processing that happens in the head area.

• Are there no A.I.s without semi-humanoid bodies with approximately the same speed, strength, and abilities as a human? Even the can-shaped mobile bombs have two arms and two legs.
  • I always pictured the one the blew up LA was just a computer in a military base somewhere or something, which now that I think about it might be exactly why they don't make them

• In a war, all the robots use hand-held guns. Even if they're not built with weapons, you'd think they could attach some.

• If human minds can be, at least temporarily, Brain Uploaded to mechanical bodies, then surely A.I.'s can be copied much more easily. By that logic, shouldn't actually killing an A.I. be really, really hard?
  • For that matter, what stopped the rebels from copying Maya's / Nirmata's mind? If it's only possible for those who have just died, you'd think they would have the equipment at the ready if they should die unexpectedly. If it can be done on the living, being able to "rehabilitate" them and have them help the cause would have solved a lot of problems.
    • Given how [1] is depicted I don't think it'd really be a useful to evade the Americans. There's never any indication of their A.I.s having any real wireless ability besides Alphie and infinitely copying would still require bodies which are being decimated, remember the war is against all of New Asia's sapient robots, specific ones staying around wouldn't really make much of a difference. As for Maya, if it really does only last a few minutes even on living people it wouldn't have done any good.

• Why are all the AI's humanoids? If they can put free will into a robot like that, what about supercomputers?
  • I always kind of pictured the one that nuked LA being a computer system in a military base or something since it's never shown and that'd be the best way to set it up, which now that you mention it might be exactly why they don't do it anymore.

• How are the governments of the new Asian countries allowing the United States to just March in and kill A.I.s? Shouldn't this be causing an international incident?
  • The destruction of Los Angeles is already considered an international incident.
  • They aren't, the police and military of New Asia repeatedly try to stop them. It doesn't really seem like a warzone because much like imperialism in real life the death and destruction has just become part of their day to day lives. As for the rest of the world it's presumably similarly realistic in that other wealthy nations just don't really care. Historically elite nations having their own world-defining squabbles but ignoring anything the others are ruining in poorer places is extremely common, it's even where the term "third world" comes from.
• Wouldn’t the destruction of NOMAD be seen as the beginning of the end for humanity as a whole?

A.I.s out to kill humans and all that?

• The climax makes NOMAD's purpose really confusing. For one thing the missiles seem able to travel pretty far so I'm not really sure why they need NOMAD to hover over places to hit them. Couldn't they just haul them to orbit like they're presumably already doing to restock it, and launch them from there without using NOMAD to bring them over a target? The way blowing up NOMAD disables the missiles is also strange, it suggests they're being remotely operated for some reason. The military is wary of intelligent AI but they never really seem opposed to other computers doing important things, so I don't really see any reason to not have the missiles be autonomous.