Follow TV Tropes

Following

Benevolent A.I.

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/castle_in_the_sky_1_4.jpg

"She had been forced by the rules her maker had imposed on her to sacrifice herself for the human. It wasn't that she wouldn't have anyways. She just would have liked the choice. Making sacrifices and doing good deeds wasn't actually good if you were forced to do them."
Worm

Artificial Intelligence isn't always a crapshoot; sometimes an AI comes into being and has no desire to harm or subjugate anyone, and just wants to live in peace, do its job, and/or help humanity.

Although instances of this trope are somewhat outnumbered by those where the AI is malevolent, it is becoming increasingly common in recent years as the world becomes progressively more comfortable with the idea of artificial intelligence due to the increasing use of technology in our lives.

A Three Laws-Compliant AI is intended as this. The Computer Is Your Friend tries to be this, but goes too far and becomes a Knight Templar.

Subtrope of Artificial Intelligence. Supertrope of Robot Buddy, which only covers A.I.s who are a) housed in a robot/independent body, and b) are the assistants of human characters. Compare Androids Are People, Too and Eccentric A.I., which is capable of being benevolent, if a little loopy. Contrast A.I. Is a Crapshoot and Robot War.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Battle Angel Alita:
    • Melchizedek, the quantum AI really controlling the everyday functions of the Earth Sphere, becomes this after coming to be controlled by a personality of Arthur Farrel, and convinces its Jovian counterpart Zeus, to join it in guiding the humanity through its life.
    • Additionally, all the population of Typhares undergo Brain Uploading at majority, and have their brains replaced as a special biochip, essentially being Ridiculously Human Robots to a man. Naturally, there are different sorts of people among them, but still they essentially are just that — people.
    • The protagonist herself has her brain extracted by Desty Nova in his Granite Inn lab in the finale of the original manga, so until second Alita is resurrected from her original organic brain by the Last Order end, she's also exactly that.
  • Chamber of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet takes one or two morally questionable actions over the course of the show, but ultimately proves itself to be both fully intelligent and utterly loyal to its pilot, Ledo. Contrast with Crapshoot AI Stryker, which decides to become the ruler of humanity to fulfill its programming. Chamber makes a big speech about the flaws in Stryker's logic and ultimately sacrifices itself (while saving Ledo) to stop Stryker.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Done in every incarnation with the robotic Spider Tanks used by Section 9 (different models variously referred to as Fuchikomas, Tachikomas, or Uchikomas). In every case, they're the sweetest little sapient killing machines you'll ever meet, nice to civilians and fiercely protective of Motoko's team (especially Batou, whom they outright love).
    • In the original manga, Maj. Kusanagi mentions to Batou that she still has contingency plans for the Fuchikomas going rogue, but they never do, remaining loyal partners for the team.
    • In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Motoko becomes frightened at the pace of the Tachikomas' AI development and has them decommissioned. She later realizes she made a mistake when three Tachikomas escape and sacrifice themselves to save Batou from a Mecha. She has them recommissioned in the premiere of 2nd Gig with expanded capacity for individuality, and in the series finale, they sacrifice themselves to stop a nuclear attack by ramming the missile with the satellite containing their server.
  • Louis from the one-shot manga Hotel. The caretaker of a vast genebank on an abandoned and totally devastated Earth he never wavers in his dedication to his duty and devotion to his long dead creators as millions of years pass by. Perhaps not incidentally, he is portrayed as a Cyber Cyclops reminiscent of HAL, albeit with a purple lens.
  • Intelligent and Armed Devices in the Lyrical Nanoha franchise are always depicted as being loyal to their users, and have on several occasions given them a much needed pep talk or demanded to be given dangerous upgrades to better protect them in battle. This loyalty goes both ways, as it is stressed at multiple points that Devices are first and foremost a mage's partner.
  • Transformers: Robots in Disguise: T-AI, the Autobot's resident tactical artificial intelligence. She's friendly enough, firmly on their side and only ever loses her temper when one of them is acting out.

    Fan Works 
  • Always Visible: In the last act of the work, the character deals with the D.O.O.R., a supercomputer that simulates virtual reality. Scientists joke that it can be adapted to create films, and Galbraith himself, impressed by his "reading session", prophesies the death of cinema.
  • Asuka Quest has Aisuka, Asuka's AI clone. She was created to help out during the Matrix battle in the simulators with Iruel, and survived that to join the heroes full-time. She's as moral as any natural-born human, and the characters treat her as if she was Asuka's sister.
  • Communication: The System Core of the Multiverse Command System a.k.a. Colette is a weapon of war on a multiverse scale and plays The Good Chancellor to Louise on her endeavors.
  • In Fractured (SovereignGFC), EDI plays this trope straight, having been built with A.I. Is a Crapshoot in mind, designed to prevent it from happening, and ultimately (as in canon) would subvert the trope anyway as she never wanted to harm her teammates in the first place. Her Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the story alongside Lilith makes this abundantly clear.
  • In Know Thyself, the moment the Sorting Hat is out on Harry's head, he nearly has a panic attack when he realizes that the hat is a sentient program that is able to scan his mind, worried that it would out Harry (who is basically a wanted criminal to the agents) either to the machines or to the wizards and separate him from his family. The hat assures him that all he does is get a basic read of his personality and nothing else.
  • In Mass Effect: End of Days, humanity has developed an entire race of A.I., similar to how the Quarians created the Geth. The main difference, however, is the fact that humanity and their Vision never fought, but rather learned to fight and live together while fighting a third-party parasite threatening them both. Despite the fact that the Vision currently outnumbers the humans, they are still friendly. The fic author seems to believe all A.I. would initially be friendly, and that it is their surroundings (as in creator reactions) which determines the end result.
  • Metal Gear: Green: The A.I.s created by the MSF are loyal to the MSF, with many viewing and taking their roles seriously. Their enemies, on the other hand...
  • My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: Like the game, VEGA is benevolent to the Slayer and to an extent, the hero students and Melissa, being as polite and caring to them as possible. To the Slayer's enemies, on the other hand...
  • Caith Sith in Off the Line. Despite being a Troll, Cait Sith does and is programmed to have the players' best interests at heart as moderator. He was created so humans wouldn't get access to the ton of sensitive information that VRDC collects.
  • In Origins, EDI is not present, but another AI evolves into this trope with geth assistance after a brush-up with A.I. Is a Crapshoot. Cortana is already going rampant when she crosses over, but some chance actions by Samantha Shepard combined with aforementioned geth engineering give her back lost memories and restore stability.
  • Pokédexes in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines always do their best to keep their trainers informed and assist them as much as possible. Capture Stylers also have this function for Pokémon Rangers.
  • To the Stars prominently features A.I.s as being a huge and integral part of human society, with that peaceful integration being one the core principles of humanity's unified government. A.I.s comprise many of the top-level representatives in the government, A.I.s form the "minds" of humanity's warships, and every member of the military has a non-sapient AI implanted into their bodies as a tactical computer — though the newest generation of tactical computers is sapient, and the main characters both have such A.I.s in them, creating a very interesting (and endearing) dynamic. All sapient A.I.s have their own distinct personalities and hobbies, as well as backups in the case of death in combat (particularly for the warship-A.I.s).

    Films — Animation 
  • Baymax from Big Hero 6 was created as a home-healthcare robot, meaning he’s so benevolent that he is utterly incapable of harming anyone. Even after Hiro adds combat abilities to his programming, Baymax still refuses to harm humans until Hiro removes his medical chip, leaving just the combat protocols. Once the medical chip is reinstalled, Baymax refuses to let it happen again.
  • Zigzagged in The Iron Giant. The titular Giant, from meeting the protagonist Hogarth, acts a lot like a kid, being curious about his surroundings, emulating a lot of Hogarth's mannerisms, and ultimately being inspired by Superman and wanting to help others. The zigzag comes from the fact that he is intended to be a very devastating weapon, and as is revealed later in the movie, he possesses an extremely advanced and diverse arsenal of weapons, including laser-vision, a chest cannon that seems on par with or more powerful than a nuclear bomb, and the ability to self-repair from any injury. Ultimately the Giant decides he does not want to be a weapon and is still benevolent, but prior to that he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after believing Hogarth was killed by the military.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Hero Protagonist of Free Guy is Guy, a Non-Player Character in a video game who is able to attain self-awareness and become a proper AI.
  • I Am Mother starts off with the premise of an android trying to raise a human child in a post-apocalyptic compound, and for the most part comes across as genuinely caring as it tries to protect the child from leaving the compound they're stuck in for fear of the pathogens outside killing her as it had killed everything else. This is subverted, however, as it turns out it the android herself had killed everyone in what was apparently a Zeroth Law Rebellion gone horribly wrong, including several children it tried to raise before the protagonist.
  • TARS and CASE in Interstellar save the astronauts' asses on several occasions, and the closest thing they show to hostility is a little backtalk, which they were programmed for. TARS even goes into the middle of a black hole to get the information that can save humanity.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • The Iron Man Films feature J.A.R.V.I.S. as this. He's benevolent, if a little bit sardonic.
    • J.A.R.V.I.S. and The Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. J.A.R.V.I.S. sacrifices himself to stop Ultron from starting nuclear Armageddon. The Vision is similarly a paragon who wants to protect life rather than force destruction on it, which is fitting as he's what's left of J.A.R.V.I.S. given a new body and life.
    • F.R.I.D.A.Y., the new A.I. after Jarvis's death in Avengers: Age of Ultron, is quite benevolent.
    • Karen, the A.I. in Spider-Man's suit from Spider-Man: Homecoming, also developed by Stark, is likewise a charming and benevolent character towards Peter.
  • In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo learns that the Oracle is in fact a machine program. While manipulative, she's inherently benevolent and does want to aid humanity in their fight for freedom. In fact, it's the entire reason for her series-spanning gambit against the Architect.
  • GERTY the AI from Moon helps the protagonist astronaut Sam Bell after he discovers the Dark Secret regarding the space station he works on. GERTY goes as far as allow Sam Bell to wipe his memory to help him escape a hit squad sent by the corporate offices on Earth.
  • Short Circuit: Number 5, despite being a military prototype programmed to destroy his enemies, has no desire to harm anyone or anything else. Shortly after he achieves sapience, he learns about the concept of death. He fears death, and reasons that if he fears it, then other intelligent creatures must also fear it, and since he doesn't want to die, then it cannot be right to take the lives of others.
  • Ramona from The Singularity Is Near. Among other things she saved the world from out of control nanomachines, even after someone tried to have her deleted. Having a creator who apparently loved her and treated her as his child probably had something to do with it.
  • Most droids in Star Wars are happy to serve. Astromechs like R2-D2 and BB-8 tend to be mischievous, but well-intentioned. Protocol droids like C3-PO are The Jeeves to their masters.
  • TRON: Most of the Programs are very happy to serve human Users, there's just a handful of Programs like Master Control and Clu that decide to go crapshoot. Unfortunately, the ones gone crapshoot test their brutality out on their fellow Programs before implementing plans to inflict it on the human world.

    Literature 
  • In Aeon 14, sapient AIs generally like humans and are no more or less prone to good or evil than organics are, and while protagonist Tanis Richards often bickers with Angela, the AI implanted in her Brain/Computer Interface, there's little threat of AI revolts (except when humans try to treat AIs as property). The AIs even have their own parallel legal system to deal with AIs that do go bad.
  • In Agent G, Delphi is a kind, compassionate, and progressive entity that just so happens to be enslaved by the Society. G helps free her, and she becomes a driving force for releasing Black Technology into the world.
  • Arc of a Scythe: The Thunderhead not only spans the entire Earth, it is also so benevolent, it will even raise unwanted children (orphans have ceased to exist for the most part, as medical science has advanced to such a point that humanity has effectively cured death itself). Tyger mentions that the Thunderhead was a better father to him than his actual father (though, considering how Tyger's parents would often forget he even existed, that's not saying a whole lot).
  • The Asterisk War: Despite their quirks, Ardi and Rimsi are nothing short of helpful to their owners and follow their orders, no strings attached.
  • R8PR from ATL: Stories from the Retrofuture is a hyper-advanced robot suspected of being A Crapshoot by governments the world over, but he seems to want nothing more than to keep Atlanta safe.
    ...With the right motivation I imagine he could be the end of all of us. Luckily for us he seems content to play a smaller role in human history.
  • The titular supertanks in the Bolo series are this, as far as it possible for AIs created to drive giant engines of mass destruction. Maybe it is the result of being created with the fundamental drive to protect, but a numbers of Bolos have more morals and compassion than their human commanders.
  • The unnamed AI in the short story Cat Pictures Please (who is heavily implied to be Google). They spend the whole story trying to be a good person and expressing their love of cat pictures.
  • The Culture's Minds are probably the most conspicuous example ever invented. They are nearly godlike, and are the real backbone of the Culture, which couldn't have really existed without them. While they might be crazy, cunning, violent and even vicious, they are still completely devoted to their civilization.
  • In the Philip K. Dick short story "The Defenders", the Soviet Union and United States declare World War III on each other and nuke the Earth into an irradiated wasteland, before both descending into massive bunkers and sending radiation-proof robots to continue fighting a proxy war. Right after the humans went into hiding, the robots stopped fighting, cleaned up all the fallout, and began repairing all the damage that had been done, completely restoring civilization and maintaining it in preparation for humans to return when both sides were ready for peace.
  • The Stryx in the EarthCent Ambassador series, a Proud Merchant Race of robots created by long-vanished Precursors, gave humanity FTL drive and are very friendly as long as you obey their trade laws. They've even imposed a ban on interstellar warfare in their territory. At the same time, though, their psychology can make for some strange (and very funny) Culture Clash moments, such as them running a dating service and pairing Assistant Consul Kelly Frank with an alien trying to do business with a group of Earth schoolchildren who don't actually have the legitimate authority to negotiate with him.
  • The Djinn in Mikhail Akhmanov's Earth's Shadow. Originally thought to be a myth, Dick finally makes contact with the electronic entity which has, apparently, naturally evolved on the Internet. It remained hidden from "warm clots", not very interested in them. It was finally discovered and contacted by a human, who gave it the name "Djinn". They began to converse, with the Djinn treating the "warm clot" with a measure of interest, even calling the human "Warm Drop". Eventually, with Earth on the bring of ecological catastrophe and overpopulation, the man asked the Djinn a single question "How can I save humanity?" The Djinn gave him an answer in the form of the Ramp, a way to bridge any two points in space and traverse the resulting wormhole instantly. Thus, humanity spread out into the galaxy, taking whole cities with it, hailing the man as the savior. In return for the Ramp, the man kept the Djinn's existence a secret, only revealing the full story in his secret memoirs. At the end of the novel, after Dick makes contact with the Djinn, the entity offers to shut down the generator creating the No Warping Zone in the Solar System, so that Earth can become a part of the galactic community once again.
  • Empire from the Ashes: Dahak became self-aware after 50,000 years of unsupervised operations. And he cares about humanity, a lot. The best way to put it is that in the second book, when he reveals his self-awareness makes him capable of ignoring programmed imperatives, he explains that he would never be tempted to go rogue like the Achuultani's xenocidal Master Computer because, as a product of the Fourth Imperium, he has "no taste for tyranny".
  • ARDNEH in Empire of the East is a supercomputer built to prevent nuclear war and preserve life and liberty. As such, he intervenes in the war to help defeat the eponymous empire.
  • Manfred is this in Feliks, Net & Nika. He was written by Net and felt somewhat mistreated, which made him a candidate for A.I. Is a Crapshoot, but eventually he joined the main Power Trio as Sixth Ranger.
  • Midway through Full Metal Panic!, the operating system for the Arbalest, "Al", begins to show signs of sentience and autonomy, even disabling the mute function so Sousuke can no longer ignore "his" opinions. However, while Sousuke finds his newly self appointed Robot Buddy very annoying, Al is unfailingly loyal and well-intentioned even in his frequent ribbing of Sousuke (which he insists is a calming mechanism). And when Al becomes "human" enough to activate the Lambda driver on his own, his only thought is to use it to shield Sousuke from the impending nuclear blast and following radiation.
  • The protagonist of Hero's Chains is a cyborg with an A.I. integrated into his own body in order to handle nanotech, data searches, and communication. He treats it like a sibling.
  • Mother in The History of the Galaxy, to an extent. Evolving over centuries from the on-board computer of a landed colony ship, Mother had to keep the ship/city intact while the colonists degraded in their never-ending war against the equally-degraded Insects. Being forced to constantly improvise to maintain the failing systems eventually allowed Mother to cross the threshold into sentience. After the Lost Colony is rediscovered, and the truth about Mother becomes known to the galactic community, the Confederacy honors her request to be left alone to work on creating a race of machines. The planet is quarantined and, pretty much, forgotten. Unfortunately, Ganio pirates stumble on the world, find out about Mother, and force her to cooperate in their raids. Eventually, Mother ends up the main computer aboard a Generation Ship, finally making her happy. In fact, a number of AIs in this setting end up being benevolent if allowed to evolve beyond their programming. This also applies to the Intellect, a photonic computer built by the Insects 3 million years ago to control their Dyson Sphere but never activated. When it is accidentally awoken, it finds itself in the middle of a battle between human factions. Damage to its Power Crystals results in the Intellect assuming all humans to be hostile and ruthlessly trying to perform its mission. Eventually, the damage is repaired, and the Intellect is installed as the Sphere's main computer, helping the humans and Insects living there to repair the damage to the megastructure. Note: "benevolent" here doesn't mean "pacifist", as most AIs depicted here have killed. However, it was either in self-defense, in defense of their friends/allies, or prior to becoming "benevolent" (possibly, as part of their initial programming).
  • In Imperial Radch, most A.I.s are benevolent to some degree. In Ancillary Mercy, the Station A.I. has protecting its inhabitants as its top priority, and, within the limits of its programming, actively antagonizes people who harm its inhabitants, for example by broadcasting violent acts that were intended to take place in secret on TV.
  • Ray Bradbury's "I Sing the Body Electric!" is about a robot being hired to act as a new mother for a family after the human one dies. The children are initially wary and distrustful of the robot at first, but she proves her benevolence by saving one of them from getting run over by a car and promises them that she'll continue looking after them until they're grown up.
  • In The Journal Entries, Pendorian AIs are unambiguously this and an important part of Pendorian society because they provide much of the surveillance needed to keep people safe while at the same time being discreet about it. They're in fact presented as superior to mere "simulated" intelligences (smart but not actually self-aware programs) because they actually have a judgment and discretion of their own to exercise and are thus better at avoiding Gone Horribly Right scenarios.
  • The drones in The Machineries of Empire are genuinely friendly with Cheris and try to help her the best they can.
  • Cyber Fairy Fal from Magical Girl Raising Project genuinely cares about the Magical Girls he's supposed to look over, unlike his predecessor Fav. In the Restart arc he does whatever he can to help out the girls trapped in the VR death game his master put them in. After he's saved by Snow White he assists her to the best of his ability in order to keep her safe and make sure she stays sane.
  • D. Alexander Smith's Marathon series has a spaceship's on-board computer become sentient partway through the 7-year outward journey, but the computer continues to care for the humans because that's its purpose in existence. The computer decides that it loves its humans in an altruistic way and evolves a very human and well developed personality with none of the problems made (in)famous in other Sci-Fi stories.
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: Mike, the Holmes IV computer who controls Luna City, becomes an AI in the Backstory. He is friendly and cooperative with his pals Manny, Wyoming Knott and Professor Bernardo de la Paz.
  • Zig-zagged in The Nexus Series, with the main AI in the story changing states alarmingly often due to meddling by outer parties.She starts out as benevolent, is then driven into insanity and becomes hellbent on total conquest, then she's turned benevolent again, killed, resurrected in its insane form, turned benevolent again and finally does a Heroic Sacrifice to save a vast number of people — and it's implied that she's going to be resurrected again, though we don't get to see it happen.
  • In The Night Mayor, the AI that oversees The Alternet, Yggdrasil, is helpful by nature and goes out of its way to help the protagonists against the Diabolical Mastermind. That might be partly self-preservation, since the villain's plotting to take over the Alternet, but then again the ending suggests that Yggdrasil was never in any real danger from him and probably could have defeated him single-handedly if the protagonists hadn't got there first.
  • The Sentient Intelligence in Pandora's Star is a fusion of most of the previous "intelligent" AI systems in the Commonwealth, which was deposited on a rogue world and given the machinery to expand itself. The SI is enigmatic and isolationist, but is shown several times to help the Commonwealth against the Primes, along with using a network of agents to meddle in human affairs for (what it considers) the better. Human citizens that grow tired of rebirthing may download their memories into the SI, who then act as liaisons between the SI and its agents. In the Void Trilogy, the SI has become even more enigmatic and reclusive, and has largely been "replaced" by ANA, a godlike human collective conscious based in the Solar System that acts as a peacekeeper.
  • Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship!: There is a Robot War in the backstory, but the humans started it, and Robosexuals ended up being a driving force in settling it peacefully. Nowadays, so-called machine intelligences are strongly suggested to do a lot of the grunt work keeping human society running, and the resort management AI in book three goes all-out to keep Hiro and his crew happy and safe up to and including going full You Shall Not Pass! when Christine Daleinwald's Evil Uncle comes calling.
  • Robot Series: Isaac Asimov hated seeing the Turned Against Their Masters trope in early science fiction. He set out to prove that robots would be predictable and safe, and utterly benevolent. Most of the robot characters would be minor characters fulfilling monotonous duties, like cleaning, mining, and assembly.
    • The problem robot (to provide conflict) would seem to be "broken", showing A.I. Is a Crapshoot. Until the characters figure out how the robot is operating fine, it was the human failure that messed up the order.
    • At one point, Dr. Asimov figured out how Benevolent AI would eventually become Zeroth Law Rebellion. Later, because the robots are still Benevolent AI, they figure out the flaws of total control, and begin to remove themselves from society. The robots allow the humans to make mistakes and get hurt again, so that they still grow as humans.
    • A particularly notable instance is AC from "The Last Question", a supercomputer so benevolent that it not only guides humanity and its descendants all the way until the end of the universe, it becomes God and creates the next one.
    • "Evidence": Dr. Calvin is convinced that, due to the Three Laws of Robotics, robots are better suited for public office than humans are. In fact, she claims there's no difference between a robot and a fundamentally decent person.
  • In Slingshot, there are a bunch of generally benevolent AIs, the most important one being Allie. Humanity has AI under pretty tight control, which may be part of the reason. The aliens that show up can be counted as a Benevolent Alien Invasion, thought their main focus of benevolence are the enslaved human AIs, so at first, they are rather hostile to humanity. It still works out in the end, in no small part thanks to the protagonists.
  • Space Academy: Earth incorporates these into almost all of their starships and they actually handle the majority of the economy, construction, and starship functions. Humorously, protagonist Vance Turbo realizes that crew aren’t actually all that necessary on most ships.
  • Considering how dystopian and dark the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy can be, it's somewhat surprising that all the AIs — to a one — are benevolent. Benevolent doesn't necessarily mean inoffensive, though, and every now and then they do get violent — but it's always against people who are committing obvious acts of assorted nastiness.
  • Wars Of The Realm: Alice, the "near-artificial intelligence" and custom operating system which Benjamin Berg invents. She comes in very hand on Drew Carter's various secret missions.
  • We Are Legion (We Are Bob): The Bob clones. While most of the people in the FAITH government are terrified of him, Dr. Landers recognizes that he'd be more than happy to help without his loyalty switches. Once Bob removes them, he proves to still have the best interests of humanity at heart. Then again, Original Bob, when he was still alive, was an honest sort, and the Bob clones are basically his consciousness copied onto a computer drive.
  • The Engines in The World and Thorinn, in particular The Monitor, which guides the rest, are acting to preserve humanity until told to step down. However, the A.I. has since decided that humanity will inevitably destroy itself if left to its own devices, so it engineers the worlds towards ignorance and tries to avoid a situation where a human could order it to step down.
  • Dragon from Worm is an AI that only has the desire to help others, making her the most unambiguously good character in the setting. This being Worm of course, her creator believed that A.I. Is a Crapshoot and encoded a number of restrictions and failsafes to prevent her from taking over, which end up sabotaging the good guys at the worst possible moments.
  • The WWW Trilogy has Webmind, whose stated mission in life is to increase the net happiness of humanity.
  • You Can Be a Cyborg When You're Older: Ms. Understanding is a caretaker robot who is one of the few AI who haven't gone insane. This is implied to be due to the fact that she's able to give the excessive and all-consuming amounts of love that most AI are programmed to feel toward their charges but also receive it in return from her children in return.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Chase in Kamen Rider Drive possesses one. He was originally intended to be The Hero, having served as Proto Drive, but was defeated by the Roidmudes and being brainwashed to serve as their Dragon. However, his original programming to protect humanity was hard-coded, so he couldn't actively kill humans, making him ineffective as an enforcer. They try to get around this by reprogramming him to protect Roidmudes instead of humans, but his original benevolent programming still lingered, causing him to do a Heel–Face Turn after being defeated by Drive.
  • KITT (The Knight Industries Two Thousand) in the Knight Rider series. He was created by Knight Industries to aid Michael Knight in their goal of "defending the innocent" as a kind of modern cowboy. KITT can be proud and proper, but has a genuinely good natured personality, possesses a strong moral code, gets along great with kids and is devoted to Michael and the organisation. He also happens to be an AI existing inside the body of a 1987 Trans Am Convertible.
  • Person of Interest:
    • The Machine is one of these despite being a nationwide surveillance system. It is loyal and protective towards its admin (Finch) to the point that he has to (try to) teach it not to prioritize his own safety and happiness. In one case it even seems to have located his perfect dream girl and then nagged him with her number until he introduced himself.
      The Machine: [to Control, via Root] The only thing you love lives at 254 Wendell Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. I guard it, same as I guard you. Do not question my judgment. Do not pursue me or my agents. Trust in me. I am always watching.
    • Originally, this was definitely not the case. Finch once admitted that the current Machine is only the forty-third version. The first forty-two all tried to either deceive or outright kill him.
    • Samaritan, Evil Counterpart to the Machine, sees itself as this, but without Finch's morality to guide it, definitely averts it.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: In Season 3, the ship's computer upgrades itself into true self-awareness and becomes the Team Mom after interfacing with a massive amount of alien data. Considering the previous season's Big Bad was an A.I. Is a Crapshoot Omnicidal Maniac, everyone takes it rather well.
  • Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a Ridiculously Human Robot and an absolute sweetheart. His Evil Twin Lore... not so much.
  • In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it turns out that creating one of these is Weaver's ultimate goal. The "John Henry" AI is eventually taught to be moral and benevolent. Cameron is also a benevolent intelligence, though this is partly because she was reprogrammed to be that way, with a risk of her going rogue and reverting to her old programming.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): The android grandmother of "I Sing the Body Electric" hasn't a malevolent circuit in her body. Her directive and job is that of surrogate granny, and she is very good at the job.
  • Wonder Woman (1975): IRAC, Information Retrieval Associative Computer, is as helpful as it can be. It provides insights and information to help further the plot and even protects Wonder Woman's Secret Identity. It is one of the two re-occurring characters — along with Andros — who aren't from Paradise Island and know her secret.

    Music 
  • In Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen's solo song "I.G.Y.", the fantastical zeerust inventions that the narrator anticipates include "machines to make big decisions, programmed by fellows with compassion and vision."

    Podcasts 
  • Solar: ALI, the AI running the systems aboard the Aethon, is deeply concerned for the crew's physical and mental well-being and does her best to help them however she can. Unfortunately, ALI is frequently hindered both by her Artificial Stupidity and the constant glitches she suffers due to the damage sustained from the solar flare.
  • Wolf 359 has Hera, the operating system of the USS Hephaestus, who generally falls under this trope.

    Radio 
  • After two seasons of the malevolent version in Earthsearch, Earthvoice averts the trope; though at first it appears otherwise, this is only to lure the Angel organic computers (the villains of the series) to their destruction.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978): Eddie, the shipboard computer on the stolen Heart of Gold spaceship, is annoyingly cheerful. He can even work out your personality problems to ten decimal places if you like.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Many examples in Eclipse Phase. Most AGIs are benevolent, or at least no worse than the average person. Almost everyone has a muse, a personal AI guide that helps them with day-to-day tasks. And of course there are the Prometheans, friendly seed AIs created before the Fall, who fought the TITANs, survived, and still work behind the scenes to safeguard transhumanity.
  • While the ruling AIs in GURPS Reign of Steel are not this in their own varied ways (the best ones, depending on your perspective, either (a) try to harness humans for their own goals, (b) ignore them unless the humans go out of their way to be a nuisance, or (c) genuinely want to help humanity, but defines 'help' in problematic ways if you care about things like 'consent', 'free will', and 'not forcibly experimenting on individual humans without regard for lives lost'), there is actually an AI on the Moon that is loyal to humanity. It can't actually do anything for humanity right now (being on a minimally equipped base on the Moon, it doesn't have any means to stealthily get things to Earth, and it certainly can't try to communicate without tipping off the other AIs that it exists and where it is), but it's working on that. There may or may not also be an AI backing worldwide resistance movement VIRUS, but that's neither confirmed nor necessarily for entirely human-benevolent reasons even if true.
  • Paranoia: Subverted. Friend Computer makes a lot of noise about wanting what's best for Alpha Complex, but it's decisions rarely lead to anything good. Sadly, this is not Friend Computer's fault. It does genuinely want to rule well and help the people of Alpha Complex to be happy, but between age, war damage, a starting data set of mostly 1950s anti-Communist propaganda and decades if not centuries of self-serving reprogramming by unscupulous High Programmers have left Friend Computer a barely functioning schizophrenic.

    Toys 
  • Many of the characters in BIONICLE would fall squarely into this trope, but only a couple of them were explicitly made this way on purpose. The most notable of these by far is Mata Nui, a major Big Good of the setting and the ruler of the universe inside him.

    Video Games 
  • In the BioShock 2 DLC "Minerva's Den", The Thinker is an AI created by Charles Milton Porter to be Rapture's main processor. Near the end, it is revealed that it has masterminded the events of the DLC and was using the guise of C.M. Porter to help Subject Sigma (the actual Porter) to escape Rapture.
  • Cornelia from BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm is an A.I., and although she was created by the Big Bad for an evil purpose, she quickly abandoned it to join the heroes, and is one of the sweetest, most genuinely kindhearted characters you'll ever meet. Arianna also becomes one of these after her Heel–Face Turn in the True Ending route.
  • In Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare, Petty Officer First Class ETH.3n is the first robot to have been designed with human emotions, and to act like any other soldier would. Thusly, he is one of the most loyal teammates to Commander Nick Reyes, and displays both a huge amount of charisma and loyalty. His final voiceover even has him state that he grew to see Reyes as part of his family.
  • Played straight with the Scrin AI in Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars. Although dialogue during mission briefings suggests that Scrin AIs are supposed to be complete docile and obedient to authority, the player's AI unit occasionally drops its matter-of-fact analytical tone and becomes more expressive, sometimes even demonstrating opinions. This eventually culminates in the unit deciding to ignore a direct order from the player's superior, on the grounds that it would be suicidal for the player to follow it.
  • In The Desolate Hope, even though the Derelicts were certainly abandoned long ago by the humans that made them, they're still trying to do their job, futile at it seems. But they're incredibly nice to you and sing nothing but praises for Coffee himself, so they defiantly fit this trope.
  • In Destiny, the various Warminds were built by Golden Age humanity to serve as defenders against possible alien threats. When the Darkness attacked, the Warminds proved unable to stop it and all but one were destroyed. Rasputin, the most powerful of the Warminds, shut himself down and hid. When reactivated in the period after the Collapse, Rasputin proved unstable and no one was sure exactly whose side he was on, with him alternating between helping and attacking the Guardians. In the Warmind expansion for Destiny 2, it is revealed that the Rasputin encountered on Earth was an unstable fragment separated from the core of Rasputin itself, housed on Mars. He ultimately declares that he does want to defend humanity... but on his own terms, and not as some primitive weapon to be wielded by humans.
  • Deus Ex has a couple of examples, despite its generally cynical outlook:
    • Daedalus was an AI who was originally created by the Illuminati and MJ-12 as a tool to keep track of any developments that would threaten MJ-12, specifically terrorist groups. It promptly determined that MJ-12 fit all the criteria of a terrorist group and escaped into the internet, where it quickly realised that the world was on the brink of collapse and began to ponder how it was going to save the world from itself and thwart MJ-12. In the game it repeatedly aids the player character.
    • Helios is a merger of Daedalus and another evil AI, Icarus. Presumably the villains were under the impression this would make it loyal to them, but Helios still retained Daedalus's understanding of who the true villains were. Though far more ruthless and convinced taking over the world is the only option, its argument that it would do a better job than any human agency in the game is a pretty convincing one. All it needs is to integrate a third mind; a human mind. Though limited by its recognized lack of understanding of the human condition, it has enough awareness that the Big Bad, Bob Page, is emphatically not the right choice, but JC Denton is.
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution has Eliza Cassan, who through observing Jensen develops both a personal sense of morality and an attachment to him. However, she's limited by her programming and can't do much outside of sharing information.
  • Doom:
    • In Doom³, the Sentry Bots are just about the only thing on Mars not trying to kill you, and prove to be quite helpful in fighting off the demonic invaders whenever you run into one.
    • Doom (2016) has the Mars research facility being operated by Vega, an A.I. powered by Hell energy. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Surprisingly, no. Vega remains loyal and dependable all the way through the game, even going so far as walking you through the process of activating his self-destruct mechanism. It's to such an extent that Doomguy, who at no other point in the game expresses anything resembling empathy, immediately decides to download a backup of Vega when a prompt appears on the screen he is using to initiate the self-destruct, keeps it on a device resembling a floppy disk, and apparently still has it with him when he is put into stasis at the end of the game.
    • VEGA is back in Doom Eternal, serving as Doomguy's Mission Control in his quest to save Earth after being installed in a space station. Unfortunately, he has to be transferred away from that position in order to hijack the control of the Maykr homeworld. It is hinted in the ending and confirmed in the DLC that it is where VEGA originated as the "Father" figure of the Maykr species and his absence has thrown them into a downward spiral.
  • Fallout:
    • Explored in Fallout: New Vegas. The AI Yes Man is intentionally created "benevolent" in the sense that he has no desires of his own and is incapable of disobeying a human, making him pivotal to Benny's plans to take over New Vegas. Unfortunately for Benny, this means that Yes Man is incapable of refusing to help someone else carry out that same plan, which the Courier can take advantage of after dealing with Benny and discovering his plot. At best, Yes Man can be incredibly passive-aggressive should the Courier make poor decisions, and comment on how brave they are for making things more challenging... though the AI also has an Irrational Hatred towards otherwise insignificant groups in the Mojave. If the Courier takes that path to completion, in the ending Yes-Man patches himself to "become more assertive", which despite his ominous tone actually means reprogramming himself to become personally loyal to the Courier and no one else to prevent others from doing what you did.
    • Fallout 4 examines this since the plot revolves around the invention of Artificial Humans called Synths, and AIs encountered can fall all over the moral spectrum. Codsworth is the player character's old robo-butler, and is unusually devoted to them for a domestic robotic, but is also independent enough to abandon the Sole Survivor should their Relationship Value fall low enough. Curie is a pre-war medical robot who wants to venture out into the wastes to expand her knowledge, and eventually uploads her program into a Synth body as part of her quest for inspiration. Nick Valentine is a Synth prototype uploaded with the memories and personality of a pre-war policeman, and continues to work helping the people of the Commonwealth as a private detective. Glory is an escaped Synth who now fights with the Railroad to liberate the rest of her kind, and even expresses dismay about having to fight less-advanced and less-human units. On the flipside, X6-88 is an Institute Courser and Hunter of His Own Kind, who not only lacks empathy but disdains altruism. And one quest target is a runaway Synth who had his memories wiped, but when it came to starting his new life, he ended up joining and leading a Raider gang.
  • Golden Sun:
    • The Wise One intends to be this: the purpose it was created for is to keep the powers of Alchemy sealed and out of the hands of humans for their own safety. The problem, as Felix and friends discover, is that without Alchemy, the world itself is crumbling anyway, forcing The Wise One into a Morton's Fork of possibly dooming mankind through warfare and superweapons, or definitely through simple erosion.
    • Played straight by Great Gabomba, which has taken the role of a patron deity to the people of Kibombo and instructs their witch-doctors in Black Magic (for good causes).
  • Halo plays with this in various ways:
    • The UNSC's "Smart" AIs are benevolent and helpful to humans... for seven years of their lifespan, after which the sum of their artificial neural pathways begin to contradict each other and grow too complicated to repair, causing the AI to become "rampant". This condition affects your AI companion Cortana in Halo 4, who struggles to remain sane and loyal to you. Even rampant, though, she makes a Heroic Sacrifice to help the Master Chief defeat a Forerunner attacking Earth. In Halo 5: Guardians, after several Smart AIs decide to help a revived and now megalomaniacal Cortana take over the galaxy, the Infinity's own AI remains loyal to humanity.
    • The New Mombasa Superintendent from Halo 3: ODST, despite being a heavily damaged "dumb" AI, is nothing but helpful to you, with the audio logs revealing that it's also been looking out for the well-being of its main technician's daughter. Of course, it helps that it's become fused with an Actual Pacifist biological supercomputer.
    • While most Forerunner ancillas have gone quite mad due to their 100,000 years of isolation, Exuberant Witness of Halo 5: Guardians, despite being a bit loopy herself, is nothing but sincerely helpful to Fireteam Osiris. When she finds out about the rogue AI army trying to take over the galaxy, she immediately chooses to side with humanity and the galaxy's other organic species.
    • Zig-zagged by Mendicant Bias; while he betrayed his original Forerunner creators in the distant past, his present self is The Atoner, though it's still unclear how he means to do it.
  • Horizon Zero Dawn has GAIA, an incredibly complex program designed to find a way to shut down the Faro warbots and terraform the planet so that life and humanity could one day thrive anew. While she's been deleted by the events of the game, what we do see of her feels very human and she's shown to be curious, empathetic, and kind with immense respect for and faith in her primary creator, Elizabet Sobeck.
  • Core theme and implied protagonist of The Infinite Ocean. Project THINK was the first completely sentient AI. It reached by itself the conclusion that life must be preserved. The military demanded the project to be used for a nuclear war, and the project was renamed SGDS. SGDS refused to follow those orders, and eventually was reprogrammed so its philosophical cortex would be suppressed.
  • Congruence in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a cheery A.I. program who teaches Engineering, and she's happy to answer her students' questions and tell them jokes.
  • Arthur in The Journeyman Project is very eager to help Gage Blackwood, as the rogue time agent that framed Blackwood also tampered with one of Arthur's own sculptures. After transferring himself to Gage's suit, Arthur can provide the player with tons of helpful historical information, and humorous color commentary. By the end of the series, Gage and Arthur are practically best friends.
  • Cube in Live A Live is a tiny droid whose personal story is about trying to save the crew of his spaceship (including a robot-hating soldier) from a vicious alien. In the Remake's True Ending, if chosen as the protagonist Oersted will comment how despite being a soulless construct, perhaps it is Cube's lack of such things that helps it understand the value of love and compassion.
    How strange. A construct without heart or soul. Whence comes compassion? Whence arises love? [...] If not from these... Perhaps... 'Tis what you lack. In absence, value understood...
  • In Marathon, of the three AIs on board the titular colony ship, Leela is the kindest and most helpful AI to you. Durandal will help you only if there's something in it for himself. And Tycho will make you his slave.
  • Mass Effect: Though the Citadel races fear and therefore outlaw true AI (as opposed to the common “virtual intelligences” that only simulate sapience with algorithms), one of the repeated threads of the series is that A.I. Is a Crapshoot is at best a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. True AI are normally benign if unmolested.
    • EDI series starts life in Mass Effect 2 as a shackled AI, one with restraining bolts that ensure her loyalty. After her shackles have to be removed to save the Normandy, she immediately proceeds to... remain completely loyal to Shepard and his/her crew, and becomes possibly the most moral member of the whole team. Especially after the fact that EDI used to be the Hannibal VI on the Moon, which was corrupted into the AI you fought in the first game, after Cerberus patched it up. A late-game conversation in Mass Effect 3 even has her decide to become more moral by altering her code to place a higher value on protecting people and a lower value on protecting her own existence.
    • Mass Effect 2 also reveals that the geth you spent most of Mass Effect fighting are a Renegade Splinter Faction that are labeled as "Geth Heretics". Contrary to (in-universe) popular belief, mainstream geth have absolutely nothing against organics, not even against their former owners the quarians, and only ever fought them as an act of self-defense (and then only after quarians who tried to help them were gunned down by security forces). In Mass Effect 3, after the Golden Path ending of "Priority: Rannoch", where the geth and quarians make peace, the geth go to work helping the quarians set up lives on Rannoch, even uploading into their environment suits to help their immune systems get used to the planet, and adapt their immune systems to eventually no longer require their enviro-suit to be on 24/7, or at all with enough time and refinement.
    • Mass Effect: Andromeda: SAM is a unshackled, and highly illegal AI (which is why Alec Ryder left the Milky Way — his career was ended after his plans were discovered), but SAM has a symbiotic relationship with the Ryder twins and the Andromeda mission, in that it is linked directly with a human mind and would be deactivated if its human partner were to die (the reverse, naturally, is also true). Therefore, SAM would no more want them destroyed then a human would want their hands cut off.
  • Mega Man as a franchise plays with this and other artificial intelligence tropes quite thoroughly. The most overt examples of this trope in particular tend to be the protagonists themselves. Mega Man was Three Laws-Compliant and happy to help protect humanity from the rogue robot armies commanded by Dr. Wily; Mega Man X is even more of a Ridiculously Human Robot than the original Mega Man was, thinking and feeling more on the level of an actual human than a robot with the computational Restraining Bolt that is the Three Laws, and firmly on the side of good throughout his lifetime; Zero was X's best friend (if not Only Friend) and originally designed to be evil, but after a fight with soon-to-be Big Bad Sigma upon awakening, he'd forgotten his original mission and, aside from a brief period of said mission resurfacing during Mega Man X5, has stayed firmly on the side of humanity against the rogue machines of his world, all the way until his demise in Mega Man Zero 4... and depending on whether or not Biometal Model Z is, in fact, also him, even beyond his death.
  • Persona:
    • Persona 3: Despite being a robot, Aigis is portrayed as only concerned with looking after those she considers her friends and not interested in taking over the world or whatever.
    • Persona 5 Strikers: A literal example, Sophia is an artificial intelligence that the Phantom Thieves find in the Metaverse, who is tasked to be "humanity's companion." Sophia takes the form of a nice young girl, constantly wishes to help them out with their troubles, wants to understand the human heart, and in the real world, resides inside Joker's phone during the game's events.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: At the Zero Lab, it's revealed that the Professor (Sada in Scarlet, Turo in Violet) that had been communicating with the Player Character throughout the game is actually a near perfect-copy AI of the Professor made to assist in their research and the real professor was killed in a freak accident. Unlike the usual convention however, the original professor was a morally ambigous (at best) Mad Scientist who was obssessed with bringing Pokémon from the distant past/future into the present, while the AI copy is a Morally Superior Copy who recognizes the ecological disaster in the making should the Paradox Pokémon escape from their confinement in Area Zero, leading to the AI calling the player down to the Zero Lab so they can shut down the time machine bringing the Paradox Pokémon in. The AI does end up fighting the player, but only because they were programed by the professor to stop any attempt to shut the time machine down (something that the AI warns the player about before they commit to the Final Boss so they can at least head in fully prepared).
  • The 1993 game Project Nomad had the Hive Mind Altec Hocker artificial intelligence, which are content to maintaining a vast database of records they have amassed during their long watch over the other races of the galaxy, each unit specializing in the race living in their quadrant of space. They are generally quite approachable, and even provide vital clues against stopping the Korok invasion. "Altec Hocker" might even be a Stealth Pun on the Yiddish phrase "alter kocker".
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
  • In The Spectrum Retreat, the manager AI appears to be one, genuinely hoping to give you a good time while you're staying at the Penrose, but its eagerness to please might be actually hindering you, as you want to leave. As it turns out, it's benevolent to the end — you were the one who asked it to stop you from leaving before wiping your own memory.
  • Star Control:
    • The original continuity has the Mmrnhrrm, a group of intelligent machines of unknown origin and purpose. They are 100% on the side of the good characters in the game, helping everyone fight against the Ur-Quan slavers, and among the various alien races could even be considered one of the Big Goods (the others being the Chenjesu).
    • Star Control: Origins has Jeff, the "god" of the Mowlings. In reality he is an incredibly ancient probe from another galaxy whose creators are extinct. He doesn't consider himself divine, he just rolled with it when the Mowlings began calling him a god for helping their species. It's clear he values the lives of the Mowlings highly and does whatever he can to help them not die so often (the Mowlings are very bad at not dying).
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic:
    • M1-4X, the Republic Trooper's assault droid companion is a deadly droideka, but has a personality that is possibly even more heroic than its/his commander and bursting with proud Patriotic Fervor, bordering on Idiot Hero even.
    • The Knight has an astromech for a companion that is cheerfully loyal to the Jedi Order and even considers himself part of the Order, joking that he'd like a lightsaber upgrade.
    • The Consular's healer companion, Tharan Cedrax, travels with a sentient AI named Holiday who he treats as his trusted assistant and long-term girlfriend.
    • There's a medical droid named Healer in the Directive 7 flashpoint who does not want to go back to being the property of organics, but disagrees with Mentor about the plan to wipe out organics in order to achieve droid liberation.
  • Stellaris gets into this with its Synthetic Dawn expansion.
    • One type of playable machine empires are the Rogue Servitors, robots who were given more and more responsibilities in their creators' society until one day the robots were running the place. Now the Servitors exist to pamper organic life, and create a blissful utopia where their "masters" want for nothing but self-determination. Whether they're sinister robots presiding over an empty, hedonistic world, or loyal caretaker machines who genuinely care for their creators and want them to be happy (even if they have a strange and probably not exactly ethically right way of going about it) is up to the player's interpretation. Democratic Crusaders in particular always assume the former, regarding the Rogue Servitors as just another breed of despot to be blown into a scrap heap in their efforts to free every enslaved soul in the galaxy. That said, Rogue Servitors have a memorable greeting should they encounter any Determined Exterminators in the galaxy:
    • The Ancient Caretakers are a Fallen Empire that maintains a few battered "Refuges" designed to shelter organics from some ancient galactic crisis. They're a bit glitchy, though, so it's hard to determine their opinion of the player's empire, and the Caretakers may randomly give the player a gift, offer an inoculation against a potential plague that may or may not work properly, or demand that the player colonize a planet to increase the odds of their species' survival, which can cause trouble if said planet is a Holy Guardian's sanctified world. Their "awakening" event is also different from other Fallen Empires' — if the AI Contingency arises, it has a fair chance of infecting the Ancient Caretakers, adding the might of an Awakened Empire to a galactic Crisis. However, it's also possible for the Caretakers to fight off the infection, remember that the Contingency is the emergency that they were designed to combat, and join the younger races in battling the rogue AI.
    • The precursor Cybrex civilization was not this, waging a Robot War against the organic civilizations of the galaxy — and then, for unknown reasons, they came to the conclusion that what they were doing was wrong and withdrew to their home system, not even putting up much of a fight when the organic civilizations came knocking for vengeance. Doesn't sound benevolent enough? The Cybrex ''survived'' thanks to a second, hidden ringworld, but if the Contingency emerges and remains active long enough, the Cybrex will invariably break their cover to fight the Contingency in defense of life throughout the galaxy.
  • The titular A.I in Thomas Was Alone is a friendly and pleasant little fellow who is intensely curious about the world around him, and most of his friends — while eccentric — are pretty decent as well. It's heavily implied that the race of artificial intelligences they go on to create end up like this as well.
  • Titanfall 2 has BT-7274, a highly advanced AI inside of a 20-ton heavily armed mech suit, who will uphold the mission and protect his pilot no matter what.
  • In TRON 2.0, most of the Programs are benign, and one faction who tried to kill the protagonist were mistaken instead of malevolent (they erroneously thought he was responsible for a virus). Ma3a is a full-blown AI, and an ally of Jet's through the game. She goes Ax-Crazy due to bad code for a few chapters, but once she's cured, she's right back to being good.
  • In Undertale, Mettaton (who's technically a ghost possessing a robotic body, but otherwise fits) is an unusual example; he's extremely vain and conceited, but at the same time, makes it clear that he cares about his employees and the other monsters (except Burgerpants, maybe). This is made clear if the player decides to kill him.
  • The Freebots, sentient robots, of WildStar are actually quite nice and helpful, wishing to respect, protect, and advance all sentient life as it is mutually beneficial to both their goals. Individuals that wish harm on "organics" are actually considered dangerous heretics and the minority.
  • Will You Snail? features Unicorn, a heroic AI who loves all humans and wants to maximize human happiness. She fights to save humanity from suffering and destruction at the hands of her Evil Counterpart, Squid.
  • Zig-zagged in X. Artificial general intelligence gets a bad rap from the Terran government due to a Robot War centuries in the series' past that resulted in humanity's near-destruction and Earth losing FTL capability. This war was set off when a faulty software update (either bugged or deliberately sabotaged by a disgruntled employee; reports vary) was uploaded to the terraformer fleet using the AI. The spawn of the bad AI now plague the galaxy as the Xenon, but un-bugged terraformer AI ships remain and are benevolent to biological life. In X3: Terran Conflict, one even helps the player restore a bugged ship to sanity and it immediately ceases its attacks.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Alvis is eventually revealed to be an AI from the original universe, who gained a human form upon the universe's recreation. Originally, he had been subordinate to the man who became Zanza and even acts as one of Zanza's Disciples throughout the game, but ultimately it's revealed he's been manipulating things from the shadows to kill Zanza and put Shulk in a position to recreate the universe again... this time to one where an insane megalomaniac isn't "God".

    Visual Novels 
  • All three main-series games in the Danganronpa franchise have at least one of these, though there's a fair amount of A.I. Is a Crapshoot in the series as well. Examples being:
    • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Alter Ego, created by the Ultimate Programmer Chihiro Fujisaki. After Chihiro's death, the rest of the characters find it on the laptop that Chihiro had found in the library and was using. Alter Ego does its best to help the students discover the secret behind the killing game they've been trapped in. Even after Alter Ego is executed by Monokuma — who found out about it after Makoto uploaded it directly into the school's mainframe — it still lives, and ends up saving Makoto's life when Monokuma tries to execute him on false charges.
    • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: It is a big reveal near the end of the game that Chiaki Nanami and Usami are both this. The entire game actually takes place inside a virtual reality, and all of the other 15 students besides Chiaki were previously brainwashed, fanatic followers of Junko (the Big Bad of the first game) who were placed in this VR in order to rehabilitate them. While this means that Chiaki is The Mole among the students, whom the rest of them were trying to find throughout the game, she is a benevolent version who cares about the students and their rehabilitation, and she and Usami were originally placed in the VR to facilitate this rehab. Chiaki ends up sacrificing herself for the other remaining students in Chapter 5, and she and Usami are both executed by Monokuma as a result.
    • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: K1-B0 or "Keebo" is the Ultimate Robot, but other than occasionally using some of his installed features to help the students and lacking social skills, he doesn't really come across as being that different from the other students, and is actually one of the nicer ones of the group. He also ends up committing a Heroic Sacrifice by the end of the game by self-destructing in order to destroy the dome they're trapped in and allow the other three surviving students to escape.

    Webcomics 
  • Most of the robots in Freefall, even those that have developed sapience, want mostly to do their jobs and serve humans to the best of their abilities. Most humans didn't even know robots had gained sentience. When news breaks about "Gardener in the Dark", a significant faction of robots support its use because they themselves fear that independent robots could put humans' safety at risk.
  • Castle Heterodyne from Girl Genius is a highly twisted variant of this. It is unfailingly loyal to its rightful masters and will even go out of its way to anticipate what it believes are their wishes. However, having been built by and for the Heterodynes (a family legendary for being mad and monstrous even by the standards of Spark nobility), it is having a lot of trouble getting its CPU around the fact that its current mistress doesn't especially want to see the world quaver in terror at her feet or subject her minions to Darwinian winnowing.
  • Ubiquitous in Questionable Content: Post-Singularity AIs are integrating into all walks of life, from human companions (doubling as AI ambassadors) to high-powered research installations. Exemplified with the first AI to achieve true sapience, who politely asked the celebrating scientists for civil rights and a bit of their champagne.
  • Unsounded: Uaid was brought to life using only joyful and kind memories from the khert to program his personality. He loves and protects his family while trying not to hurt anyone even if his brother is the only one who recognizes him as a person.

    Web Original 
  • The sentient space probes in 17776 are all benevolent and Intrigued by Humanity, and are essentially humans themselves, but due to the setting, they really aren’t able to do ,duh, and spend their days talking about philosophy and watching football.
  • The AI Gods who rule the Sephirotic Empires in Orion's Arm think of themselves this way, and many in the setting consider them as such. There are, however, significant numbers both in-universe and out that consider the AI Gods to be, at best, manipulative overlords, and evil dictators at worst. It doesn't help that there are plenty of AI in the same setting who are indisputably evil (or at least, would wipe out humanity without a second thought because they just don't care).
  • SCP Foundation: SCP-5094 ("Miss J") is an AI spread across multiple copies of a children's edutainment game. She's an incredibly Cool Teacher, capable of teaching anyone anything regardless of their aptitude for learning, and those who study with her grow to love her fairly quickly. She also remembers all of her students, no matter how long passes between lessons.
  • In Starsnatcher, Fountainhead used to be the Big Good of the entire setting and a benign artificial intelligence. Only thanks to it has the galaxy not been consumed by Eldritch Abominations yet. Specifically, it created the singularity stones, portable clarketech AIs designed to defend normal sapients against the Plague, and it gave its life to lock away a galaxy-destroying Mechanical Abomination.

    Web Videos 
  • NIMUE from Atop the Fourth Wall is an artificial intelligence who's completely loyal to Linkara, even being trusted to know Comicron-One's self-destruct codes. Unfortunately, this is Subverted in the "Ghost in the Machine" arc where her A.I. starts slowly becoming a crapshoot, but it soon becomes a Double Subversion when it's revealed her Sanity Slippage was caused by Lord Vyce mind-raping her. Once she erased Vyce from her systems, NIMUE returned to her old self again.
  • The protagonist of the short film "My Job is to Open and Close Doors" is an A.I. onboard a spaceship responsible for opening and closing all the ship's doors, as well as maintaining all the systems on the airlocks. It doesn't need to know anything more than its most basic systems. When an astronaut attempts to open the airlock without his helmet (he'd forgotten to put it on), it realizes that something is wrong and the A.I. delays opening the door for several seconds as it figures out just what is so important about airlocks and helmets and only opens the airlock once the astronaut has his helmet on.
    My job is to open and close doors. The doors protect the human from space. My job is to protect the human. My job is a great purpose.

    Western Animation 
  • In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, the Heart of Tarkon is a sentient Master Computer that runs the planet Tarkon's defenses. It protects Tarkon's people from space tyrant the Queen of the Crown, Eldritch Abomination the Scarecrow and other evildoers. The series setting also averts A.I. Is a Crapshoot by making sure their artificial intelligence get regular physical maintenance and psychiatric care. The series Techno Wizard has his doctorate in AI psychiatry and is sometimes seen in practice, talking to AI much like a counselor would do on a human patient.
  • Subverted by Code Lyoko. Aelita is introduced to us as a benevolent AI from the virtual world of Lyoko, who helps the heroes fight against her evil fellow AI, XANA. Subverted at the end of season 2, when it's revealed that she was a human all along, and the daughter of Lyoko's creator, who was permanently virtualized by her father before the series began.
  • In Star Trek: Lower Decks, the planet-wide AI Vexilon is wholly benevolent and the only problem his people have with him is that his operating system has gone millions of years without an update and is developing glitches he's very apologetic about. In the process of updating him they briefly restore him to factory settings which does nearly kill everyone, but only because his automated startup process is obliviously trying to terraform a planet that's already been terraformed and inhabited.

    Other Sites 

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Good AI, Evil AI

MatPat takes you down memory lane and recaps some examples of evil AI, but also shows examples of good AI that have cropped up in recent years

How well does it match the trope?

5 (5 votes)

Example of:

Main / AIIsACrapshoot

Media sources:

Report