Perfectly good trope, does not marry up with most of the examples.: AI Is A Crapshoot

OK, lets read the trope:

"Though Evil Twins are not limited to characters of an artificial nature, it seems almost law that for every good sentient computer, there is an Evil Twin (or Evil Counterpart) from the same source."

"More often than not, the evil AI is a Psycho Prototype of the good. Frequently based on some obvious design flaw corrected in the later version, The Evil AI is then invariably switched off and put away somewhere, but not destroyed."

"Less often, the evil AI is built as a replacement for the good AI."

There are more examples, but this is the core problem. The trope explains that the tropes is about evil duplicates of good A.I.s. Now, lets have a look at the examples. Most of them are "AI goes evil" not "There is an evil version of the AI."

I think you are right.

I've skimmed this one before and never got a solid handle on it. That first paragraph: it's perfectly clear once you know the meaning, but I found it oddly derailing.

The first bit feels like Word Cruft. The second bit sounds like some background or a built-up rather than a definition. That's not so good given plain old Evil AI / AI Goes Evil are common enough tropes.

The laconic doesn't help. The laconic sounds like the general AI Goes Evil trope.

And finally the page image — no Evil Twin there.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:21:03 AM by Camacan

Oh no, that is the definition? Trope Decay.

Well, do we even have an AI Goes Evil trope? Because that strikes me as an awful lot more common.

I've never seen this used as anything but "any AI will turn evil at the drop of a hat, regardless of its purpose or personality."

Thing is, I only read the page recently. I assumed that the deffinition was AI goes evil and never really paid it much attention. I think most people are working of that assumption.

Same here. That definition has nothing to do with how the trope is used.

I side with the crowd assuming that the trope means "AI always turns against its creators".

I can't even understand why that definition is different from Psycho Prototype. Even having the good AI be the prototype is just inverting the trope. Agree with the many who have understood it to mean AI Goes Evil.

Also with AI Turns Evil.

So, if it's used almost completely that way, shall we redefine it to match the (mis)use?

edited 16th Mar '11 1:41:50 PM by Laukku

Obviously, if we redefine it, then we're inverting what gets considered misuse of the trope.

I vote for a Trope Transplant. The name is much better for the trope about AI turning evil, and the examples and wicks are already using it that way.

Honestly, I think somebody just went in and screwed up the description. I've never seen this used as anything other than "AI goes evil at the drop of a hat."

If so, that must have happened a long time ago.

Yeah, I agree that I thought the trope always meant "An AI that becomes evil after going nuts". The title certainly points towards that.

And I also feel like we should have a plain old "Evil AI" trope, as I remember being stymied by the lack of one back when I had a character I wanted to describe that is an Evil AI that is not crazy or likely to turn on its evil masters.

So, this needs fixing. I will take a stab myself come Monday.

Should we use a wick check to see if anyone had use the definition in the paragraphs?

I wonder who is responible for this.

I went and looked at the page from 2007, and the description is nearly the same. However, while the first examples were all good/evil clones, it fell apart starting with the following example:

• Literary example: a particularly dire take on this turns up in Peter Watts's Starfish, in which the quasi-sentient supercomputer designated to protect all life on earth from The Virus winds up almost destroying it instead; turns out it found The Virus more structurally pleasing than the biosphere as a whole.

That takes it to AI that was supposed to be good, but turned bad. I think that's definition we need. An AI designed to be evil wouldn't even fit the title.

Let's agree, then.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A.I.s in fiction have this ugly habit of turning evil.

There are two important things to note here:

1. It does not concern A.I.s that were designed to be evil in the first place. 2. The trope description has nothing to do with the trope itself.

Neither does the page image, for that matter; while I personally find it funny, could we get a picture of HAL 9000 to go up there? I can pen up a description if no one minds (the current descriptions of Massive Multiplayer Scam, Immortality Hurts and Matter Replicator were done by me as well, and you can check my userpage for other examples).

edited 16th Apr '11 2:34:13 PM by Ryusui

Can you show that HAL 9000 is evil with a picture?

This good enough for you?◊

No, it's a glowing light.

Agreeing with the trope transplant, I have never, ever seen the trope used in it's "original" meaning.

I just did a quick wick check, 15 wicks (not a big sample, I know)

• 2 were using it as per it's original definition
• 3 were using it in a manner that was NEITHER the original definition, nor the proposed new ones (pothole for bad videogame AI, Pothole for cyborgs without mention of evil or not)
• 3 I could not tell.
• 7 would fit the new definition (AI turns evil).
  • None of them mentioned if the AI was evil to begin with, so there COULD still be incorrect ones.

So it looks like whatever we do, there's gonna be alot of clean up to do.

edited 16th Apr '11 9:54:06 PM by Ghilz

Um, a month. No action. This trope needs fixing...

edited 21st May '11 3:24:06 AM by RegShoe