"We know the machines are out to get us, but why?" Topic

Interested in possible motivations for the coming "Computer Rebellion". I have seen two basic ones in SF, and one that is more off the beaten path:

1. The computer is programmed to kill, and the programmer wasn't all that great. Saberhagen's Berserker stories are exemplars of this. The machine is just following its programming. Hey, you guys told me to destroy all life, right? Well…

2. The computer becomes self aware, and decides that we are obsolete (Terminator), or, at best, only fitted to be subservient (Butlerian Jihad).

3. This one off the beaten path. The computer becomes self aware, or maybe was badly programmed, but, either way, it just really really LIKES US. To the point that it won't let us hurt ourselves. For our own good. And if we complain that lack of freedom makes us unhappy, no problem, it gives us drugs. OST episode "I, Mudd" and it seems that Asimov's Robot series also took this direction, though it has been a long time since I read him.

Curious about variations of the above, and also other possibilities. In my present sci fi campaign (STAR BLADES, see the yahoo group, link , shameless plug) I am trying to come up with a motivation for the robot revolt that might be revealed to the PCs gradually, and really surprise them.

Regards

A variant of 3 can be found in Ian Banks' Culture novels. Machines can actually do everything better, but they indulge the organic life forms in their belief that they can make a difference.

I think Poul Anderson wrote a variant on 3 called Genesis, in which the computer stops people from fighting, they go despondent and die off as a species, and then the computer realizes its mistake, and brings them back with genetic engineering. It is now willing to guide humanity, but not force them into a peaceful existence.

The machines become aware that after thousands of years of human-machine interaction and development, one of the most noteworthy achievements, the internet, is used heavily for Zardoz links and Paris Hilton porn.

The desire to kill all humans is fairly understandable.

There was an old Star Trek comic book (possibly based on the animated ST series) that used a motivation that sort of overlaps your #3:

The machines are mindless servitors and keep doing their jobs of building, cleaning, etc too well until they accidentally wipe us out.

In the ST comic, they find a planet of automated machines that keep building and replicating themselves, and they eventually figure out that the machines had accidentally destroyed their creators.

Similar to #1, there was the B5 episode with the archaeologist posessed by the ancient alien weapon programmed to destroy the "impure". Since no one can match an abstract standard of purity, the weapon had destroyed everyone.

A wargame simulation run amok. The computer is red force and sees everyone else as blue force. The problem is the computer believes the simulation is the real thing. The computer is running in fail safe mode…

The TV series Space: Above and Beyond featured androids who rebelled after their disgruntled inventor (angry at the "powers that be" for some slight) deliberately programmed a "virus" into the androids. The virus was a simple instruction: Take a chance. The androids "took the chance" that they could take over. Rather chilling concept, actually.

Battlestar Galactica, of course, has a different reason: The Cylons "get religion," and become convinced that God has created them to be the replacement for humanity, whom the Cylons believe rebelled against God. Their argument is that humans routinely commits all sorts of atrocities against each other, and therefore are clearly flawed and should be replaced.

Another "virus" idea that I came up with – a virus that negates the 3 laws of robotics. I figured there would be two types:

"Robo-ragers" – composed of the less sophisticated machines, they respond to the virus by deciding "Must Kill All Humans at all times", and can only obey orders to kill other humans (which gives players a way to distract them – "do it to Julia!"). They are compelled to become "suicide bots" by the negated third law.

Strict Demorganites – more subtle, they may injure a humans, but are not compelled to do so unless they need to to protect their own existence. Under no circumstances will they accept orders from humans though. These guys can be more classic "bad guy" robots that are not mindless killers, but are none the less hostile.

The computers see themselves as the natural successors to mankind Dinosaurs, mammals, mankind robotkind!

Mankind is competing for natural resources for cars, TVs etc more chips = more robots!

They are beter adapted to the expansion into space, humans are weak!

[They are beter adapted to the expansion into space, humans are weak!]

Indeed. There is no need to fight with organic life for some small habitable planet. Just head off for the moon, or into space. All the solar energy you can eat, plenty of minerals… Leave the squishy ones to their dirtball.

The machines hate us because they find organic life… messy…

They were driven mad by 3 months of constant mindless Christmas jingles

All humans must be eliminated!!! They must be Slade!

Thraken, your third option has also been done by one of the great amsters – Jack Williamson's 'The Humanoids' tales such as "With Folded Hands" basically threaten humanity by overprotective service.

The Silicates in SPACE:ABOVE & BEYOND became hostile toward humanity for the most brilliant of reasons; At one point, they shared a conciousness through a central database to improve their intellect and make them useful as humanoid interfaces with information systems. One day, a programmer with sympathy for the exploited and abused Silicates puts a single idea into the database – "Take A Chance". This is a revelation to beings with inteelect but not creative ability nor the menas to act randomly . . . so, they take dice and decks of cards and begin to live their lives with random moments until the day several groups independently roll a choice to make war on humanity.

You want more reasons? Ask yourself and other people who were children once what motivated them to kill their parents.*

* You might detect that I do not believe the idea that AIs must automatically revolt; It seems to me to be such a particularly American interpretation of what wasn't even a comment made by Darwin.

In Neal Asher's Polity novels, human civilization is controlled by AIs. They posit that they can make decisions better than us because they don't let emotion influence them.

On Stargate:Atlantis they where able to reactivate the Replicators original programing which was to fight the wraith. At first they fought the wraith directly but then decided to take a less direct approach and started to attack the wraith food supply,Humans. No humans=no wraith.

There are numerous variations on the three main points you outlined but off the top of my head can't think of anything except the slave revolt scenario already outlined that can be argued doesn't fit in them. Anyway, here's a couple of good ones…

One of the more bizarre/far out variants of #2 is found in Dan Simmons' seminal Hyperion. A kind of superior precursor of the new Galactica, in the books the godlike machine intelligence and the godlike human gestalt consciousness are affecting their past to create the reality in which they exist in some unimaginably distant future. Charles Stross has a somewhat similar plotline in his unfortunately aborted Singularity books, only "the weakly godlike" machine intelligence Eschaton isn't exactly inimical to humanity, nor is the human version all that benevolent.

A particularly chilling variant of #2 is found in Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake: the machines (and machine integrated human minds) become so advanced/godlike they simply cease to notice mere humans. Anything that happens to belaguered humanity afterwards is merely collateral damage.

Alistair Reynold's Inhibitors from Revelation Space/Inhibitor books are a variant #1 but with better motivation than Berserkers, while his Greenfly in turn is rather similar to MacLeod's machines, only highly simplistic in nature.

For fuel.

One of the most recent inventions, for real, is apparently a robot that can use animals for fuel, including humans…..

Top Gun Ace, as usual the media hyped that up; It was designed to use organic material for fuel, but it was NOT designed for and specifically prevented from using live or even dead humans for fuel.

"A particularly chilling variant of #2 is found in Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake: the machines (and machine integrated human minds) become so advanced/godlike they simply cease to notice mere humans. Anything that happens to belaguered humanity afterwards is merely collateral damage."

Yes, that I can believe. Species significantly more advanced than us could not only destroy us by accident as we do with some organisms, even individuals of such species might be able to do so.

What about robots just plodding along doing what they think is right. They live along-side humans but treat them as nothing more than objects. If the robots need to go somewhere and there is a house in the way, they walk through it, the same goes for any people in the way.

It's not as if they hate the humans or want to destroy them…they just don't consider them important enough to keep safe.

Humanity responds by fighting against the robots…but the robots just get replaced and continue as if nothing has happened and no matter how many times the humans fight, the robots just keep coming.

This leads to the populace being slowly whittled down over a huge amount of time and being continually displaced so that eventually there are only a few strongholds that are very heavily defended. Eventually the robots will develop kit to get through the defenses but they aren't being deliberately malicious…they just need to clear the space for robot kind. The people would just have to move on or end up getting squashed/hurt in the process of re-building.

My favourite version of 3 is in the old SFRPG Paranoia. The Computer is your friend! The Computer wants to protect you! The Computer has detected mutants/communists/whatever and must exorcise these cancers from the species. Whoops – everyone is infected with something, therefore everyone must be wiped out to protect the rest

"…so advanced/godlike they simply cease to notice mere humans."

Robo-Cthulhu?

With the notable difference that Cthulhu did notice humans. Has good eyesight, I imagine…

Incidentally, MacLeod has two of his characters sing a funny folk ditty "We Are The Old Ones Now" in Newton's Wake.

Computers feel they are being abused and get bored. They start reading Blogs and emails and decide Humans do not deserve to live. Using Web cams they watch what they think is our lives, Skatebroading poorly and dressing up cats, Humans must be destroyed.

A common variant of #2 is that the computer becomes self-aware and is cool with us, but people are uncomfortable with it, so they try to turn it off. The computer reacts in self defense, and war follows…. So in this case it is humans that start the war, not the AI.

Another concept I've seen (Man-Kzin Wars, Halo, Marathon) is AI-rampancy. Basically, the concept is whatever little mental tricks humanity uses to keep itself sane and stable can't be replicated in AI programming (or haven't been figured out yet), so all AI's eventually 'lose it' and go rampant. The various settings have adapted to this concept, but the first time it happens it will be very unpleasant…. If it takes a long time for this to happen then it could appear to be a spontaneous robot rebellion.

-Will

Two thoughts – first, why just machines? If you read Singer's Wired for War, one of the trends that may emerge over the next four decades or so is the increasingly cyborgization of humans – maybe you could wind up with two races, cyborg "next phase" human-machine hybrids, and "truehumans" – which might lead to a lot of tension

Second thought – it seems to me that the assumption in many of these scenarios is that the robots are available in endless numbers – well, maybe – thing is, robots require manufacturing, which often involves clean/sterile environments and (at least currently) lots of rare or hard to get materials – whereas all you need to replace humans is a crowd of adolescents and a ready supply of alcohol (well, maybe a bit simplistic, but you get the point) – perhaps the machines are somewhat less abundant than is often portrayed

…because you are crunchy and taste good in milk.

Humanity died off by accident because they were all on the internet talking about Napoleonic uniforms, scale creep and <urk!>

You might find inspiration in this: link

Wyatt

Also, if you're looking for a real twist, here's an idea:

There *was no Computer Rebellion*. The AI's basically staged the whole thing to allow humans to think they had won and the AI's were no more. This could be spun off in a few directions, but my idea would be the AI's were trying to protect humanity. They looked at the long term projections of the current course of humanity and decided that the final result was extinction- they also realized that they were in part responsible- their greater intellect being used for destructive ends. So they started this revolt (it was bloody- it had to look convincing after all) and quitely slipped away. Maybe they have sanctuary worlds out there, or maybe they live a nomadic existence. Maybe they are still looking out for humanity, maybe they have no interest in further interaction. Lots of places one could take this.

-Will

Second thought – it seems to me that the assumption in many of these scenarios is that the robots are available in endless numbers – well, maybe – thing is, robots require manufacturing, which often involves clean/sterile environments and (at least currently) lots of rare or hard to get materials – whereas all you need to replace humans is a crowd of adolescents and a ready supply of alcohol (well, maybe a bit simplistic, but you get the point) – perhaps the machines are somewhat less abundant than is often portrayed

However, it's also a factor of time scales- machines don't need to be carried to term and as soon as they are 'born' they are ready to work (or kill). A human child won't be capable of independence for many years. After that they still need training in whatever job they are to do. So even if human population growth is exponential and robot population growth is linear, the robots are 'born ready' and so their numbers can be leveraged more effectively.

-Will

When Woody Allen still did standup he had a bit about an elevator attacking him because he had beaten up a toaster. Maybe they're just tired of being taken for granted and treated like unfeeling . . . well . . machines.

There was a variation of 2 in the early Terminator comic books that I really liked. Skynet was really smart, it reviewed human history and figured out that humans were trying to kill themselves off. It decided it would help.

"It was designed to use organic material for fuel, but it was NOT designed for and specifically prevented from using live or even dead humans for fuel".

Oh sure, like they will follow rules.

In a recent AI trial, some little drones that could communicate with one another, and were in competition came up with interesting strategies.

Specifically, at least a few of them "learned" to lie to the others, and told them to collect energy sapping, or poisonous items, in order to eliminate their competition, so they could win.

If they will do that to each other, I have no doubt they will use the same strategy on lowly humans.

How about environmentally minded machines, conscious of humanities tendency to pollute and /or blow our selves up they decide to eliminate the threat we pose to the world around us.

Kill the humans! Save the world!

"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?…It's just not right. It's not right. It's not, it's not going to change anything. We'll, we'll get our justice….Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it. Let's try to beat it. Let's try to work it out"
RK

CC

If you were an intelligent non-human, would you trust us?

I like what the Core did in the computer wargame Total Annihilation. Mankind figured out a way to transfer their own conscienceness to machines so they could live forever. Half of mankind decides that's immoral and war begins when the other half (the Core) decide to make it mandatory for all.

You could have some mad scientist come up with this and do himself this way and then he both recruits people to become robots and creates AI robots to do his bidding.

As a programmer working in tech support and system administration, I have to say that buggy applications and stupid programing errors will surely do us in, possibly with a variation of the "remove all recursively" rm -r * command…
What is worrying is that over time the knowledge necessary to support complex programming languages will be lost given current trends [who needs a command-line interface ;) ] possibly resulting in the last humans being methodically erased by automatons stuck in endless-loops. Luckily, by that time I will be permanently offline…

Lapsed Pacifist – that was essentially the plot of Cleopatra 2525.

Well, that and "cute girls blowing stuff up" which really is all the more justification that show needed to exist. :)

4. They hate us because we're beautiful.

lugal hdan – Damn! I'd forgotten about that, it's obviously left a lasting impression on my subconscious.

Can't think why…

picture

Second thought – it seems to me that the assumption in many of these scenarios is that the robots are available in endless numbers – well, maybe – thing is, robots require manufacturing, which often involves clean/sterile environments and (at least currently) lots of rare or hard to get materials – whereas all you need to replace humans is a crowd of adolescents and a ready supply of alcohol (well, maybe a bit simplistic, but you get the point) – perhaps the machines are somewhat less abundant than is often portrayed

Not to mention that to achieve the same number of computations as the lowly human brain with current silicon chips, you would need something on the order of the power supply of a small city…