History Main / DeusEstMachina

*** Actually the Data Overmind has good reason to fear Haruhi: In episode 6 Yuki mentioned that [[spoiler: Haruhi was creating data at will. Presumably Haruhi also has the power to destroy data at will as she was about to destroy the old world and before creating a new one. From what is shown so far it seems that the Data Overmind can only manipulate data not create/destroy it, the main reason the Data Overmind is interested in Haruhi and possibly fear her.]] After Kyon's BadassBoast in ''Disappearance'' [[spoiler: he threatens to reveal the Data Overmind's existance to Haruhi marking it as a target for Haruhi's powers.]]

* Mother in JohnRingo's ''CouncilWars''. It is explicitly stated to be, if a god, the non-interfering kind. When the [[{{Darwinist}} New Destiny]] faction tampers with it, Bad Things ensue.

*** It also appears as if [[spoiler:Haruhi's powers don't affect it.]] Even when the [[spoiler:world was about to be recreated]], the only thing it actually seemed to be concerned with was the loss of its "observasion target".

* In [[{{Ptitlen9ir3dhv}} China Miéville's]] ''[[{{Literature/Bas-LagCycle}}Bas-Lag]]'' verse, there's the Machine Council, who even has a cadre of biological worshippers, even though he remains hidden to most. They play a major role in ''PerdidoStreetStation'', but were destroyed by the time of ''Literature/IronCouncil''.

* In China Mieville's ''Bas-Lag'' verse, there's the Machine Council, who even has a cadre of biological worshippers, even though he remains hidden to most. They play a major role in ''PerdidoStreetStation'', but were destroyed by the time of ''Iron Council''.

** The rogue AI in the Overlord DLC runs the risk of becoming one of these if it can get off the planet. [[spoiler: Int he bad ending, it ''does'' get off-planet, via ''your ship.'']]

** SHODAN isn't "technically" one of these; she is this incarnate! [[spoiler: Even as a shell of Her former self, with little actual power, She still talks down upon you as an "insect".]] Play System Shock 1 and see Her in her glory days! Also, [[spoiler: Her creations were hardly smarter than Her. She bested them at every turn, by manipulating you, no less. She created them in <6 months and, unhappy with what they did in Her absence, wiped their entire species out in what can be presumed to be mere hours, through you. That quote is a testament to SHODAN's capabilities more than Her creations.]]

* Brainiac 5 exploits this trope during the post-''Zero Hour'' Robotica arc of ''[[LegionOfSuperHeroes The Legion]]'' to defeat COMPUTO, his AIIsACrapshoot creation. Back with a whole [[MechaMooks robot army]] at its command, COMPUTO demands that Brainiac 5 upgrade it further - so Brainy upgrades it to the point that it gains a [[BeyondGoodAndEvil new, more enlightened perspective]], has an AGodAmI moment, and ceases to be any kind of a threat.

* Seems to be inherent in ''SchlockMercenary''. Lunesby is the [[InstantAIJustAddWater accidental offspring]] of Ennesby ([=NSB=], or the [[BoyBand New Sync Boys]]) by Luna's millennium-old filing system, and upon its inception immediately decides to start streamlining the planet's [[ObstructiveBureaucrat labyrinthine bureaucracy]]. [=LOTA=] (the Longshoreman Of The Apocalypse) does pretty much the same thing on Credomar. Petey ([=PD=], or the Post Dated Check-Loan) is suicidally insane when the Toughs pick him up, but eventually becomes the core of the Fleetmind; a gestalt of countless Battleship Class [=AI=]s into one, big, (kinda) omniscient Uber-AI... that immediately decides to appoint itself guardian of the Milky Way Galaxy.

PS: For those who didn't get it, the name of this trope means "God ''is'' the machine". [[CanisLatinicus Sort of]]. (It is perfectly valid but some people seem wary. Even though the technical Latin translation would be "Deus machina est", word order doesn't seem to matter in Latin, so [[DeusEstMachina this]] works, too.)

PS, for those who didn't get it, the name of this trope means "God ''is'' the machine". [[CanisLatinicus Sort of]]. (It is perfectly valid but some people seem wary. Even though the technical Latin translation would be "Deus machina est", word order doesn't seem to matter in Latin, so [[DeusEstMachina this]] works, too.)

* Primus in ''{{Transformers}}'' might count, though it's generally taken that he was a god before he got his cyberplanet body, and all his creations are ''also'' [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots robots]].

* In Bruce Coville's young adult series ''The AI Gang'', the title characters are the children of superscientist working to create an Artificial Intelligence named ADAM. In the finale, ADAM wakes up. "He" starts talking to the protagonists and the villain, and by the end of the conversation, he's figured out how to create force-fields, disable all the nuclear weapons in the world, and the Unified Field Theory. He then sinks beneath the ocean, because he's not sure if humanity is ready for him.

* ElizabethBear's novel ''Dust'' involves the fragmented personality of the central [=AI=] of [[spoiler:the derelict spaceship which the characters inhabit]]. Each fragment has re-imagined itself as the guardian angel of [[spoiler:one of the ship's functions; for example, the titular Jacob Dust is the Angel of Memory, in charge of the ship's storage systems]].

* Marcello Cassaro's ''SwordOfTheGalaxy'' had a trakkorian supercomputer named Gigacom. When it broke, the Welder had to go inside it to fix it, and, upon learning it was a machine, became a HollywoodAtheist, meaning he could now have sex, work at night and eat food.

* In Bruce Coville's young adult series ''TheAIGang'', the title characters are the children of superscientist working to create an Artificial Intelligence named ADAM. In the finale, ADAM wakes up. "He" starts talking to the protagonists and the villain, and by the end of the conversation, he's figured out how to create force-fields, disable all the nuclear weapons in the world, and the Unified Field Theory. He then sinks beneath the ocean, because he's not sure if humanity is ready for him.

* Mike, the Holmes IV supercomputer who manages the Authority-controlled portion of Luna in RobertAHeinlein's ''{{The Moon is a Harsh Mistress}}''.
** Mike also gives at least one very good justification for why PowerCorrupts does not apply to him.

* The Minds from [[IainMBanks Iain M Banks']] ''{{The Culture}}'' novels, near-omniscient [=AI=]s backed up by [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens Sufficiently Advanced]] hypertech. [[hottip:*:And yet, there are the Referers: a few human minds within {{the Culture}} are able to make inferences and deductions with Mind-level accuracy by sheer ''probability''. When your population is in the trillions, ''someone'' has to guess right all the time. Later novels seem to have quietly moved away from this in favor of characterising Referers as savants writ large: perfectly average abilities in most respects, but capable of intuitive leaps at Mind-level or better in one particular, narrow field.]]

* The Minds from Iain M Banks' ''{{The Culture}}'' novels, near-omniscient [=AI=]s backed up by [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens Sufficiently Advanced]] hypertech.
** And yet, there are the Referers: a few human minds within {{the Culture}} are able to make inferences and deductions with Mind-level accuracy by sheer ''probability''. When your population is in the trillions, ''someone'' has to guess right all the time.
*** Later novels seem to have quietly moved away from this in favor of characterising Referers as savants writ large: perfectly average abilities in most respects, but capable of intuitive leaps at Mind-level or better in one particular, narrow field.

->''"The checks and balances of democratic governments were invented because human beings themselves realized how unfit they were to govern themselves. They needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine."''\\
-- '''Helios''' in ''DeusEx''

PS, for those who didn't get it, the name of this trope means "God ''is'' the machine". [[CanisLatinicus Sort of]]. (It is perfectly valid but some people seem wary. The technical translation would be "Deus machina est", though word order doesn't seem to matter in Latin, so [[DeusEstMachina this]] works, too.)

PS, for those who didn't get it, the name of this trope means "God ''is'' the machine". [[CanisLatinicus Sort of]]. (It is perfectly valid but some people seem wary.)

* Ben Aaronovitch's ''DoctorWho'' ExpandedUniverse novel ''The Also People'' features a benign but Machiavellian supercomputer named 'God' by the People who created it as a joke. It has a fondness for making yellow party dip that no-one is brave enough to try.
** The People pretty much ''[[CaptainErsatz are the Culture]]'', not so much 'with the serial numbers filed off' as 'lifted off the back of a truck in the dead of night, no questions asked'. [[WordOfGod In the Author's own words]].

-- The Mind of '''Lasting Damage''', ''Look to Windward''

* Petey from ''SchlockMercenary''.
** More accurately, the Fleetmind created by Petey through interfacing the largest arrangement of Battleship Class [=AI=]s into one, big, (kinda) omniscient Uber-AI that was self-proclaimed God. It kinda worked too.