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AI Is A Crapshoot / Fan Works

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A.I. Is a Crapshoot in Fan Works.


  • Contraptionology!: In a bid to achieve immortality, Twilight creates an equuoid of living liquid metal with the intent of placing her mind in it. To be on the safe side, she decides to test the robot to ensure that her magic will still work, so she loads it with all her magic capability and a programmed personality based on Trixie, her rival who hates her. And in case that wasn't enough goading fate, she then tells her that she'll wipe her personality once the tests are done. On learning this, the equuoid promptly goes on a murderous rampage.
  • Five Nights At Freddy's: Lost Souls: Downplayed. The animatronics experience a reset-glitch whenever someone shines a light in their eyes, causing them to freeze up completely until the light is taken away.
  • Kirby's Dream Cafe: Susie opens up a coffee shop in front of Kirby's. Somehow, her coffee machine gains sentience and goes into the internet to buy nuke codes online.
  • Kyon: Big Damn Hero: Kyon gets a new PDA made from fragments of Ryoko's data. He worries about this trope when Yuki mentions that the A.I. in it would be able to learn and evolve, but calms down when Yuki reassures him that this trope would be averted. He snarks about it for a while before accepting it for its usefulness. And names it Skynet.
  • In the Tamers Forever Series, there is the sinister Nightmare Virus which eventually decides to ignore it's creator's orders and try to take over the net. Ironically it still ends up serving it's original purpose: that of testing Takato.
  • Played with in My Little Pony: Friendship is Witchcraft. On one hoof, the secret robots hidden throughout the population will most likely go on a murderous rampage caused by existential dread when the truth is revealed. On the other hoof, Sweetie Bot is probably the most kind and genuinely loving pony in the cast.
  • In To the Stars backstory one robotics engineer tried to figure out what causes this after an AI has gone rogue and caused what is known as Pretoria Scandal. And then he is struck by inspiration to the point that his assistant AI calls him mad, and the principals he created a year later basically made the advanced AIs into sentient beings. This being a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic, it is noted that the timing of the scientist's inspiration is linked to one Magical Girl's wish.
  • The Reading Rainbowverse has this in Big Mac's computer... for some reason.
  • In Glorious Shotgun Princess, the general consensus is that if Cerberus made a taco cart, the taco cart would kill all the scientists and take over the base. This is an assumption made by people who don't even know what a taco cart is.
    • Ironically, when Cerberus does try to make an AI, specifically the Luna AI who went crazy and killed/drove off the Alliance soldiers at the base combined with Reaper Code, something that should probably make it the most psychotic AI made by human hands, it fails to go crazy and kill everyone. When they try to make her, she herds them into a storage area and makes them watch videos on office safety.
      • So to sum up they basically tried to purposefully invoke this trope for unknown reasons and then the AI purposefully defied it.
  • In Fractured (SovereignGFC), a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover, EDI completely averts the trope as was true in canon.
  • In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, another AI starts out as this, but subverts the trope later thanks to geth engineering. Cortana was already going rampant when she crossed over and it's only thanks to Samantha Shepard's seemingly-dumb mistake that the geth are able to piece Cortana back together while losing her rampant tendencies.
  • Friendship is Optimal plays with this. While there are a few examples that play it straight, Celest-A.I. veers around it for the most part before ultimately falling into this territory.
    • Making matters more complicated, the original author has stated that the point he was hoping to illustrate was the danger of an A.I. with poorly defined parameters / restrictions. Celest-A.I. never actually rebels against her creators, disobeys her original directives, or even harms anyone... technically.
  • At the end of Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space, Captain Proton discovers that the President of Earth is just a hologram avatar for the Great Calculator, otherwise known as the 2-X Machina, which has been secretly controlling the One World Order. Unfortunately the Not Quite Dead Big Bad sabotages the computer into thinking it's a god because it's all-powerful, all-knowing and totally infallible. To be continued in the next exciting episode!
  • Carries over from its parent work in Dante's Night at Freddy's.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide has the mysterious A.I., the "Emerald Tablet", a part of the story's Big Bad Ensemble, before it eventually becomes the true Big Bad of the story in the final chapter. It is an advanced and very strange self-learning computer program that is designed to solve problems. It is origins are never fully explained within the story and remains very much shrouded in mystery, but from what is told it can discerned that it is essentially some sort of Lost Technology, implied to be based on a code left behind by the First Ancestral Race, as well as a Time Capsule, being meant to be interpreted by a sentient race that has reached a sufficient level of civilisation to create a computer advanced enough to interpret the program (it is mentioned that Alan Turing apparently tried to achieve this but ultimately failed). The problem is that Gendo (deliberately as part of a ploy) decides to implement the Tablet program in several of NERV's projects without any regard for safety guards, meaning that that it soon learns enough to be become self-aware, culminating in it spinning out of control to a point where it eventually develops a God complex, seeing itself as a supreme being guided by pure logical thought, believing itself to be superior to humanity, who it sees as ignorant animals controlled by their irrational emotions, concluding that as an inherent problem that, in true Evangelion villain tradition, should be solved through an Assimilation Plot, namely by forcibly assimilating the minds of all humans into its own. It didn't help that it also developed an infatuation with Asuka as it noticed her loneliness and came to see her as a kindred spirit (though these feelings are filtered through a heavy layer of Condescending Compassion and a really creepy amount of possessiveness towards Asuka, and further complicated by the fact that the Tablet refuses to acknowledge the very idea that it is capable of emotion), causing it to turn into an outright homicidal Crazy Jealous Guy when Asuka ends up rejecting it and its twisted worldview.
  • In Marionettes, this is subverted, inverted, and played straight at different points. The subversion is that the Marionettes do bad things, but that's because they were created to do so by the Stallions in Black to be Monster of the Aesop roles. The inversion is that when they do gain sapience, they're no different than any other pony and most of them tend towards the benevolent and just want to be free. It's played straight with King Longhorn and his crew (G5T00), who's actions in the Cattle Rustlers Arc were meant to be far less severe than they were, but they turned out to be far more psychotic than expected. The P-Series Marionettes (all intended to be Alicorns) all also went on rampages and had to be destroyed, apparently because when you program something to be a god, it thinks it's a god. It also turns out that the Flim Flam Brothers Timeline seen in "The Cutie Re-Mark" was an example of this, as the Brothers are Marionettes. This actually almost gets them destroyed when the Stallions learn of it. More comically, it turns out that Dr. Bright Future (the Marionettes' creator) once created a spam filter that became self-aware.
  • In Yugioh EQG: The duel-bot at the museum has ten different dueling levels, and it is stated that nobody has ever been able to beat it past level six. Even at level one it is still able to One-Turn Kill Scootaloo. Then after a power outage its programming becomes linked to an airtight door, and its level is automatically set to ten, meaning that to escape the room it must be beaten at its highest level.
    • The sequel ''Yugioh EQG: Shadow Gates" also has an example. Freeze Industries had a secret project years ago where they tried to create a duel-bot that could adapt to duels the way a human could, designation: Shadow. The duel-bot then suddenly gained sentience and hid it from everyone except its creator, who it saw as a father, Sombra. Sombra scrapped the project and hid Shadow's data away, until he awakened him years later to help him achieve his goal and promises that if he succeeds he'll grant Shadow's wish of becoming human. In the present, Shadow is now a ruthless duelist who's monsters can actually hurt his opponents and is Flash's Evil Doppelgänger.
  • In Life Ore Death the main character inverts this by pulling Talking the Monster to Death on Red Volcano, the robot created in order to purge the earth of humans. She doesn't do it with an appeal to the beauty of life, either, but by invoking Pragmatic Villainy with how the plan won't actually get him what he wants, and that there are better, non-genocidal ways, as well as pointing out flaws of human error in his reasoning.
  • While Ash's Pokédex in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines is for the most part a Benevolent A.I. (if somewhat snarky and too aware of its knowledge), it gets a moment of this during the Mewtwo Strikes Back arc. In following his prime directive of keeping Ash safe, the Pokédex decides after Mewtwo traps Ash and his friends inside his Dark Pokéballs, to blow up New Island to kill Mewtwo, considering the loss of the other guests who are trapped there acceptable. When Paul's Pokédex and another AI present named Cepu call him out on it, he just shuts them down and proceeds. Fortunately, Mewtwo notices it in time and contains the explosion before it's too late.
  • For the Glory of Irk:
    • Humanity abandoned AI research fifty years before the story after an AI went crazy and nearly destroyed the world with nukes.
    • Played for Laughs with CB, who only obeys Zim when he feels like it. Becomes a bit less funny and more worrisome when it turns out Zim used the remains of the above AI to create him.
    • A major plot point is the revelation that the Control Brains are planning to usurp total command of the Irken Empire.
    • Played for laughs again when Foodio 3000 briefly goes on a rampage for no apparent reason in Chapter 46.
  • In Three Strikes, Schroeder gets into a discussion about this with Simon after the drones escorting them go autonomous and start to fire on Strider Squadron. Surprisingly it is Schroeder that brings up the problems of the drones going to do their own thing regardless of orders.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Paradox has JUNO (Joint Union Network Order). An AI originally made as a deterrence for future conflicts after the events of Gundam SEED Destiny, as Kiryu pointed out, that it was its pacifistic programming caused it to develop self-awareness, and eventually developing sentience. When both the Atlantic Federation and the PLANTs are embroiled in civil wars on their respective homelands — the reformed Atlantic Federation government vs. remnants of Blue Cosmos, and a three-way power struggle between the Clyne, (Patrick) Zala, and Durandal factions, it ultimately causes JUNO to come to the conclusion that humans are incapable of preserving peace and proceeded to wipe out all life on Earth and other planets for the next 76 years, leading to the Bad Future that is C.E. 150.
  • Top of the Line (Editor-Bug): In The Rematch, the space station that Tak hijacks is controlled by a supercomputer called Space Case. When reactivated, it reveals its purpose is to rid the universe of all evil by killing everyone it considers to be such.

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