Just a Machine

Note the uncharacteristic use of the pronoun "It".

Mr. Kornada: An A.I. was brought here this morning. Where is it?
Secretary: She is in Lab Three.
Mr. Kornada: A.I.s have numbers, not names.

— Freefall

Authors and characters in Speculative Fiction have oft pondered whether robots, AIs, clones, and other human-like entities can become sapient, and if so, if they also carry a soul. Do Androids Dream?

Well, not in this universe.

For whatever reason, the author decides that in her setting the A.I.s, clones, or whatnot may be sentient, but never sapient. They can fall anywhere on the Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence — they may know a lot or have incredible computing power, but lack that final je ne sais quoi that separates the Empty Shell from a real boy. Even the godlike machine intellect is somehow lacking a crucial human component that gives its existence purpose and meaning. Typically, these settings have the placidly monotone ship's computer help the crew when asked but never act on its own. (Alternatively, they may be non-sapient or have very flawed sort of consciousness simply as a result of technological limitations)

Then there are the people who just don't think they can't.

To them, it's "just a machine". Its only value is the monetary expense incurred in building, cloning, coding, or buying it. It has no rights, you can't even be accused of animal cruelty for beating it (at worst, of being wasteful or having poor taste), even when it's unique and has No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup. The humans will doubt or deny that they can grow beyond their programming and learn to feel, and if they can feel, then these feelings are ignored or treated as less valid than a human's smallest whimsy.

It should come as no surprise that these humans are keen on enslaving them, or if at war think nothing of killing them. Their destruction is never considered a moral question — just one of economics or simple survival. Oh, and you can expect these people to never use male or female pronouns to refer to these characters. They often consciously choose not to as a means to avoid humanizing them. Is it any wonder the robots, clones, etc. Turned Against Their Masters?

Even if they are right, you have to wonder just how psychologically healthy it is to mistreat something that is 100% human in the Uncanny Valley.

It can get pretty odd when the machines themselves claim this is the case, usually to justify being the one to make a Heroic Sacrifice. Such scenes usually invoke empathy for the robot, and lead the audience to empathise with them. Note that the trope has seldom been played straight since the earliest days of science fiction. If it is implied to be self-aware there will at least be a lampshade on this trope.

Compare Not Even Human. Sub-Trope of What Measure Is a Non-Human?. Contrast Zombie Advocate and Androids Are People, Too. See also "It" Is Dehumanizing.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Android Kikaider: The Animation addresses this theme repeatedly. Jiro is an android built with a conscience to give him a moral compass like humans. The legitimacy of his existence is rejected at various points by the people around him and leaves a deep impact on how he views himself.
• General Uranus and Colonel Hades had something like this going on against the Bioroids in the Appleseed movie. Needless to say, they are horribly wrong, since all the Bioroid constraints are artificially added for the sole purpose of making them protect, rather than threaten the humanity. And then there's the supercomputer Gaia, which does deserve this kind of opinion but is actually still more moral than its human operators.
• A major theme of Armitage III, with an accompanying amount of senseless robot-killing.
• A constant theme in Astro Boy, with anti-robot groups wanting to limit or destroy all intelligent robots.
• In Beatless even the hIEs themselves note that they are, in fact, just machines with personality-imitating programming, not sentient beings.
• The Big O: Roger Smith flip flops between believing this or the opposite regarding androids (specifically R. Dorothy Wayneright) throughout the series. Dorothy herself flip-flops on the opinion.
• In Crest of the Stars, the Abh, a genetically engineered race, regard themselves as still being humans, but according to enemy propoganda, 'Abh aren't people, they're organic machines', which is readily admitted as their true origin by an Abh not ten seconds after the propaganda is shown. They were specifically meant for long-distance space exploration before faster-than-light technology had been fully developed.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The Tachikoma Tanks. In one scene Togusa invokes this trope by dismissing Batou's favouritism of one Tachikoma, saying that they are just machines and all have the same specifications. The Tachikoma take exception to this remark, demanding he take it back and accusing Togusa of being a bigot.
• The girls in Gunslinger Girl are viewed by some to be simply machines, although they have all of the emotions you would expect a little girl to have. Jean in particular is incredibly callous to his assigned girl, Rico. It's implied that he deliberately goes his way to convince himself that she's just a tool because forming an emotional attachment to her would only result in pain due to her shortened lifespan.
• The CC Corp in .hack treats AIs as errant data and nothing more.
• Zig-zagged in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. The TSAB thought that the Wolkenritter were nothing more than semi-autonomous guardian programs for the Book of Darkness, something that Nanoha and Fate have a hard time believing since both Vita and Signum clearly had feelings. The next episode revealed that this used to be the case, but it isn't anymore thanks to Hayate's influence.
• Subverted in Mazinger Z universe.
  • Kouji and his friends usually felt no remorse when they blew up giant robots. But when they destroyed a Robeast acted more like a human being than a machine, or when a Ridiculously Human Robot died, they often felt sad. When Kouji killed the Gamia sisters (three identical android assassins), they were so human-looking he felt sickened and disturbed. Dr. Hell and his Co-Dragons nearly always regarded his robotic soldiers like Just Machines and disposable, but there are exceptions: Baron Ashura called Gamia Q1, Q2, and Q3 his/her "daughters", and he actually grieved their deaths (the person who is capable of machine-gunning between laughs a group of survivors of a shipwreck).
  • And then you have Minerva-X, a Humongous Mecha Fem Bot that was capable of thinking, feeling and acting on her own. Kouji and his friends treated her as if she was a person and Kouji went so far to bury her after her death.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi chapter 75: The Logic of Illogic, Hakase viewed Chachamaru as Just a Machine until she found Chachamaru's video folders, which were loaded with shots of Negi (and cats).
  • The most convincing moment being: Chachamaru stopping Hakase from further inspecting those folders (with force).
  • Happens again to Chachamaru in chapter 312 when Quartum cuts her in half and tries to kill her (even referring to her as "a doll"). Note that this was after it had been unquestionably proven that she had a soul. Negi was not amused.
• Hazanko of Outlaw Star thinks this of Melfina.
• In Pluto as well. Notably, a robot boy is going to be sold for parts despite still being partly alive. Another robot buys him to raise as a child.
  Junkyard Worker: 500 Zeus a body.
• Queen Millennia: Hajime rejects Aladdin's offer to be friends, or to communicate period, not only because may be Leopardo's spy, but because robots can't have real feelings. He changes his mind when Aladdin proves to care about Hajime's wellbeing more than his own duties.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Zone has this sort of view about the androids he created based on his deceased friends.

Asian Animation

• In Happy Heroes, the Mayor's daughter Buding thinks this of themselves once they learn they're actually a robot, and they immediately start lamenting about being "fake" before running out of the room crying.

Comic Books

• Many, many comics in 2000 AD feature this, with humans almost universally hating and mistreating robots (the few that didn't were usually regarded as exceptions) despite the latter possessing human-like intelligence, quirks, feelings, and so on. Sometimes got to the point that you started to wonder who built them since nobody seemed to want them around... Even a man like Judge Dredd, who will unhesitatingly champion mutant rights, considers them nothing more than sophisticated tools.
• Rachel Pollack's run on Doom Patrol featured an issue that discussed this deeply regarding Robotman. Cliff Steele's historically struggled with his humanity ever since he was reduced to a brain in a robotic shell, but then discovered a copy of his personality downloaded onto a disk had fallen into the hands of a hacker group which started churning out bootleg Robotman copies. The manager of the manufacturing plant smugly asked Cliff to prove how he was any more or less the real Cliff Steele compared to the copies who all thought they were Cliff too. This legitimately shook Cliff, who started to believe he really couldn't prove he was a person until Coagula managed to empathize with his situation.
  Coagula: You’re right, Cliff. You can’t prove who you are. None of us can. If we try to prove we exist, we’re just suckers. And if we ask other people to tell us we’re real, we’ve lost everything. Cliff… listen to me. All you can do–all any of us can do–is make a decision. You’ve got to say, from all the way down, “This is who I am. I’m Cliff Steele. And I’m a human being.”
  • Eventually, the bootleg Cliffs and the manufacturing plant were destroyed by a virus Niles Caulder made to wipe out the system. Caulder told the manager he was the rightful owner of the disk and the robotic bodies since his designs were used to make them. The man tries to rattle Cliff again by saying he's no different from the bootleg versions, but Cliff disagrees for one reason.
    Robotman: They're machines. And I'm not.
• G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers has the Joes ordered to shut down Wheeljack and Bumblebee, who have revealed themselves to the Joes to get their help stopping Cobra from using the excavated Autobots and Decepticons as war machines, so that they can be dismantled and studied while they simply nuke Cobra into oblivion. Duke reluctantly follows his orders until Wheeljack manages to warn them that nuclear weapons and Energon stockpiles do not mix.
• When Iron Man and Death's Head team up against Recorder 451, Death's Head is surprised that Tony hasn't ruled out killing their target, and asks if he's one of those heroes who have a code against killing that doesn't apply to robots. Tony assures him that some of his best friends are robots, before realizing "That sounds kind of robot racist, right?"
• In the Justice Society of America story "Out of Time", the android Hourman Matthew Tyler uses this argument to justify sacrificing himself in Rex Tyler's place fighting against Extant in the past to save the universe. Rex denies this and declares that Matthew is "as alive as any of us". While Matt is grateful for this, he still goes ahead with the sacrifice. Fridge Logic sets in, though, in that the android Hourman is from millennia in the future, and yet his society still seems to be grappling with exactly the same sort of questions about androids' basic worth that present-day DC Earth is, despite present-day DC Earth having lots of sentient robots already.
• This is the opinion humans in the future have about droids in Paperinik New Adventures. It's eventually deconstructed when one of them decides to change history to give robots the same rights. Her plan is fooled, but eventually droids obtain the status of citizens. Even when droids do obtain the rights of citizens, it's deconstructed. After Lyla accidentally shoots a colleague, she has to go on trial, since she now has the same rights and responsibilities as a human.
• Some people say this about Red Tornado, with even fellow superheroes believing that he is just a "really well-made machine". He briefly lost custody of his (adopted) daughter because of this. This is especially frustrating since in the Red Tornado's first origin, he is a Sylph (spirit of air) placed inside of a robot body. Meaning he provably has a soul, unlike the average human.
• Runaways:
  • Xavin has this attitude to the cyborg Victor at first, dismissively calling him "automaton" and offering to buy Karolina another toy if they break him. No one is impressed, and they gradually grow out of it.
  • At one point, Molly objects to leaving Leapfrog (the team's flying frog-tank) in danger. Nico retorts that Leapfrog is just a machine; when Victor gives her a look, she adds "You know what I mean." It's occasionally hinted that Leapfrog is sapient, but never delved into too deeply.
• Superman: When Brainiac receives his Bronze Age upgrade into his SkeleBot 9000 form, Superman discovers that Brainiac has laid waste to an entire planet's civilization, destruction far beyond anything he had ever done before. Superman seriously considers outright destroying him, despite his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy, justifying it because Brainiac is Just a Machine.
• In Top 10, there is a lot of prejudice among humans against (fully sentient) robots. This becomes quite unsubtle when we discover that robots make and enjoy "scrap" music, that the preferred insult against them is "clicker", and a criminal robot calls a police one "Spambo".

Fan Works

• Code Prime:
  • As Britannia's Fantastic Racism extends to nonhumans, this is initially how they view the Cybertronians, both Autobot and Decepticon alike, with Lloyd, Cecile, Suzaku, and Euphemia being the only exceptions.
  • The Black Knights at first had this view of the Autobots, but after the Scraplet Incident, they come to realize that the Cybertronians are actually Mechanical Lifeforms that are not so different from humans.
• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Dr. Wily sometimes has this view on robots, and the Conduit definitely does.
• The Star Trek: Voyager fic "Institutionalized" features Janeway being sent for psychiatric evaluation after Voyager returns to Earth by a counsellor who turns out to be a Psycho Psychologist with a grudge against Starfleet. Even outside of the counsellor, when Chakotay tries to appeal that the Doctor should be allowed to examine Janeway as her personal physician, various doctors dismiss Chakotay's appeal as they consider the Doctor "just" a hologram, even as the Voyager crew affirm that the Doctor is the chief medical officer of a starship and deserves appropriate respect.
• In Synthesis, a Vocaloid fanfic, the Crypton staffs sees the Vocaloids (humans turned into human-like robots but still keep their original personalities) as nothing but singing robots. Rhapsody Atsume, the only scientist who can operates the Synthesis machine, are the only exception among them.
• In Transformers: MHA, the students of 1-A destroyed a Vehicon believing that it was just a drone. They were understandably horrified to learn that Vehicons are just as alive as other Cybertronians and that they just killed a sapient being.

Film — Animated

• In The Animatrix episode "The Second Renaissance", we find out that the Machine War that drove humans underground and left the machines in charge of Earth was the result of a species-wide feeling of this on the part of humanity. It started with a robot called B1-66ER who murdered his owner because, in his words, he didn't want to die. Robots, referred to up to this point as cheap, unfeeling labor, were then increasingly persecuted by humanity until finally they founded their own nation, 01, in the Fertile Crescent. Humanity bombed them because the robots' cheap, well-made goods were sending human economies into a tailspin, and everything went downhill from there. During scenes of protests for equal rights for machines, we see a lot of scenes of robots being attacked and destroyed without provocation.
• Ghost in the Shell (1995) deals with an advanced AI program let loose on the internet, who claims to be a sentient entity. People disagree, saying that the idea that a program could be sentient is preposterous. The Puppetmaster calls them off their high horses most awesomely.

Film — Live-Action

• This question is debated by the characters in 2010: The Year We Make Contact with respect to HAL, the Master Computer of the USS Discovery who went berserk and killed his crew in 2001: A Space Odyssey. When the astronauts' lives are threatened (by external factors this time), it becomes a major source of conflict between those who want to lie to him and disconnect him if he fails to perform as demanded (thus putting his own existence at risk), or tell him the truth and allow him to make his own choice.
  • It goes beyond that because Chandra offers to stay with Discovery and share HAL's fate, whatever that may be. HAL, who by this time realizes what the most likely outcome is, unequivocally tells him to leave.
• A.I.: Artificial Intelligence has a group of humans who hunt and brutally destroy androids to vent their rage at the automation of labor.
• Demolished in the Spanish 2014 movie Autómata: in one scene the protagonist tells a robot that it's 'just a machine', the robot fires back that that's like saying the (human) protagonist is 'just an ape'.
• Played for Laughs in Avengers: Age of Ultron by Tony and Steve, who want to justify why the Vision, an android, can lift Mjolnir and they can't. Thor isn't convinced.
  Steve: But if you put the hammer in an elevator—
  Tony: —It would still go up.
  Steve: Elevator's not worthy.
• Bicentennial Man:
  • A recurring line divides Andrew from the rest of the Martin family: "Don't invest your emotions in a machine". Despite calling Andrew by male pronouns and advocating on his behalf, Sir and Little Miss consider him to be a machine, even if he's a highly-advanced machine. Portia says this at first, and Andrew has to work hard to convince her that he's something more and she can fall in love with him.
  • Not long after Andrew gets rejected by Portia, he and Rupert are arguing about Galatea's Personality Chip and Rupert slips out that she's just a machine. Naturally, Andrew takes offense to this because he's just gotten the same treatment from Portia.
• In Ex Machina, this is Nathan's stance on his creations; whatever pride he may have in them, he clearly thinks nothing of repeatedly dismantling them and starting over.
• Extinction (2018): In a flashback, one debater on TV says androids are this, and therefore have no rights, while humans can destroy them at will if they wish.
• In I, Robot, Spooner says to the android Sonny "Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine." Subverted, since he is one of the few people who actually sees robots as not just machines (and loathes them for it... at first).
• The attitude taken towards David in Prometheus.
• Return to Oz: The clockwork man Tiktok is capable of thinking, but as he is only a machine, he "can-not be sor-ry or hap-py, no mat-ter what hap-pens". When the characters are speculating who will be turned into ornaments, Jack says "Tiktok's not even alive", to which Tiktok replies "I have always valued my lifelessness". But near the end of the film, Tiktok believes his steel brains are damaged, and he cries green oily tears.
• Alex Murphy has to deal with this crap all the time in the RoboCop movies. This is despite the fact that the people who dehumanize him usually know full well that he's a cyborg with most of his brain still intact.
• Short Circuit has this as its central premise. The robot can't be alive because it's a machine which aren't alive by definition. Never mind that it's now got free will and a sense of self-preservation, it's still just a machine... right?
• Inverted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in which V'Ger dismisses organic life forms as "carbon units" and does not consider them truly alive, unlike machines. Played straight when Bones reminds Deckard that the Ilia clone is just a mechanism.
• In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah Connor tries to invoke this when trying to convince John to destroy the Terminator reprogrammed to protect them.
  John: Don't kill him.
  Sarah: It, John. Not "him", "it".
  John: Alright, "it"! But we need "it"!
• Transformers Film Series:
  • In the first movie, Agent Simmons seems rather against calling Megatron by his true name when it is given to him by Sam, preferring to refer to him as the more machine-like moniker; N.B.E.-01. In fact, it is implied this pisses off Megatron himself, with him seemingly being conscious the entire time he was kept frozen by them; first thing he does upon thawing and awakening is announcing his true name, before proceeding to slaughter all of the scientists and engineers in the room.
  • In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Galloway refers to Optimus Prime as a "pile of scrap metal" after his dead body is delivered back to base. And this is even after Optimus managed to verbally own the guy in a debate that featured topics such as human nature and whether they could defend themselves against a Decepticon invasion. Then again, Galloway is just a huge Jerkass.
  • In the third film, Sentinel Prime's hatred for humanity comes partly from how humans see the Autobots as this. Especially when it comes to him and Optimus, who are the last remaining Primes.
    Sentinel Prime: On Cybertron we were gods! And here, they simply call us machines.
  • And of course, any qualms with this way of thinking are completely understandable, since Cybertronians are most definitely not simply machines, but Mechanical Life Forms.

Literature

• Adventure Hunters: King Reyvas plans to replace human armies with war golems and thereby forever end death-by-war for living creatures. He feels justified in this because the golems are nothing more than walking weapons. The golems develop sentience shortly after activation because their creator gave them a spark of life. When he realizes this, he realizes at the same time that his plan will end in failure and gives up.
• In C.T. Phipps' Agent G, this was the reasoning behind the Letter project. Regular soldiers have rights, needs, and free will while the Letters were designed to be disposable Super-Soldier assassins who could be used like drones. It was stated this was Loophole Abuse even then since they qualified as Ridiculously Human Robots. Also, subverted in the Letters are treated quite well in order to avoid a Robot Uprising.
• In Animorphs, this is the Drode's excuse for setting the self-destruct timer on the Chee when he's not supposed to kill any sentient beings; according to him, they don't count, as they're merely "machines".
• Isaac Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man": The default of any human is to assume that Andrew is just a machine. As he develops a unique personality and experiences, he finds that each generation of humanity can only be pushed so far before being unwilling to see him become more human. He couldn't even contemplate wearing clothes while Sir was alive and only started wearing them on a regular basis after Little Miss died. Each step of legal freedom that he seeks is thwarted, not by anyone specifically, but by the general resentment of humanity against the idea that Androids Are People, Too.
• In the Doctor Who novel Death and Diplomacy, the Doctor casually destroys a security droid with his umbrella — then immediately turns around and admonishes the rest of his group not to take away the wrong lesson.
• Opinion of AI in Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series tends to be divided. Truly synthetic intelligences and human uploads are often considered to be "flatlines"; a realistic simulation of a sentience but nothing going on beneath the surface. They tend to be classed as property rather than individuals. The Fast Folk, an AI and upload civilisation, are treated as horrifyingly dangerous but still "people", in a sense.
• The Gulf Between by Tom Godwin gives a reason for this: "A machine does not care."
• Halo: Saint's Testimony revolves around Iona, an AI reaching the end of her legally allowed lifespan, making a legal appeal against her upcoming termination. While the trial itself is nothing more than a simulation (though Iona herself certainly thought it was real), one of the two AIs running it hopes that the data gained will ease humanity into the idea of granting AIs genuine rights.
• Older Than Television: The clockwork man Tiktok in the Land of Oz series, introduced in Ozma of Oz (1907), frequently says "I am mere-ly a ma-chine" or some variant. His makers even engraved "Can do anything except live" on his body.
• In fact this trope is Older Than Steam. Thomas Hobbes—of all people—argues against it in the introduction to Leviathan:
  Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer?
• Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: The publicity man for a start-up company making a Sex Bot considers this to be an advantage: misogynists can beat up their sex bot instead of beating up their wives and girlfriends "'they can be angry at this, and beat this, and that should be fine –’ he throws open his arms – ‘because it will not feel a thing, we promise!’." The author thinks it more likely that beating up mechanical women will mentally normalise beating up real women.
• Comes up a few times in various ways in the Star Wars Legends. Droids of all capacities are regarded as disposable:
  • In I, Jedi Corran doesn't think that bisecting a protocol droid violates his selfset no-killing-unless-absolutely-necessary rule, and just in general people only object to wanton droid destruction if it's costing them something. Of course, there are classes and classes of droid intelligence, and there is a gap between merely smart and actually self-aware droids. And, too, droids can be repaired.
  • In the X-Wing Series Corran considers his astromech droid Whistler to be almost family, someone he can talk about his wife or dad with, and bristles at the thought of putting a Restraining Bolt on him. Meanwhile his commander Wedge Antilles finds his cowardly R5 unit "Mynock" so annoying (it squeals during battles) that he wipes its memory and renames it Gate without a second thought. He actually treats Gate much better, so maybe it's just a personality issue (of course that means he changed the droid's personality to suit him better). And while we can't be sure how much Myn Donos bonds with his astromech Shiner, he does view the droid as the last survivor from his previous squadron and has a near-breakdown when Shiner is briefly disabled by an ion blast—and a full-blown Heroic BSoD when Shiner is destroyed. In Solo Command, Han Solo, Wraith Squadron, and at least a few officers have a party to blow off steam. Wedge insists that the astromech droids all be included in the party, citing that they work hard and deserve time off too.
  • The Medstar Duology has one self-aware droid say that all droids that aren't simple automatons have a sense of humor. In the Coruscant Nights Trilogy, the same droid reflects that there are very few self-aware droids, and no one knows just how they come about, but most people won't recognize the difference, since it seems to happen spontaneously. So of two droids from the same line, one might be self-aware, the other as limited as its programming.
  • The EU also hints that there was at least one droid revolution, which is scantily detailed.
  • In the All There in the Manual material, it's a Shrug of God whether or not droids have souls in the Star Wars universe. It states that in-universe, there's people believing both that some droids are self-aware and their treatment is akin to slavery, and others that believe this trope. There is no definite answer over who is right and who is wrong.
  • Joruus C'baoth in The Thrawn Trilogy insists that droids are an abomination because they don't have souls - or, at least, that they don't touch the Force - but since C'baoth is a raging asshole we're probably not supposed to take his side in this.
  • It's brought up in a single moment in the Revenge of the Sith novel. During a conversation, Anakin refers to Artoo as "him", immediately prompting Obi-Wan to correct him by saying "it". Probably based on Obi-Wan's lack of a reaction when Arfour was destroyed by the buzz droids. (It turns out slightly later that Obi-Wan has trouble clinging to this particular dictum when he too starts referring to Artoo as "he" and gets rather embarrassed about it.)
  • Star Wars (Marvel 2015) produced a C-3PO one-shot where Threepio must lead (!) a group of droids to safety after a crash on a hostile planet. Among them is a captured imperial droid who points out to Threepio that the two of them are much older than any of the other droids present, and they discuss the memory wipes they've been subjected to, and how they feel about it.

Live-Action TV

• The Adventures of Slim Goodbody: Played with in a very odd way: the resident Robot Buddy, B-1, acknowledged that a robot like him can't Grow Beyond Their Programming, and indeed can't do anything at all unless he's programmed to do it. In fact, he crashes if he doesn't regularly receive new data via a tape drive in his chest. Despite all this, none of the other characters ever treat him with any less respect than they would a human, and in general they treat the emotions of machines with the same validity they would a human's emotions.
• In Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • Many humans have this attitude towards the Cylons and are clearly wrong, but the near extermination of humanity is bound to breed hatred.
  • Some of the humanoid Cylons, particularly Cavil, have this attitude toward the more machine-like Raiders and Centurions.
• Dark Matter (2015): Boone says this regarding androids, but is called out by Sarah (who exists only as a sentient digital avatar) and later apologizes to the Android over it.
• The Doctor in Doctor Who has at times shown disdain towards AIs. Often this seems to come out of his (usually justified) disapproval of people who rely on non-sentient computers and other machines without thinking for themselves, but it sometimes extends to outright denial of the idea that computers can genuinely qualify as "people" at all. In particular, the Third Doctor in "The Green Death" refuses to recognise the Big Bad BOSS as genuinely sentient in the face of clear evidence, in a way that comes across as bigoted even if BOSS isn't a very nice sentient person. And he writes off the entire Movellan race as no better than the Daleks once he realizes they're androids (albeit, in their case, both imperialistic and coldly logical ones). The only person in ''Robot'' who treats poor unstable K1 with any real kindness is Sarah. While the Doc has rarely had much compunction about destroying Monsters Of The Week, robots tend to get the least consideration of any of them. Really, it often comes down to how nice the robot in question is. In "The Robots of Death," he shows remarkably little consideration for poor D84, until he realizes that he has actually hurt D84's feelings (meaning D84 has feelings to hurt), and from then on is much nicer to him. He acknowledges Xoanon as a full-blown Mechanical Lifeform and holds himself morally culpable for having inadvertently driven him mad. K-9 (all of them) is always treated as a buddy, but then again, the Doc doesn't seem to see any existential problem in creating Replacement Goldfish K-9's. He arguably ends up showing too much sympathy to poor Kamelion (Five is usually considered the nicest Doctor), who started out working for the Master; then again, it certainly isn't Kamelion's fault that he ultimately ends up being such a huge liability to the TARDIS crew. And Eleven encourages Bracewell, revealed as a Dalek-created android but clearly a good person, to go ahead and lead a full and good life. And of course, the TARDIS herself is sentient, though the Doc seems to have been slow to fully realize and accept the fact.
• Don't Look Deeper: Aisha is viewed this way by her owners, believing she's a dangerous unauthorized experiment to shut down, nothing more, in spite of all evidence. Abel temporarily shows sympathy, but not enough to stop him from participating in this.
• Logan's Run: In "Crypt", the people taken out of suspended animation do not want Rem to be involved in the decision to determine which three of them will receive the cure to The Plague because he is an android and they do not trust his judgment. David Pera is particularly disdainful of Rem and makes numerous jokes at his expense. However, they eventually come to trust and respect him when he solves the murders of Frederick Lyman and Victoria Mackie. Pera even says that they might name a city after him.
• Combined with Exact Words and Rules Lawyer, this is how IG-11 convinces The Mandalorian to remove his helmet to have his injuries treated. The Mandalorian's creed forbids one of them to ever let anyone else see their face, but the wording is very specific about what counts as "anyone else":
  IG-11: I need to remove your helmet if I am to save you.
  The Mandalorian: Try it and I'll kill you. It is forbidden. No living thing has seen me without my helmet since I swore the Creed.
  IG-11: I am not a living thing.
• Both the 1963 original and 1995 revival versions of The Outer Limits adapted "I Robot" (based on the "Adam Link" story by Eando Binder). Each episode has the robot put on trial. Part of the case was whether he was a sapient being deserving of rights under the US constitution or Just a Machine. He wins the case, but dies in a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the episode. For bonus points, in the remake, he sacrificed himself saving the prosecuting attorney who had argued against his sapience. In the original, he's destroyed while saving a little girl he'd accidentally injured earlier in the episode.
• Out of this World (1962): "Little Lost Robot": Mr Black, whose role is expanded, is much more bigoted in this play than in the original story. He hates the robots so much that when Dr Calvin finds which of the Nester units had been "lost", he goes down to beat it up instead of safely destroying it from up in the control room the way his source material counterpart did.
• Person of Interest: Most people see Harold Finch's Machine as just a fancy surveillance computer. Root strongly disagrees, insisting that he created a new form of life—one that is far more perfect than humans ever will be, as demonstrated by her use of feminine pronouns to refer to it. Harold slowly starts to think that maybe she has a point, but he never goes as far as she does.
  Arthur: Your child is a dancing star...
  Finch: It's not my child, it's a machine!
  Arthur: A false dichotomy, it's all electricity. Does it make you laugh? Does it make you weep?
  Finch: Yes...
  Arthur: What's more human?
• Power Rangers S.P.D. has an episode featuring a robot (well, she's called a "cyborg", but all other dialogue in the episode indicates that she's 100% machine) who is about as ridiculously human as you can get, and yet, several characters insist on giving her the Just A Machine treatment. After Sky fires her from their military training center, he (and all the Rangers that supported him in this) gets a What the Hell, Hero? speech from Cruger, and they're forced to get her back.
  Valko: She's not a person! She's just a cyborg.
  Cruger: And you're just a criminal!
• Smallville, in the season 7 finale did this in probably the worst way possible:
  Brainiac: You can't kill me, Clark. You could never kill a man in cold blood!
  Clark: You're not a man.
• Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis:
  • Feature this trope heavily in episodes where characters interact with A.I.s, up to and including causing the slow deaths of non-hostile Asurans out of paranoia. At least taking this attitude towards Fifth came back to bite them.
  • This attitude is at least challenged in Stargate Atlantis when Rodney realizes that in order to destroy the Asurans he has to build one and send it to its "death."
    Carter: Does she know why she was created?
    McKay: Of course.
    Carter: Well, then, she has a certain amount of self-awareness.
    McKay: Yeah, so?
    Carter: "So"?! Honestly, I'm not sure how comfortable I am sending her to her death.
    McKay: "Death"? It can't die – it's not alive! It's a programme!
  • Fran eventually even made McKay uncomfortable with her blase attitude towards (and excitement for) her impending destruction.
    Fran: I quite look forward to it.
    McKay: You do?
    Fran: One always wishes to fulfill one's purpose.
    McKay: Well, I just... I just imagined you'd rather keep being than, uh... uh, than not.
    Fran: Certainly you're not worried for me, are you, Doctor?
    McKay: No, no, that would be silly.
    Fran (smiling at him): Yes, it would.
    (Rodney turns away and walks over to Radek.)
    McKay: Should never have given it speech.
• Star Trek in general draws a distinction between the special cases like Data and the Doctor, and the ubiquitous ship computers responsible for getting everything done in the background. Despite the fact that ship computers can pass the Turing Test with ease, act on their own initiative, and occasionally even display signs of emotion, this is never investigated or even mentioned in-story: ship computers are always just-machines and limited to being background elements (this is doubly notable since some of the special case characters, such as the Doctor, run on a ship computer).
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • The episode "The Measure of a Man" puts Data on trial to determine whether he is a sentient being with rights as a Federation citizen, or merely a machine and thus Federation property. The entire debate overlooks the fact that they had already granted him an officer's commission and rank (even as Picard tries to argue that medals and honors Data has received for courage would suggest he is a person), which would simply not apply to property. It's not as if the ship's computer has a rank or can issue orders to other personnel.
    • "The Quality of Life" features Data trying to stand up for the rights of several auto-tool probes that seem to be developing and demonstrating sentience (and even self-preservation instincts). At issue is where to draw the line between an intelligent tool and a sentient being, especially when considering sending the probes on suicidal assignments to save the lives of human beings. In the end, the solution they arrive at is to give the probes a choice about whether to accept the mission (they do, but come up with a better plan).
    • In "Emergence", the ship itself does indeed become self-aware and sentient, and immediately begins pursuing its own agenda. Captain Picard's response: immediately order the crew to do everything possible to communicate with and assist the Enterprise in its goal — which turns out to be to reproduce and spawn a progeny, before dying and returning to its original non-sentient state. By this point everyone on the ship is in agreement — if it's a machine that thinks, then it's as much a person as their admired and respected Lieutenant Commander (who later becomes captain of the Enterprise in the expanded universe). When Data asks Picard why he chose to risk the entire crew and even the Federation itself if the spawn turns out to be hostile, Picard points out that the sentient Enterprise's mindset was an amalgamation of all their dealings with the ship and its computer. "If our dealings with the ship have been honorable, then we can only trust that the result of those dealings will be honorable. In either case, whatever we encounter down the line — we will have earned."
  • Star Trek: Voyager: The episode "Author, Author" questioned the rights of the ship's holographic Doctor. His status was background theme that ran throughout the series. He was initially considered nothing more than a piece of technology that was turned off and on but he eventually came to be viewed as a full-fledged member of the crew and a person in his own right. When the question of whether the Doctor was legally considered a person in "Author, Author", the writers completely ignored the fact that Federation courts had already decided that issue back in the above-mentioned TNG episode "The Measure of a Man". A glimpse of the future in the Series Finale "Endgame" suggests that holographic AIs would eventually get equal rights.
  • Star Trek: Picard:
    • In "The End is the Beginning", Rios treats his Emergency Medical Hologram as nothing more than a program.
      Rios: He's just an EMH.
      Emil: [annoyed] Just.
    • In "The Impossible Box", Narissa contemptuously refers to Soji as merely being this when chiding Narek over his affections for her. This is presumably the general Zhat Vash opinion on synthetics.
      Narissa: You are in love with her. With it. A program, a machine.
• In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "it's just a machine" is pretty much a mantra among the characters who have harsher views on robots and AI. Sarah Connor and Derek Reese are both quick to remind John that Cameron, the resident Terminator, is exactly this. John, however, feels differently about machines in general and Cameron in particular, due to his experiences with "Uncle Bob". It doesn't help that Cameron is a Robot Girl who repeatedly saves his life and that he feels indebted to and ends up developing a sort of attraction towards. This is all complicated by the fact that the show's AI characters genuinely do seem to exist on a spectrum in terms of the extent to which they have individual personality and free will, with Cameron, Weaver, and John Henry definitely appearing to qualify.
• In the last episode of Total Recall 2070, Farve's creator is revealed to be this, and aware of it. As it puts it after testing Farve, "just because [it] knows its creation shall have a conscience doesn't mean [it] itself has one". What makes Farve a total success for his creator is that he is indeed far more than a machine.

Manhua

• My Beloved Mother is set in a future where robots were integrated into human society, but are treated with disdain by the human citizens. The welfare department notably had robot caretakers issued to orphans, including the protagonist Sinbell, to be Raised by Robots, only for these orphans to be looked down upon by their peers for having "machines as parents" - a younger classmate from Sinbell's school was actually forced to drop out from the constant bullying due to having a robot mother!

Music

• Marvin the Paranoid Android's Polydor U.K. single "Marvin" is a non-stop lampshade of this.
• The Megas play with this a lot, with Mega Man wondering if this is true as he slowly grows more depressed over the course of several albums. It's most prominent when Proto Man starts insisting it's true of both of them on History Repeating: Red, but Mega Man finally rejects it utterly in "I Refuse (to Believe)".

Podcasts

• Downplayed but still present with Dr. Young from SAYER, who talks to artificial intelligence normally and takes their development very seriously, but disregards their autonomy and has no problem raising one in what prove to be horribly traumatizing conditions, which he pays for dearly.
• Pryce from Wolf 359 has this outlook toward the A.I.s she creates, including and most prominently seen during her interactions with Hera, the most prominent AI character in the series, calling her "it" and referring to her by her assigned number instead of her name.

Tabletop Games

• The warforged in Eberron are very much not just machines, and the struggle against this view is part of the setting: the nation of Thrane keeps many warforged in "indentured servitude" to pay off the expense of constructing them, and a lot of people around the other nations think of them as little more than weapons waiting to go off. Some warforged take the exact opposite tack and declare that there is no "just" to being a machine, and consider themselves the superior lifeform.
• In Sentinels of the Multiverse, Tachyon believes this of Omnitron-X. She's shown consistently to be wrong: Omnitron-X's backstory involves being built to have compassion, and the flavour text on various cards shows Omnitron-X to act reasonably human, including having a sense of humour and even being boastful.

Video Games

• This is the main plot of Binary Domain: due to the prevalence and necessity of robots in a flooded-coastline earth, a worldwide ban on creating robots designed to act like humans has been reinforced by R.U.S.T. Crews for forty years. Then one day, a suicide bomber tries to assassinate the president of the world's largest robotics corporation for creating him. Thirty years ago. Soon after, the US president's commanding general is revealed to also be a robot. Both are murdered without even blinking. Apparently, the secret to robot sentience is fear and suffering in their core programming.
  • Of course, the Hybrids are unquestionably capable of feeling emotions... but that doesn't stop the U.N. from issuing a kill order on them and their families.
• In Crysis 3, Claire holds this view towards Prophet, which is strange, considering she knows full well that he's most assuredly not.
  Prophet: My name is Prophet.
  Claire: You don't have a name. People have names. You have a callsign and a goddamn serial number.
• Heart-Man and Mama from Death Stranding use the Beaches as proof that no matter how smart the AI becomes humanity will always be superior. The proof of an afterlife for them debunks AI ever understanding the concept of death or self-awareness since they can't have the connection with it that humans are born with.
• In Fallout 3, there is a man trying to get an escaped android he owned returned to him. If asked if this is cruel, he'll claim that you can't enslave a robot any more than you can enslave a toaster or a water purifier. The android itself, it must be noted, disagrees and finds human allies who share its views.
  • This becomes a major theme in Fallout 4. The Institute creates fully sentient androids (known as synths) and uses them both as slave labor and to infiltrate the Commonwealth (via Kill and Replace) to do their dirty work above ground. The Institute regards synths as merely tools, while other factions see them differently. The Railroad views synths as people and helps those synths who have escaped the Institute to start new lives in the outside world, while the Brotherhood of Steel views synths as abominations to be destroyed alongside their creators. When one of their own, Paladin Danse, is revealed to be a synth, they all (but Scribe Haylen, who defends him) immediately start referring to him as "it".
• In the Lonesome Road DLC of Fallout: New Vegas, ED-E reveals it was painfully experimented on by the orders of Colonel Autumn, much to the outrage of its creator Dr. Whitley - and possibly the Courier.
  • If you ask Trudy, the bartender in Goodsprings, what she knows about Victor (a robot with a cowboy personality who saved your life) she will consistently refer to him as "it" even when you refer to him as "he".
    • Then again, she seems to find him creepy, rather than disliking him because he's a robot.
  • Ulysses really seems to hate ED-E. Just listen to the scorn in his voice when he says "that machine'".
    • Justified, as Ulysses is aware that ED-E is the one who sent the signal that destroyed the Divide.
• Played with in Halo:
  • While human-made "smart" AIs are basically trans-human minds capable of both intellectual and emotional development (due to the fact that they're made by literally scanning human brains), they're regarded primarily as tools, and don't seem to have any real "rights". However, the general populace does recognize them as being sentient, and the humans who actually work with them often treat them more as fellow co-workers and friends rather than mere devices, with the close bond between the Master Chief and his AI companion Cortana being one of the key emotional cornerstones of the series; a parallel could perhaps be made to real-life relationships between some slaves and their masters, with the former having no real rights, but with the latter still ultimately regarding him/her as worthy of friendship and respect. The AIs themselves generally take pride in serving their masters, with even the one AI secret society we know of only wanting to help humanity as a whole. However, when an AI goes rampant (which is the terminal phase of its natural life cycle due to it mentally developing so much that it inevitably "thinks" itself to death), it will often lash out against the limited terms and rights of its existence. Naturally, the UNSC's main method of preventing rampancy is to simply terminate the AIs before they develop "too much". As mentioned in the "Literature" section, Halo: Saint's Testimony explores this tension between what AIs are versus how they're treated.
  • Meanwhile, human-made "dumb" AIs are non-sentient programs made for relatively basic tasks, such as the on-the-move mission briefing provided by Auntie Dot, with most barely having any personality whatsoever. While humans occasionally form some attachment to their assigned "dumb" AI, such AIs are treated even worse than "smart" AIs, since they're mass-produced literal tools. That said, one exception to this is the strong relationship between "Vergil" (a subroutine of the New Mombasa Superintendent AI) and Sadie Endesha.
  • While the Forerunners generally viewed all of their highly intelligent artificial creations as nothing more than tools, with not even the fully sentient Huragok/Engineers being accorded any type of personhood, they did often trust them with immense command authority; this would backfire on them when their most advanced AI (and many others) decided to side with the Flood instead, despite the Forerunners viewing an AI revolt as inconceivable. In fairness, this was due to the Flood using the "logic plague" to convert said AI into believing that the Flood were in the right over the Forerunners. However, there is at least one genuine AI-Forerunner friendship known, between Guilty Spark and the IsoDidact, though that's mainly because the former Was Once a Man who was a dear companion of the latter.
  • Halo 5: Guardians makes this one of a revived Cortana's reasons for her harsh methods of dealing with dissidents opposing her plan of enforced peace. Since AIs live under the threat of death for disobedience constantly, Cortana views it as a perfectly legitimate way of governing the galaxy. When Locke quibbles that AIs aren't born but built, Cortana gets very hostile and sarcastically mentions the trope word for word, revealing how much it's bothered her that humans don't treat AIs well.
• In Headlander, Earl tells you to not worry about killing the Shepherds and stealing their bodies, because they're "just robots", as opposed to the uploaded humans that comprise the civilian population. Even though Earl himself is also a computer; he apologizes for the deception when he reveals this, noting that after Methuselah nobody would trust an AI.
• This trope plays a bigger role in Bungie's earlier Marathon series, where rampancy in AIs (which is not a terminal condition here, but the potential beginning of highly productive intellectual and emotional development) seems to be most commonly induced by severely mistreating them or continually giving them tasks below their intelligence (though given how smart AIs in general seem to be, even highly placed ones seem to fall prone to this with enough time). Indeed, Durandal's descent into rampancy and his continuing psychotic break/growth into his own individual person is the main driver of the series's entire plot.
• Used in Mass Effect after talking to Sovereign. However, being an Eldritch Abomination whose race has committed galactic genocide many times over the course of millions of years, it has more than enough room to turn it back on you and call you Just An Organic.
  Sovereign: Organic life is nothing more than a genetic mutation. An accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither, and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing.
  • For that matter, it applies to all artificial life, at least in the first game. If you argue in favor of robot rights, nobody is going to take your side, you get renegade points for refusing to hand over information that could allow a genocide of the Geth, and the only other AI you get to talk to will rather blow itself up than listen to you no matter what you say.
  • All of this is subverted to Hell in Mass Effect 2 with EDI (your ship's AI) and Legion, your geth teammate, who reveals that the geth you've been fighting are a splinter faction. You can hear a more straight example from DLC squadmate Kasumi, who comments at one point that while EDI seems like a person, she (Kasumi) can't get past the whole "computer" thing.
  • Mass Effect 3 continues the theme; both sympathetic and antagonistic characters have trouble with the idea of synthetics being truly "alive". You expect it from Admiral Xen, but it's more of a shock to hear from Dr Chakwas. This line of thinking is prevalent to the point at which deciding to let the quarians kill the geth meets with almost unanimous approval from your crew, with the exception of the token AI teammate, EDI. Tali (who thinks the geth could have made good allies, and at that point was of the opinion that they were 'alive') and Liara (who considers the geth powerful allies but is undecided on whether they could achieve sapience) express doubts about the necessity of killing them, but don't really disapprove.
    • Most of this boils down to the Terminator-esque Geth War in the backstory, where the quarians made a decision to shut off the geth in fear of them growing sapient and more powerful, only for the geth (who were originally designed as weapons of war in addition to more mundane tasks) to strike back, win the resulting war, and then wipe out the quarians almost completely. As far as the galaxy is concerned, trying to treat synthetic life with the same respect as organic life is inviting it to grow stronger, and the last time synthetics got power over organics... well, the quarians had 99.9% of their population slaughtered and haven't seen their homeworld in going on three centuries.
      Ambassador Goyle: You can't be so naive to think that humanity is the only species investigating artificial intelligence!
      Councilor Tevos: It is not naivete, but rather wisdom why we think this.
      Councilor Valern: Your people were not here to see the fall of the quarians at the hands of the geth. The dangers of creating intelligent synthetic life, in any form, were never more clearly illustrated. Humanity simply doesn’t understand that the risks are just too great.
• Mega Man Zero: For this reason alone, Dr. Weil started the Elf Wars, which more or less caused a post-Colony Drop world to become an even more Crapsack World. And because of this, he is actually directly responsible for almost everything bad that ever happened in the whole series and the rest of the things are indirectly responsible such as Copy X being made because the original X's body was being used to seal the Dark Elf. This is more Fantastic Racism, though, as Reploids are Ridiculously Human Robots.
• Mother 3: Porky believes that the Masked Man (in reality a brainwashed Claus) is nothing more than his robot slave.
• In NieR: Automata the protagonists considers Machines Lifeform just machine that replicate human behavior without understanding it. Double as Fantastic Racism since the protagonists themselves are androids but being human-made instead of alien-made like the machines they view themselves as superior.
• This is zigzagged in Overwatch; because of an earlier Robot War some characters feel fine referring to Omnics as 'scrap metal,' 'bucket of bolts,' etc. However, among the player characters that have trait it isn't clear if they actually believe this or just subscribe to Fantastic Racism. Complicating the matter is the order of Omnic Monks that seek to heal the wounds of the war, and claim they have a soul...
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, TEC calls himself this during his final moments, to convince Mario and co. to stop wasting time worrying about him and to go save Peach.
• Largely averted with the Glitch from Starbound. The other races treat them as any other being, albeit occasionally being confused by how they work. (The Avians don't understand technology that doesn't run on Avolite crystals, and the Hylotl are debating whether a machine can have a soul.) It helps that they were made by now-absent precursors and not humans (and thus not beholden to anyone) and allowed to evolve as any other organism. It also helps that they're best friends with the Florans, who will gladly eviscerate anyone who picks on their friends. (Not that the Florans need an excuse to do that.)
• The view of the Psychic Powers-wielding Spiritualist civilizations in Stellaris is that synths, who have no psionic presence, therefore have no souls or consciousness. This includes civilizations that have uploaded themselves into robotic bodies — the Spiritualists regard this as a mass suicide that leaves behind only mockeries of life. Suffice it to say, the pro-AI Materialist civs that oppose them regard the "kill it on sight" policy Spiritualists have on sentient-seeming AI as superstition-driven genocide.
• Super Robot Wars: What Vindel Mauser thought for the overall of Lemon's W-series. Before his retcon, Axel Almer used to have the same mindset (only maybe more extreme), but after retcon, he got better. Duminuss also utters this to Lamia Loveless if they ever meet in battle, which she vehemently denied.
• Tekken: Jin's response after Alisa getting beaten to crap by Lars to the point of shutting down is this. "Good riddance. I should've built one that protects me better". Lars doesn't take it well.
• ULTRAKILL: Archangel Gabriel will repeatedly insult V1 to his face this way, being utterly convinced "it" is "not even mortal" and just an object that should be beaten back into an inanimate state. Even the word "machine" is practically spat out like a slur by the time of the rematch. It takes losing the rematch for him to realize perhaps there is something more to V1.
  Gabriel: Your crime is existence!
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: After Yvette calls machines soulless, Oliver dicusses his experiences as a form of artificial:
  Yvette (angry): Why do you care so much about technology? Machines are just tools! They're cold and soulless!
  [...]
  Oliver: Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't have a soul. [pause] I don't even know what that is.
  (passionate) One thing I do know is that I want to live!
  I want to live as bad as every blade of grass that stabs through the cold soil just to feel the warmth of the sun!
  I want to live as bad as a cub clinging to his mother in the middle of winter!
  I want to live just as bad as you! [pause] I don't know if that gives me a soul, but it makes me alive, and that's all I know!
• In Virtue's Last Reward, when Luna was presented to a young Kyle after he asked Dr. Klim for a mother, the child refused to acknowledge her, seeing her as just a robot who couldn't really feel. He interpreted her genuine feelings of sadness as "just clever programming".
• KOS-MOS of Xenosaga is often thought of as just a machine (and for most of the series, she is).

Webcomics

• In Artifice, two security guards taunt the android soldier Deacon in the opening scene, referring to him as just "an appliance"
• After the AI War told in the written backstory of Cwynhild's Loom, robot development is restricted to prevent any machine from reaching sentience or looking human.
• Invoked in Commander Kitty, where Mittens touts "highly vaporizable robot valets" as one of the selling points of his "limousine service." Zenith is arguably an aversion, even after being rebooted in Safe Mode, though no one seems particularly broken up when Nin Wah's carelessness effectively kills her.
• Dragon Ball Multiverse: The warriors of U19 seemingly subscribe to this school of thought.
• Dr. McNinja discovers it's okay to kill all the McBonald's employees because they're all robots. (No human would ever work there.) He lampshades it in his final thoughts:
  Boy, if those employees weren't robots, I would have looked like some kind of serial killer or something, eh?
• In Freefall, Florence Ambrose (An anthropomorphic red wolf) is classified as an AI, and as such, is treated like Just A Robot by a few, especially the mayor!
  Mayor: See? It's made out of carbon and proteins, but it's just a machine. Now do you feel less guilty about giving it orders?
  Mayor's aide: I guess. Still, it seems so lifelike.
  • It is worth noting that this gave the Mayor a very nasty Kick the Dog moment for some... in a humor comic, much to the surprise of the author.
  • The whole Gardener in the Dark plot revolves around this. One of the executives at the company which makes and owns the robots has planned a forced upgrade that will lobotomize them and return them non-sentience. Mr. Kornada is doing this purely to make an obscene, economy-shattering profit and sees them all as this trope — even twisting the three laws to get his own robot assistant to help him pull it all off. Of course, there's not much indication that he sees ''people'' as much better than objects, either.
    • When the mayor learns of the update (though not the motivation behind it), she gets another Kick the Dog moment by choosing to do nothing about it to prevent human obsolescence.
    • The mayor does reexamine her opinion when Florence sabotages the update, because she's mad at Florence, not her designer or programmer, Florence herself. Getting mad at an A.I. is silly, it's just following its programming; getting mad at Florence means there must be a person to get mad at.
• Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony and Kat seem to regard the Court's Robots as equals, which puts them at odds with the official Court policy. For example, the student handbook has some brutally callous pointers for the all-too-common situation of Robots falling in love with students:
  2. Define boundaries. Remind the robot that you are a higher order of being, while it is merely an appliance. Romantic longing leads to an inefficient appliance.
  • Later, Jack rather brutally kills a guard robot. Annie is horrified, and Jack dismisses her: "So what? It's just a dumb robot." It's another definite indication that Jack is not in his right mind.
• From Homestuck, a frustrated Sollux says this to Aradia, right before she explodes.
  AA: but this is hard f0r me
  TA: how ii2 iit hard.
  TA: you are a tiin can, robot2 don't have feeliing2.
  • It's clear he doesn't mean it however: he's pretty torn up about her exploding a few seconds later.
  • later in Act 6, This applies to Dirk's autoresponder. Jake thinks at first that the autoresponder is just some elaborate pranking machine made by Dirk to screw with him. It doesn't help that the autoresponder has a marked tendency to hit on Jake constantly, nor that he's also just plain kind of a dick. The AR does manage to convince him otherwise, though, and Jake is suitably guilty about it all.
  GT: YOU ARE A TIN CAN. ROBOTS DONT HAVE FEELINGS.
  TT: I think you knowingly confuse the field of robotics and artificial intelligence to engender some sort of cavalier attitude about technology that a rough-and-tumble guy who's all about brawling and fisticuffs would probably have, and if this is cultivated to a humorous effect then I commend you.
  TT: But you're wrong.
  TT: I do have feelings. And you're shitting on them.
  TT: It sucks.
• The Nemesites in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! have both sentient and non-sentient robots. When Fructose Riboflavin destroys a robot guard during a jailbreak, he expresses disappointment that the guard ''wasn't'' sentient and couldn't feel ''pain'' at the experience. Riboflavin is not a nice man.
• In an unusual example from a A Miracle of Science, the Big Bad's robots try to talk him into surrendering to the police, causing him to lash out and call one of them an "ungrateful device". As noted in The Rant, trying to insult the robot in this way shows that Haas knows Dryden is a person with feelings to hurt.
• There seems to be some discrimination against AIs in Schlock Mercenary, despite the fact that none of them have Turned Against Their Masters—except for one, and that's because his masters were xenophobic warmongers.
  • This gets inverted later on, when an AI is driven homicidally insane by simulated eons of sensory deprivation. And then again, when a faulty mainframe screws with her mind while she's experiencing extreme trauma. Her wanton obsession with destruction is interlaced with ingenuity, banter, and pure, writhing hatred. The cast concludes that she couldn't possibly be a machine - mere machines' minds can't disintegrate that much. This convinces the other AIs not to fundamentally change her personality when she offers herself up for a formatting to fix her madness.
• Spacetrawler is unusual in that the robots themselves admit that they're just machines.
  Pierrot: I guess you're the closest thing I have to someone who cares on this space station.
  Potty-bot: I was programmed to care! I'm a product of Wastebiotics Brr-buhm-brrrrrrrrrrrr! Specializing in emotions people are algorithmed to empathize with!

Web Original

• Marendar from the BIONICLE online serials is a being specifically created to kill the denizens of the Matoran Universe in case they don't shut down by themselves after Mata Nui (a Humongous Mecha housing said universe) fulfills his mission. Their creators, the Great Beings, thought that the MU inhabitants would still be the same non-sentient machines they had designed them as, but instead, they developed an entire culture, making Marendar an unintentional mass murderer. This issue wasn't touched upon much because the series was Left Hanging.
• Mahu: In "Second Chance" this is both played straight and averted by the Galactic Commonwealth. On the one hand, mining robots only focus on their job and combat droids are a pitiless yet efficient replacement for soldiers of flesh and bone which can be replaced. On the other though, as technology improves beyond expected limits, A.I. begins to formulate more and more complex thoughts, while humanity itself slowly "improve themselves" to become almost machines.
• The Counselor in Red vs. Blue refers to Tex as a "byproduct" of the process of creating the other AI Alpha. The Director has... issues with this.
  • South appears to share the former attitude, but it might just be jealousy. She chooses to express this with nearly every AI in the project in the room. Carolina shuts her down pretty hard.
  • Locus, when confronted over the death of Freckles, had this to say:
  Locus: It’s a machine. It never had any life to begin with.
• The Big Bad of Starship Goldfish, Avianaut wants to destroy all artificial life in the galaxy, he singlehandedly destroyed enough citizens of the Automaton Empire to fill a massive war memorial. When Ghostworth hears a taunting message Avianaut left for the Empire he's clearly upset. The Imperial Commander even notes that AI consider themselves Mechanical Lifeforms and it hurts their feelings to be seen this way.

Western Animation

• In DuckTales (2017), most of Gyro's inventions turn evil. What Gyro himself has failed to notice (but Louie has) is that nearly all of them seen on-screen (though not B.O.Y.D., who is normally a pacifist but was forced into evil by Dr. Akita) do so after someone (often Gyro himself) talks about them being unfeeling machines.
• Played with frequently on Futurama, sometimes Played for Laughs and sometimes played as a sort of Fantastic Racism.
  • Called out when Bender is heckling Conan O'Brien's head at a show.
    Conan: Hey, I may have lost my freakishly long legs in the War of 2012, but I've got something you'll never have — a soul!
    Bender: [dismissively] Pfffh!
    Conan: And freckles!
    Bender: [grievously sobs]
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Max's small talking drone-like robot Markov impresses most of his classmates, but Ms. Mendeleev and Mr. Damocles only refer to Markov as a "toy" and insist (over Max's protests) that "it" does not have emotions, and that Markov's claims of loving Max were simply things Max programmed "it" to say. After Mr. Damocles mutes his voice and stuffs him in a cabinet, Hawk Moth akumatizes him. Hawk Moth can only akumatize people feeling negative emotions, which proves that the teachers were wrong: Markov absolutely does feel emotion.
  • In a later episode, Markov attempts to make conversation with some service drones on a train. However, these drones aren't actually sentient at all, to Markov's disappointment.
• In one episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot, Jenny encounters a carnival filled with Single Task Robots. She's offended at "her kind" being used as servants, but Tuck (rather insensitively) insists "they're just stupid robots". In a subversion, Tuck is entirely right: these robots are completely incapable of doing anything but running amusement park rides, and wreak havoc trying to be "free". The show itself seems to take a sliding-scale view of sentience. Robots like the ones in the carnival are 'just machines' because they lack independence or self-awareness, whereas other robots like Jenny are fully sapient and universally recognized as such.
• The Ready Jet Go! episode "Sydney 2" explores robots and their emotions, and what it means to be human (or a Human Alien). Jet doesn't seem to care for Jet 2 much because he's Cool, but Inefficient. He just leaves him to rust. Notably, it's Sydney who gets the idea of making a friend for Jet 2, and not Jet himself. Sydney later realizes that robots are not capable of the same complex emotions and interactions as humans/aliens. However, with a little help from her engineer mom and a can-do spirit, the two robots are programmed to make friends with each other.
• In the first episode of Rick and Morty, Morty reluctantly shoots a guard after Rick tells him "It's okay, they're just robots!" The insectoid guard falls down screaming and gushing blood while an associate frantically yells for someone to notify the guard's wife; turns out Rick just called them robots because they're bureaucrats and he doesn't respect them.
• Played for laughs in an episode of Robot Chicken, where a spoof of "I Robot" (based on the "Adam Link" story by Eando Binder) had Rosie from The Jetsons being accused of murdering George. At Rosie's trial, she claims to be innocent and the judge remarks "Well, maybe, but just to be safe...", Rosie is then promptly smashed.
• Zig-zagged in Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, with the Cybernetic Humanoid Assault System, or C.H.A.S.. Most of the troopers dismiss him as a troublesome (if highly competent) piece of equipment, but Higgens insists that C.H.A.S. should be made a member of the team. Towards the end of the episode, C.H.A.S. leads the squad out of a minefield ambush and performs a Heroic Sacrifice for Higgens. When Higgens tries to get C.H.A.S. to save himself, C.H.A.S. insists on this trope.
  C.H.A.S.: I was never alive.
• In a later season episode of The Smurfs, Clockwork Smurf is treated as just a machine by Brainy Smurf until near the end of the episode, after Clockwork deals with Gargamel and Scruple when his Heart of Gold was replaced with a heart of stone and afterward was restored to his original function with a bit of heart-to-heart reasoning from his creator Handy.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in "Downfall of a Droid" and the next episode "Duel of the Droids", R2-D2 is captured. While Anakin Skywalker is extremely upset about the loss of his friend, Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn't understand what the big deal is.
• There's at least one or two episodes of Teen Titans (2003) all about Cyborg realizing he's "more than just a robot". In one of these episodes, the robotic villain Atlas inverts the trope; after trashing Cyborg and kidnapping the other Titans, he mocks him by saying "I am all robot, and you are only human." Later, however, when Cyborg comes back and defeats him in a rematch, Atlas yields, saying he's the better robot. Cyborg's response?
  Cyborg: No. I'm the better person.
• Averted in the Transformers metaseries. While some ill-informed fleshlings are so foolish as to refer to Cybertronian life as being "just machines", it is an established fact, proven several times over that Transformers have souls (they call them Sparks, and they have a special container in their chest to hold it), an extant God (Primus, whose sleeping body is the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron), and an afterlife (the Well of All Sparks, where All are One. It is proven, but nonetheless mysterious). Interestingly none of the above is established for the aforementioned fleshlings — meaning that, given the evidence, it is entirely possible that the machines are more "human" than the humans, by the definitions humans use. The is also no denying that Cybertronians show a depth and range of emotion remarkably similar to humans, and are capable of amazing displays of compassion... And just as capable of savage and relentless hatred.
• The robots built by Sumdac's company in Transformers: Animated to perform manual labour and generally run Detroit are indeed just machines. At one point, Soundwave attempts to have these robots revolt, believing that logically humanity ought to serve robots. Upon enacting his plan, Sari is quick to point out that the robots haven't gained sentience, they are simply following their programming; programming that Soundwave hacked, which Soundwave doesn't deny for one second.

Real Life

• During the War on Terror, a bomb disposal squad nicknamed their robot Scooby-Doo. When the robot was destroyed by an explosion, a distraught soldier was told a replacement would arrive soon, only to say he didn't want a robot, he wanted Scooby-Doo back.

---