Quotes / Artificial Stupidity

Anime & Manga

"What a digital dummy."

—Mokuba, Yu-Gi-Oh!

Literature

When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

—The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lazy programmers."

— Oath Of Fealty by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

Live-Action TV

"The problem with computers is that they're very sophisticated idiots."

—Doctor Who, "Robot"

Music

Never missed Melrose Place or Lost in Space
I've seen each Amazing Race and Without a Trace
But I only watched Will & Grace one time one day
(Wish I hadn't 'cause TiVo now thinks I'm gay)

—"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Couch Potato"

Then walk into the wall like you're an NPC

—Everything Everything, "Breadwinner"

Video Games

"He's not just a regular moron. He's the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moron who ever lived."

—GLaDOS on Wheatley, Portal 2

"What kind of fiendish technology makes Molly constantly get in the way?"

"I wanna punch the guy in R&D who programmed Molly!"

— The dwarves on "Molly" the M.U.L.E., their automated walking minecart, Deep Rock Galactic

"Too bad my AI is shit."

— Sylvester if you lose him during a chase, Dave.EXE

"Mate... the Elite Four here is on some wack shit. Thankfully the AI can act like some doodoo, use that to your advantage."

— Indigo League Girl, Pokémon Radical Red

Web Animation

"I was sent to destroy some anti-air cannons in order to land a chopper on a rooftop and rescue a hostage who was up there. 'Bollocks to that', I thought. 'I'll nick an enemy chopper that the turrets won't shoot at, and tear up out of there before they know what the fuck!' Sadly, they saw through my disguise around stage 3 of my master plan and shot me down... So I tried the mission again, but [the hostage] seemed to remember me now, so when I came near the building, he eagerly walked straight off the roof to join me."

—Zero Punctuation on Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

"One time I was low on health — but not too low — and was about to use a small herb to keep myself going when I saw my partner coming towards me brandishing a valuable large herb, and when you're running away from your support character with more desperate terror than you feel for any of the actual monsters, something has definitely gone wrong somewhere. My advice is to get someone to play co-op with you any way you can. If you live alone, kidnap a hobo or train your dog extremely well, anything."

—Zero Punctuation on Resident Evil 5

"I chucked a molotov and the enemy screamed and ran out of the fire, then ran straight back into it to double-check that it was the thing making his eyeballs melt."

—Zero Punctuation, Left Alive

"A.I. don't go after collectibles. They usually just stand there staring at you with gormless, uncomprehending eyes. They were also never programmed to drive, so in the occasional vehicle section if you perhaps would rather take 'riding shotgun' to its literal heart, then fuck you and your haughty airs. The A.I. will pile into the backseat without a word and just look at you like a dog with its leash in its mouth. And as I said, they can't aim for shit. But after you've single-handedly cleared out an entire room, they'll unfailingly say one of their four or five endlessly repeated lines that goes, 'You don't have to do this all by yourself, you know!' There is no middle finger big enough!"

—Zero Punctuation on Call of Juarez

"And then I spotted the dude with the gun-arm, old Mister 'Introverted Japanese Person's Idea of What Black People Are Like', firing into a nearby handrail. I have to keep taking over to show them how to do it! It's like teaching a roomful of six-year-olds how to type! THE Q's ON THE FUCKING LEFT."

—Zero Punctuation on Final Fantasy VII Remake

"...and lest we forget, having to drag a permanent A.I. partner around that sticks to you like a genital wart and won't go away no matter how hard you windmill. An A.I. partner with a Scrappy-Doo level of appreciation for their own ability, and to whom you have to give constant healing fist-bumps, lest they steal all your lives. Oh yeah, let's add a nice big, black mark for that! A brown mark, smeared on with a white-knuckled fistful of turd. There's a lives system that you and the old ball-and-chain have to share."

—Zero Punctuation on Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Web Original

Below you'll see a Sim on fire while a dozen others panic and crowd around him, preventing a rescue attempt... One hero tries to save his friend's life by attempting to initiate sex. This unorthodox approach to firefighting fails, and the Sim dies.

—Cracked on The Sims, "6 Video Games Invented Inside of Other Video Games"

If your destination is too far away and you'd rather play the game instead of driving across it, exit out of the map and open your smart phone. Slowly scroll down your contact list since quickly isn't an option. Press A to call a taxi. Let it ring until a dispatcher picks up. If you are not playing the black character, a taxi will arrive 15 to 30 seconds later. It will be approximately one block from you, so look for it in the center of an exploding traffic jam it caused. It may start confusedly fleeing the crime scene, so tap the sprint button before it gets away. If you're not hit by emergency vehicles, you may be able to catch it!

—Seanbaby, "5 Things Critics Love About GTAV (That Actually Suck)"

Okay people, listen up! Here's the battle plan: Jester, die stupidly by rushing the enemy base alone and unarmed. Bishop, head for the sniper's nest where you'll make no meaningful contribution whatsoever. Kai. Othello. You guys grab the tank and get it stuck between some trees. Player1, I want you to quit the game and go make some damn friends so you don't have to play with these bots all the time.

—Stolen Pixels

This explains why Germany lost the war."

—Hilary Goldstein on Hour of Victory

I've watched plenty of Robot Wars, BattleBots, and Killer Robots Robogames.
If all that experience has taught me anything, it’s that the robot revolution would end quickly, because the robots would all break down or get stuck against walls. Robots never, ever work right.

—What If?, "Robot Apocalypse"

The key to good game AI is designing the game so the AI doesn't need to be very smart.

— Tynan Sylvester, developer of Rimworld

Web Video

"If you ask me, King Vendrick should've protected his kingdom by just building more doorways."

—Matthewmatosis on Dark Souls 2

You're like a bunch of Lemmings with machine guns!

—Gordon Freeman on the HECU, Freeman's Mind

(Aussie accent) "And look there, on the radar: A naturally occurring flock of henchmen! Henchmen have a natural tendency to gather in large groups to hunt and mate, but alas, as a species, were born without any form of primitive survival instincts."

—Noah Antwiler on Demolition Man, the game

"This game sucks so bad, the enemy soldiers commit suicide."

—The Angry Video Game Nerd, "Schwarzenegger Games"

Yahtzee: Huh. I think we've found, uh, Conrad's intellectual match. Am I interrupting make-out time? C'mon, I've charged the shot. Go on, investigate your friend.
Gabriel: "Ah, it was probably nothing."

—Let's Play of Flashback (2012}

"He was all 'Oh! She's an axe user... and I'm a sword user! STRATEGY!', and completely missed the fact that all her stats are double his."

Lets Player Fedule playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

"Now, remember before how protecting Anna was really annoying? Now imagine if Anna had utterly terrible stats, and there were three of her, and they were all unarmed. That's basically this mission."

— BigKlingy, "Fire Emblem: Awakening Playthrough: Part 12: The Three Villager Stooges"

"There's design issues all over the place in Colonial Marines, but the big one is how AI in virtually every character in this game is broken beyond belief. Enemy soldiers meander about the place and away from cover to give you a clear shot at them, your allies frequently get stuck in numerous different impractical locations, and the Xenomorphs, these huge, terrifying iconic monsters that shape 90% of what this franchise is, they are really, really funny."

—Rabbidluigi, Top Five Worst AI in Video Games

"Bots are, generally speaking, not as good as human players. You can make a bot with as much accuracy and rapid-fire thinking as possible, but artificial intelligence is still rather simplistic in the video game space. They don't think creatively, they don't improvise, they lack important survival traits like fear that might otherwise prevent them from rushing headfirst into an uneven fight."

— Jim Sterling, Are Automated Bots A Deceptive Con?

"[Civilians] don't help themselves much [during terror missions] - they're happy to wander into the line of fire, so you’ve got be careful and make sure you don’t shoot them. Civilian deaths at the hands of XCOM come with a particularly steep penalty."

—Stuart Brown, RetroAhoy: X-COM

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—Atomic Shrimp, "Davis Bon is Dead AGAIN!"

Western Animation

"It's not stupid, it's advanced!"

—Tallest Purple on GIR, Invader Zim

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