Deus Est Machina: Difference between revisions

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Customarily, when you can think faster than the speed of light it becomes trivial to prove [[Reed Richards Is Useless]] '''''wrong''''' and find solutions to hunger, [[The Evils of Free Will|hate]], and [[Brainwashed|happiness]] with surprising ease. Usually the calculator god sees it as so easy to make our lives paradise it says "What the hell, I'll kill a few calculation cycles now that I've done everything else".

Of course, authors ''love'' to subvert the above with the AI either playing good, or becoming insanely evil as the super intelligence makes them into a [[Master Computer]] bent on enslaving humanity. Basically, if [[The Smart Guy]] is a [[Jerkass]] because [[Dumb Is Good|his intelligence makes it hard to be happy]], multiply that by a scagillion for the AI. Then again, [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|"power corrupts"]] [[Ridiculously Human Robots|seems to apply equally to AIs and humans]]. Or maybe its idea of "help" is somewhat contrary to our desires.

Of course, authors ''love'' to subvert the above with the AI either playing good, or becoming insanely evil as the super intelligence makes them into a [[Master Computer]] bent on enslaving humanity. Basically, if [[The Smart Guy]] is a [[Jerkass]] because [[Dumb Is Good|his intelligence makes it hard to be happy]], multiply that by a scagillion for the AI. Then again, [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|"power corrupts"]] [[Ridiculously-Human Robots|seems to apply equally to AIs and humans]]. Or maybe its idea of "help" is somewhat contrary to our desires.

Who'da thunk?

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*** All of which is recycled from Jack Williamson's novel ''The Humanoids'', where a race of super-robots has been created controlled by one master machine with Three Directives. Naturally, those Three Directives make much of humanity worthless, as the robots remove all challenges, all duties, and indeed all purpose from human life. The novel details what happens when the creator of the robots attempts to destroy Central, to stop the human race from dying off from sheer boredom.

* [[H. Beam Piper]]'s ''Cosmic Computer'' centers around a society searching for an AI that will rescue them and take care of them.

* Ben Aaronovitch's ''[[~~Doctor Who (TV)|~~Doctor Who]]'' [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures]] novel ''The Also People'' features a benign but Machiavellian supercomputer named 'God' by the People who created it as a joke. It has a fondness for making yellow party dip that no-one is brave enough to try.

* Ben Aaronovitch's ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures]] novel ''The Also People'' features a benign but Machiavellian supercomputer named 'God' by the People who created it as a joke. It has a fondness for making yellow party dip that no-one is brave enough to try.

** The People pretty much ''[[Captain Ersatz|are the Culture]]'', not so much 'with the serial numbers filed off' as 'lifted [[Fell Off the Back of A Truck|off the back of a truck]], no questions asked'. [[Word of God|In the Author's own words]].

* Played with in [[Fred Saberhagen]]'s ''Empire of the East'' and Books of Swords and Lost Swords, since {{spoiler|Ardneh is a supercomputer}} with tremendous magical power who transformed the laws of nature to allow humanity to survive a nuclear war, but who insists that it is not a god and that human beings should not worship it or any other finite being.

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[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]

[[Category:Magical Computer]]

[[Category:Deus Est Machina]]

[[Category:Deus Est Machina]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]

[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]