Just a Machine: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* A constant theme in ''[[Astro Boy (manga)|Astro Boy]]'', with anti-robot groups wanting to limit or destroy all intelligent robots.

** And in ''[[Pluto]]'' as well. Notably, {{spoiler|a robot boy is going to be sold for parts despite still being partly alive. Another robot buys him to raise as a child.}}

{{quote|'''Junkyard Worker:''' [[Arc Words|500 Zeus a body.]]}}

* The CC Corp in ''[[.hack]]'' treats AIs as errant data and nothing more.

* The ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]'' anime series had this with the [[Genki Girl|Tachikoma]] [[Spider Tank|Tanks]].

** Even worse {{spoiler|they play into [[The Plan]] of the third party that would have led them to cause extinction of the human race, [[Unwitting Pawn|believing that they were destroying the Bioroids]].}}

** It's not that they don't believe that the Bioroids aren't sentient. They just believe that they will seek to dominate the humanity and create a sterile society straight out of the ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]''. This is what Uranus believes, at least - Hades is just a racist.

** Dorothy herself flipflops on the opinion.

** 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.

 

** This is especially frustrating since in the Red Tornado's original origin, he is a Sylph (spirit of air) placed inside of a robot body. Meaning he ''provably'' has a soul, unlike the the average human.

* In ''[[Runaways]]'' Xavin used to refer to cyborg Victor as 'automation' and offered to Karolina that he could 'buy another one' if he broke her toys. No-one was impressed, and [[Gender Bender|he/she]] gradually grew out of it.

* In the ''[[Justice Society of America]]'' story "Out of Time", {{spoiler|the android Hourman Matthew Tyler}} uses this argument to justify {{spoiler|sacrificing himself in Rex Tyler's place fighting against Extant in the past to save the universe}}. {{spoiler|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.}}

 

* ''[[A.I.: Artificial Intelligence]]'' has a group of humans who hunt and brutally destroy androids to vent their rage at the automation of labor.

** [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|The Puppetmaster calls them off their high horses most awesomely.]]

* [[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?

** In the third film, {{spoiler|Sentinel Prime}}'s hatred for humanity comes partly from how humans see the Autobots as this. {{spoiler|Especially when it comes to him and Optimus, who are the last remaining Primes.}}

{{quote|'''{{spoiler|Sentinel Prime}}:''' On Cybertron we were gods! And here, they simply call us machines.}}

{{quote|'''John:''' Don't kill him.

'''Sarah:''' Not "him", honey. "It".

'''John:''' Alright, "it"! But we need "it"! }}

* Inverted in ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture]]'', where V'Ger dismisses organic life forms as "carbon units" and does not consider them truly alive, unlike machines.

 

* Comes up a few times in various ways in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. Droids of all capacities are regarded as disposable; in ''[[Jedi Academy Trilogy|I, Jedi]]'' Corran doesn't think that bisecting a protocol droid violates his [[The Fettered|selfset]] [[Martial Pacifist|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.

** 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.

* 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".

 

* In ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'', many humans have this attitude towards the Cylons, and are clearly wrong, but the near extermination of humanity is bound to breed hatred.

* Both versions of ''[[The Outer Limits]]'' adapted "I, Robot" (based on thee [[Adam Link]] story by Eando Binder, not [[I, Robot (literature)||the book]] by [[Isaac Asimov]]). 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. {{spoiler|He wins the case, but dies in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] at [[Cruel Twist Ending|the end of the episode]].}}

* The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "Measure of a Man" put Data on trial to determine whether he was a sentient being with rights as a Federation citizen, or merely a machine and thus Federation property.

** An episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' had a similar theme, questioning the rights of ship's [[Projected Man|holographic Doctor]]. His status was background theme that ran throughout the series. This being ''Voyager,'' the writing was not particularly consistent: Sometimes the crew would treat the Doctor like a person, and sometimes he was just a device that could be shut off whenever it got too annoying. One [[Distant Finale|glimpse of the future]] suggested holographic AIs would eventually get equal rights.

* In the last episode of ''[[Total Recall 2070]]'', [[Ridiculously Human Robot|Farve]]'s creator is revealed to be this, and aware of it. As it puts it after [[Secret Test of Character|testing]] Farve, "just because [it] knows its creation shall have a conscience doesn't mean [it] itself has one".

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' feature this trope heavily in episodes where characters interact with [[A Is]], 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.

* ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'' 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 Robots|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.

 

* In ''[[Halo]]'', Smart AIs are killed before they can become sapient due to the part in between what they are from the start (programed emotions, responses and other stuff but a real imagination and intelligence) normally causes them to try to kill everything. It's called Rampancy, and it includes 4 stages: Melancholia, Anger, Jealousy and finally Metastability. The first one has them [[Angst|moping about not being human]], the second has them actively angry about it which normally causes them to try to slaughter people and the third one is them being actively jealous of humans. The last one is the Holy Grail of AIs and is when an AI gets over not being human and achieves sapience. It's ''very'' strongly implied that Cortana was Metastable. As for 343 Guilty Spark, well, he skipped Melancholia.

** These were pulled wholesale from Bungee's earlier ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' series, in which the AI Durandal and his continuing psychotic break/growth into his own individual person drives the plot. You spend much of the games as his errand boy and captive audience to his philosophical ranting. He gets better and less rant-y after he gets over the Anger stage, but you still spend most of your time as his favored pawn and his favorite person to explain his new personal epiphanies to.

** All of this is subverted to Hell in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' with [[Spaceship Girl|EDI]] (your ship's AI) and {{spoiler|Legion, your geth teammate, who reveals that the geth you've been fighting are a splinter faction.}}

** ''[[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 [[Mad Scientist|Admiral Xen]], but it's more of a shock to hear from [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_VGuf7OpzE& Dr Chakwas].

* 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 remind you that you can't enslave a robot anymore than you can enslave a toaster or a water purifier.

 

* In ''[[Artifice]]'', two security guards taunt the android soldier Deacon in the opening scene, referring to him as just "an appliance"

* 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!

* 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.

 

* In one episode of ''[[My Life as a Teenage Robot]]'', Jenny is told this when she encourages a carnival filled with robots. Also a subversion, because these robots are in fact completely incapable of doing anything but running amusement park rides, and wreak havoc trying to be "free".

* There's at least one or two episodes of ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' all about Cyborg realizing he's "more than just a robot". In one of these episode, 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 Cyborg is the better robot. Cyborg's response?

* Averted ''hard'' 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, were 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 robots built by Sumdac's company in ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' to perform manual labour and generally run Detroit, however, are indeed just machines. At one point, Soundwave attempts to have these robots [[Turned Against Their Masters|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.

* Invoked in the ''[[The Animatrix]]'' segment ''The Second Renaissance'' in the same way as the [[Outer Limits]] episode mentioned above; Does a robot have rights or can it be scrapped whenever the owner wants to?

* Enforced and Discussed in the ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'' episode "His Silicon Soul". The android duplicate of Batman rebels against HARDAC, destroying itself to end the mad computer's threat forever. Still, Batman and Alfred can't help but feel sorry for it, and in the final scene of the episode:

{{quote|'''Batman:''' It seems it was more than wires and microchips after all. Could it be it had a soul, Alfred? A [[Title Drop|soul of silicon]], but a soul nonetheless?}}

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Robot Roll Call]]