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Some newer works might be all over the scale by saying that multiple dumb machines "networked" into a machine god (or at the very least smarter than human) intelligence capable of dissent.
 
When this trope is averted and all the intelligences in a work are humanoid and used for slave labor or war, this trope implies that humans [["Three Laws"-Compliant|have never read]] [[Isaac Asimov]], and use exactly the same hardware/software for ''every'' kind of industrial, military and personal robot, and are purposely [[We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future|needlessly inefficient]] or [[Humans Are Bastards|cruel]] because of it. Generally involves a [[Fantastic Aesop]]. May overlap with [[Robots Enslaving Robots]]. See also [[The Singularity]] for a popular way of reaching [[Deus Est Machina]]. One of the many ways of differentiating [[Robot|robotsrobot]]s.
{{examples}}
 
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* Subverted in ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]: Stand Alone Complex''. The [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]] that appear are all non-sentient, and [[Logic Bomb|easily befuddled]] by the spider-like Tachikoma [[Incredibly Lame Pun|think-tanks]]. The Tachikoma discuss this, noting that humans would be intimidated by androids with human intelligence but are much more accepting of non-humanoid adorable robots like themselves having sentience.
** And in the original manga and movie there is the Codename 2501, a.k.a. Puppetmaster, who started out as a Brick with capability to learn, and became what is described in the final volume of the manga as an information god. In the aforementioned final volume, ''Man-Machine Interface'', the semi-AI descendants of the Puppetmaster-Major-fusion briefly plan turning every human with cybernetic implants on Earth into offshoots of themselves, but instead opt to create even higher forms of artificial consciousness. It's implied at the end that the age of machine gods is coming fast.
* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' uses varying levels of robot intelligence. [[Mecha-Mooks|Gadget Drones]] are of Brick-level intelligence and are mowed down by the dozens. Storage Devices also have Brick-level intelligence. [[Empathic Weapon|Intelligent and Armed Devices]] are somewhere between Brick and Human, capable of creating their own opinions and having conversations with their users but not to the level of humans. Finally, there's the Wolkenritter and Unison Devices that are Human level and [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|pretty much considered as fellow humans by other characters]]. In one of the [[Opening Narration|Opening Narrations]]s, Vita, one of the Wolkenritter, idly wonders if she and the other Wolkenritter were nothing more than weapons like the Brick-level [[Kill Sat|Cradle]] they're facing before they met Hayate and gained human-like emotions and personalities.
 
 
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== Films -- Live Action ==
* A rather ridiculous example from the ''[[Star Wars]]'' prequels is the Trade Federation Battle Droids who, despite being run through a central computer, still speak to each other ''in Galactic Basic''. Even though utility droids do not.
** It's sort of implied that oddly, all droids and AIs in the Star Wars universe -- evenuniverse—even crappy utility droids -- havedroids—have the potential to eventually get to God-level. They usually never get the chance, because people erase their memory all the time to reboot them. R2-D2 has human-level intelligence compared to his fellow models of the same type because his memory hasn't been erased in several decades. What's odd is that this same type of AI seems built into everything from humanoid translator and butler droids to soldiers to minor utility units.
** Believe it or not, the "three types" part is averted: There are ''five'' classes of droids, even the lowest of which is smart enough to do jobs like salvage, which does require some degree of intelligence. To make this weirder, R2-D2 is one class ''higher'' than C-3PO. ''Before'' the never-erased memory thing takes effect. [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Droid Here.]
** As far as I understand it, the droid control ship is not there to micromanage each of the thousands of droids deployed. The droids each have independent AI. The control ship is a guarantee against a [[Robot Rebellion]] only. If the droids start acting in a suspicious way, the control ship can shut down the entire army before it goes on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]. Likewise if the ship is destroyed the Droids will shut down (in case the droids decided to destroy the ship, which actually makes sense: in [[Real Life]] this is called a "fail-secure" fail-safe.)
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* A substantial amount of ''<nowiki>~2001: A Space Odyssey~</nowiki>'' is spent in discussions over the intelligence and emotional capacity of the H.A.L. 9000 computer that [[Master Computer|runs the spaceship]] USS ''Discovery''. It's generally agreed that HAL is of human-level intelligence, but while he has vastly superior powers of calculation (obviously), his emotional capacity and intellectual maturity are those of a child. This factors heavily into the explanation of the [[Logic Bomb]] that causes him to [[AI Is a Crapshoot|turn on the crew]].
* As described below (in Live Action TV), [[Terminator|Terminators]]s appear to sit somewhere between Nobel and Average Joe.
** [[Terminator|Skynet]] proceeds at warp speed from 1 to high-4. Unfortunately, it's a defense system that was ''born'' [[Child Soldiers|under attack]], and, thus being very poorly adjusted, decides to [[Kill All Humans]].
* ''[[Forbidden Planet]]:'' Robby the Robot straddles Average Joe and Nobel. He is mostly used as a general servant and tool-about-town, but shows flashes of a stoic personality, some innovation and independence of thought; he apparently uses some discretion when synthesizing materials, such as modifying a sixty-gallon batch of bourbon (delivered to [[Comic Relief|the cook]] in pint bottles) to alleviate hangovers, and he's quicker than his master to realize {{spoiler|that the monster that slaughtered the colonists and is threatening to do the same to the starship's crew is a construct from Morbius' own subconscious, and the only way to follow Morbius' panicked order and kill the monster is to destroy Morbius himself, which [[Logic Bomb|creates a paradox between his absolute imperatives to obey Morbius and never harm a rational being, causing him to short out]]}}.
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== Literature ==
* [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' series has primarily "Brick" style robots for the human designed servitor robots, and the [[Brain Uploading]] humans are effectively identical to their flesh counterparts. Reynolds' other novels however, play with it quite a lot. ''House of Suns'' has the Nobel-bot Machine People, and the godlike Vigilance.
* Averted in [[Iain Banks|Iain M. Banks']] ''[[The Culture|Culture]]'' novels: Sentient [[AI|AIs]]s vary from humanlike to godlike intelligence (the Culture Minds), but there are lots of nonsentient ones as well. And there are some that are sentient, but somewhat below the human level, like the self-aware but simple-minded Culture shuttle that makes a brief appearance in ''Consider Phlebas.'' It was advised by more intelligent AIs to ignore the immoral behaviour of some nearby humans because its mind was human-like enough that it would have been shocked, but too simple for it to have been able to deal with the experience. Culture law specifies that everything over a given level of technological complexity must have an AI. This greatly annoys a character in ''Excession'', who deliberately chooses the most stupid AI he can get to control his second-skin environment suit. This is more about a) providing a nice user interface to complex but useful devices and b) providing intelligent safety systems to dangerous devices than making the lives of humans more difficult. An exceedingly powerful weapon developed by the Culture before such a decree was made features in one story in ''The State of the Art''. Though genetically locked to only be used by Culture-descended humans, one such being is {{spoiler|blackmailed into committing an atrocity with the weapon}}. The being in question observed how weak the weapon is compared to modern day devices, but as those weapons would be too smart to allow themselves to be abused this item is potentially devastating against less developed civilisations.
* The mobiles from the ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series might be an example: when they talk to each other about entropy the discussion goes right over the head of [[Teen Genius|Pre-Teen Genius]] Dairine. However, this might not be due to being smarter than Dairine, but because they each have a [[Great Big Book of Everything]] built into their memory.
* Averted in Dan Simmons' ''Hyperion'' where the robots are considerably more intelligent than humans but none of them have godlike minds.
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** It's indicated that the Centurions ''were'' completely sentient, but the skinjobs went and lobotomized them as an ironic echo of the original robot rebellion. When the restrictions are removed by skinjob Cylon activists, they along with the Raiders return to sentience, and are not very happy at all.
** From [[The Movie]]: "His coat is burgundy. This is teal." Some of the skinjobs are [[Too Dumb to Live]].
* ''[[Star Trek TNG]]'': Data is much smarter than any human or even than any Vulcan when it comes to science, logic and math. Also, he IS creative -- whilecreative—while definitely NOT a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he can paint decent pictures. A different one with each hand.
* Averted in ''[[Red Dwarf]]''. [[A Is|Holly]] has an IQ of 6,000, but his centuries of isolation has left him "[[AI Is a Crapshoot|a bit]] [[The Mad Hatter|peculiar]]."
* The Terminators in ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' fall somewhere between Average Joe and Nobel. Generally, they operate within certain baseline programming but are given immense leeway in how to complete their objectives, and show impressive planning and intellect when it comes to this. For example, a Terminator by the name of Myron Stark is sent back with a mission to assassinate the governor of California in 2009 at a specific location inside a specific building. Instead, he is accidentally sent back to the 1920s, in the process killing the man who would build the tower where he would carry out the assassination. At this point, Stark proceeds to build the tower himself by first robbing banks, establishing his own realty company and construction firms, and even assassinates the heads of a rival company to buy up all their lands, including the land where the tower would be built -- andbuilt—and then built the tower himself. Then he hides himself inside the tower for a good sixty years until the day of the planned assassination.
** On the other hand, there's [[Robot Girl|Cameron]], who definitely appears to be of Nobel-level, and has strong capability when it comes to creativity and critical thinking. She also does appear to have emotions, particularly when her "Allison" persona is activated.
** Her ability to understand human emotion seemed to vary depending on the writers/plot. The biggest example of this being that before we learn she's a Terminator, she's able to perfectly convince John that she is a normal teenage girl. Once she's actually joined John's team, she's struggles through the most mundane of human emotions.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' has no sentient AIs (except possibly the Necrons). Of the ones who use actual thinking machines, the Imperium has a [[Dune]]-esque ban on sentient machines due to the precepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Tau haven't advanced far enough to get their AIs truly sentient yet.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' averts this with the Grate Monkeys--inMonkeys—in fact exactly the robo-monkeys mentioned above--wellabove—well, [[Magitech]] robo-[[Everything's Better with Monkeys|monkeys]], anyway.
* ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'' regularly uses Robo-Monkey muses and [[Average Joe Android]] to Nobel-Bot AGIs, and [[Deus Est Machina]] Seed [[A Is]] known as the TITANS are the reason why earth is no longer suitable for human life {{spoiler|as well as the Prometheans, who run Firewall}}.
* [[Dungeons and Dragons]] has the Construct creature type, which can denote anything from clockwork beings to servants made out of straw. The most iconic are probably the various types of golems, who have an intelligence score of "-", which means they are mindless automatons (as opposed to a score of zero, which is actually somewhat different). However, some constructs can be very intelligent, possibly moreso than most of the player characters.
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** EDI is a more straight example of a Nobel-Bot, with a far better understanding on the nature of organics than legion, as she expresses emotion (albeit limited by the rather monotone voice synthesizer she has; she expresses amusement at humor by flatly saying "That is a joke").
* Used straight, though spread out over time, in the ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' series. The chain goes Mechaniloid (brick or animal, basic enemy with simple programming), Robot Master (more complex, but still takes orders), Reploid ([[Ridiculously Human Robot]]), an ''[[Mega Man Legends]]'' has some God level ones. Could someone that has played it explain what they were?
** Mega Man Juno of ''[[Mega Man Legends]]'' is somewhere between god-like levels and ridiculously human ones, being at least powerful enough to vaporize every Carbon on the island when activated, but as a "mere" 3rd class Bureaucratic Model he's neither invulnerable nor omnipotent ([[Affably Evil|and surprisingly polite right before trying to turn you into a cloud of dust]]). Data also plays somewhere between Brick and Man, being a literal mechanical monkey, but is very plot-important. Yuna and Sera are effectively robo-Gaia and robo-God, too -- thetoo—the former effectively revives and possesses a woman on the brink of death.
** The original Mega Man was somewhere between Robot Master and Reploid -- heReploid—he wasn't supposed to truly be able to make his orders or violate the law of robotics but he did in a few cases with extreme duress. Mutos Reploids might go into the same category, since they're [[Funny Animal]] reploids built for military and civil protection of humans, but were also the main evil bosses throughout the series from X to ZX, since they had a tenancy to go crazy.
** The scale goes Mechanoid -> Robot Master -> Reploid -> Human/Reploid hybrids. Robot Masters had human level intelligence to varying degrees (child, teenager?) level. The main difference between Robot Masters are the removal of the "three laws" and ability to feel emotions, so they are tween/adult level human intelligence except for "kid" Reploids, animal or human models alike. By ZX the two begin to merge through the [[Technological Singularity]], and God level is actually after humans and robots merge so fully that there is no difference between the two. Some are human, some brick, some god.
** In the parallel ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' series, the Navi counterparts of the Robot Masters fall around the same place on the scale as them. The exceptions are [[Bonus Boss|Bass]] and [[Heel Face Turn|Zero]], who are at or near Man, and Mega Man himself, who is an [[Brain Uploading|uploaded human]]. The [[Mega Man Star Force|FM-ians]] are life forms in their own right, and fall into Man category.
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** In ''[[City of Villains]]'', a Mastermind's robot pets are definitely Brick level in play, due to the game's sometimes-lacking AI. At least they're not as stupid as the Ninjas...
* In ''[[System Shock]] 2'', SHODAN is either at or slightly below god level. It certainly thinks that God is a good description of itself. But it's [[A God Am I|a bit insane]] [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|by that point]].
** Well, it may think it is Godlike, but it's more like Human level -- surelevel—sure, synthesized life, but humans by the year the game takes place could probably do that left and right. And sure, it altered reality, but only by using human-created technology. Finally, it needs you to run around doing everything for it since it is just a computer program after all.
*** Humans in ''System Shock 2'' don't seem to have much more sophisticated biological technologies than we do today. One part of SHODAN's mind constructed the ancestors of [[Hive Mind|the Many]] as a quick experiment. Humans may have created the FTL drive, but it took SHODAN to turn it into a universe-consuming reality warping weapon that would have made her a literal god. SHODAN needed the PC to begin the process as no other systems were handy and time was short. You are disposed of quickly enough once you usefulness ends and the AI becomes independent.
* ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' has GlaDOS, a rather curious and quite insane AI which appears to be about the Nobel-Bot level.
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== Web Comics ==
* Averted in ''[[Freefall]]'', where individual machines vary from non-sentient trucks or toys to self-aware but fairly stupid robotic moving devices to robots with the capacity for significantly innovative and creative thought. Dvorak is creative enough to be dangerous to himself and others, almost on the level of [[Discworld|Leonard of Quirm]]. Florence herself is almost certainly more intelligent that most humans, but not so much as to be off the scale. Some AI even modify themselves. There are no god-like robots -- yet -- sincerobots—yet—since most of them are built by the lowest bidder, though.
* ''[[Heliothaumic]]'' has [http://thaumic.net/2008/05/20/66-mommy-issues/ ARIA], a limited AI being created by Kiyohara Takako and other faculty members at Basotei University.
* Averted in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' where a scale known as the Henke/Ventura scale is used to measure the "intelligence" of an AI -- TAGAI—TAG, an AI optimized for running a starship who is human to sub-human in most other fields, is a 2.5, while Ennesby, who is capable of above-human capabilities across the board, is a 4. Regardless of their scale number, all AIs have advantages humans do not, such as near-instant reaction times.
** Ennesby also provides a good example of how the scale can change when the hardware (or programming) of the AI is altered, making their intelligence on a true sliding scale.
** And then there's [[Physical God|Petey]], who is currently {{spoiler|at war with the Andromeda galaxy}}.
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* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'', Roofus is sentient but pretty simple-minded. Since Princess Voluptua has taken on the task of raising and educating him, it remains to be seen just how intelligent he may become.
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' actually has robots whose intelligence is equal to ''really stupid'' human beings, on the ground that they can't be [[Turned Against Their Masters]] if they're too dumb to which end of the laser gun's for holding and which is for pointing.
** Also the digbots, which are somewhere between Robo-Monkeys and Average Joe. They are "happiest", so to speak, when digging elaborate tunnels and building new structures within them -- kindthem—kind of like mechanical worker ants -- butants—but they are sentient enough to "speak" [[Rebus Bubble|(sort of)]] and appear to have a sense of humor. Also, they consist on a diet of plastic.
* AIs in ''[[SSDD]]'' range all over the scale, most that are characters are at the "Average Joe Android" level but are implied to have evolved considerably or at least have had their [[Restraining Bolt|blocks]] removed. The Oracle, which is the first AI, borders on [[Deus Est Machina]].
** On the other hand, the [[Mega Corp|Maytec]] AI Trisha has so many restrictions on her intelligence that she's [[Artificial Stupidity|"dumber than a box of hair"]] despite [http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20061017.html supposedly having more processing power than the Oracle].
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* The archilects in ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' are actually known by many people as the AI Gods. At least one article suggests that people who live in major centers of civilization are likely to be less intelligent than any of their appliances.
** They have [http://orionsarm.com/eg-article/4802ba24e7401 their own sliding scale] that goes from S:0 (human-level) to S:6 (God with a capital G).
* [[Red vs. Blue]], being a [[Halo]] machinima, uses a modified version of Halo's interpretation of [[A Is]]. For the most part, however, [[A Is]] are neither just machines nor brilliant geniuses--theygeniuses—they're just people (albeit usually simplified version of those people, due to most of them being {{spoiler|only fragments of a complete AI}}) and react like anyone else. The one exception, who has really only been mentioned so far, is {{spoiler|the original, complete Alpha AI, who was probably more on par with number 4, which his very brief appearance in season 9 implied}}.
 
 
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* XANA from ''[[Code Lyoko]]''. Hard to tell which level he started out in the backstory, but is at least Nobel from Season 1 onward, and is constantly improving, maybe reaching Godlike intelligence by Season 4. [[Gone Horribly Wrong|Unfortunately for us,]] {{spoiler|[[AI Is a Crapshoot|he came to realize early that humans (Franz Hopper) were deceiving him all the time,]] [[Endofthe World As We Know It|so he decided to kill us all.]]}} So... yeah.
** His virtual goons, the Lyoko Monsters, stay all at the level of Bricks throughout the series, though... with maybe the exception of [[The Dragon|the Scyphozoa]].
** On the other hand, XANA's Specters are around Monkey-type at the beginning, and at least Average-Joe level once they start possessing humans; their most advanced form, the Polymorphic Clones, can be rather cunning. (Jérémie's creation -- thecreation—the William Clone --, however, [[The Ditz|isn't so smart]].)
 
 
== Real Life ==
* There's a very real question in computer science in the feasibility of "strong AI" versus "weak AI". A strong AI is the conscious, thinking, possibly self-aware entity. A weak AI is a glorified difference engine with language synthesis. Weak AI is a foregone conclusion -- theconclusion—the complexity of grammar and the limits of voice recognition are the only remaining stopgaps, and computers' ability to deal with those [[Science Marches On|is improving all the time.]] Strong AI is still a question of speculation, philosophy, life, the universe, and everything.
** "The only remaining stopgaps" indeed. Fluent natural language processing is an AI-Hard problem (from the mathematical term, NP-Hard). You probably can't do it without a true AI, but you can't make a true AI until you have fluent language processing...
** There is much more to a Strong AI than just communication capability, but that particular matter is hardly an absolute stopgap. A learning, language-specific weak AI should be perfectly sufficient once we get the algorithms right; research into human language-learning and related neurology will most likely play a major part in this development.
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