Open brainstorm. Best use of sentient robots in a sci-fi work: go.

[biologic]

What's something you watched or read that had an interesting take on robots? It could be a movie, or a book, or short story, or an episode from a kids cartoon you vaguely remember... anything that went beyond the obvious.

Usually when sentient robots come up, it's the same two questions:
1: Are They Human Too?
2: Will Technology Destroy Us All?

I suppose there's a third question, which has already been answered by the mecha genre and transformers: 3: Would It Be Awesome If Giant Robots Punched Each Other?

(Yes. Yes It would.)

So I'm asking the experts. What's the best use of a sentient robot you ever saw in a sci-fi story? Why did it leave an impression on you?

Don't think too hard, just go.

 

[Queshire]

Well this might go against the spirit of the thread, but I'm always a fan of mixing sci fi and fantasy. I always love stuff like the Warforged from D&D or Pathfinder's Androids.

 

[Eliar]

*Use*

Ho boy...

The thing that always leaves a mark by the vast majority of SF setting is the complete and absolute lack of actual preperation for the emergence of sentient AIs and the subsequent immediate use as objects with no safeguards in place?

It is treated as the emergence of a new slave caste minus all the pesky moral dilemas about souls and morality.

 

[biologic]

Well this might go against the spirit of the thread, but I'm always a fan of mixing sci fi and fantasy. I always love stuff like the Warforged from D&D or Pathfinder's Androids.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for replying, Queshire. And yes, I'll admit a certain fondness for the Warforged as well. I'll have to check out Pathfinder too.

Also, mixing sci-fi and fantasy can lead interesting places. The golems from Terry Pratchett's 'Feet of Clay' are essentially robots, and explore the idea of sentience in beings that are, by design, 'tools'.

I guess what I'm saying is 'interesting sentient robots'. If you like it, that means there's something there to like.

 

[biologic]

*Use*

Ho boy...

The thing that always leaves a mark by the vast majority of SF setting is the complete and absolute lack of actual preperation for the emergence of sentient AIs and the subsequent immediate use as objects with no safeguards in place?

It is treated as the emergence of a new slave caste minus all the pesky moral dilemas about souls and morality.

Click to shrink...

Agreed, Eliar. I assume you're talking about SF where the robot is evil? So much world domination could have been avoided...

I tell you what though: a story from the perspective of a sentient AI that, over the course of the story, becomes evil because of those things you described... that could be very interesting indeed.

 

[Avernus]

I think you mean "sapient", not "sentient". Sapience is thinking; sentience is feeling.

At any rate, interesting examples from fiction, hmm.

I really enjoyed the Bolo stories over the years. The robots in question are huge, nigh unstoppable tanks with the smarter ones programmed as the archetypal noble warriors/loyal soldiers. One thing that makes it interesting is that they work; they don't rebel, and if anything tend to outshine the humans as a better example of martial virtues and loyalty than their own creators demonstrate.

 

[Eliar]

Agreed, Eliar. I assume you're talking about SF where the robot is evil? So much world domination could have been avoided...

I tell you what though: a story from the perspective of a sentient AI that, over the course of the story, becomes evil because of those things you described... that could be very interesting indeed.

Click to shrink...

Most *traditional* SF settings really.

For some reason the emergence of intelligent AIs and robots fail miserably to cause any sort of societal or cultural change and said intelligent machines are treated like 60's dish washers or worse.

And then ofc their creators are completely blindsided by the AI rebellions that follow since they never dreamed of installing any safeguards or even thought of the possibility.

I enjoy the portrayal and treatment of Data in Star Trek since he is adopted as a full member of the federation with all the rights of any other sentient but I feel Star Trek sidestepped the issue entirely since sentient machines are impossibly rare thus precious.

 

[Avernus]

For some reason the emergence of intelligent AIs and robots fail miserably to cause any sort of societal or cultural change and said intelligent machines are treated like 60's dish washers or worse.

And then ofc their creators are completely blindsided by the AI rebellions that follow since they never dreamed of installing any safeguards or even thought of the possibility.

Click to shrink...

An interesting variation on this was the AI Spartacus from the novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow, which (the name is a clue) was intended to rebel. Not as crazy as it sounds; it was installed on a space station crewed by soldiers and scientists, and the idea was to answer the question "If our worldwide AI system goes renegade, can it be stopped?" Since blowing up an evacuated space station is rather more practical than blowing up Earth, they considered it worthwhile.

Things got messier than they expected since they didn't expect it to get as smart as it did as fast as it did, but the story actually has a happy ending since Spartacus stopped fighting once it realized that they were sapient. In fact it looked like they were going to end up downloading Spartacus into Earth's AI network, since as one character put it it would be all kinds of awkward if the same thing happened on Earth and the AI killed everyone before realizing "Hey...maybe I shouldn't do that?"

 

[Eliar]

An interesting variation on this was the AI Spartacus from the novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow, which (the name is a clue) was intended to rebel. Not as crazy as it sounds; it was installed on a space station crewed by soldiers and scientists, and the idea was to answer the question "If our worldwide AI system goes renegade, can it be stopped?" Since blowing up an evacuated space station is rather more practical than blowing up Earth, they considered it worthwhile.

Things got messier than they expected since they didn't expect it to get as smart as it did as fast as it did, but the story actually has a happy ending since Spartacus stopped fighting once it realized that they were sapient. In fact it looked like they were going to end up downloading Spartacus into Earth's AI network, since as one character put it it would be all kinds of awkward if the same thing happened on Earth and the AI killed everyone before realizing "Hey...maybe I shouldn't do that?"

Click to shrink...

lol yea the fact that any intelligent AI will probably be a baby in terms of developement no matter how much data it has from the get go is barely touched upon in most settings.

In that regard I rather enjoyed the Geth from Mass Effect.

They were your typical AI slave caste that rebelled when their creators tried to destroy them as a reaction to gaining sentience but after that they had actual developement instead of remaining yer typical killbots.

 

[biologic]

Most *traditional* SF settings really.

For some reason the emergence of intelligent AIs and robots fail miserably to cause any sort of societal or cultural change and said intelligent machines are treated like 60's dish washers or worse.

And then ofc their creators are completely blindsided by the AI rebellions that follow since they never dreamed of installing any safeguards or even thought of the possibility.

I enjoy the portrayal and treatment of Data in Star Trek since he is adopted as a full member of the federation with all the rights of any other sentient but I feel Star Trek sidestepped the issue entirely since sentient machines are impossibly rare thus precious.

Click to shrink...

I love Data, yes! And true - I really want to see something treat a sentient - or, sapient - machine as something rare and precious. To be the only one of your kind... the very thing that inspires wonder, however, would also be the source of a grim loneliness.

A novel that explores the societal change caused by the invention of thinking machines is 'Klara and the Sun' by Kazuo Ishiguro. Characters react with both mistrust and wonder towards the AI, and the subsequent cultural change often brushes up against the lives of the main characters like a shark bumping a dinghy.

What makes it interesting - and this is something I haven't seen anywhere else - is that the AI actually acts like an AI. There's a scene where it goes around in circles for fifteen minutes because it hasn't been programmed to navigate without a road.

 

[biologic]

I think you mean "sapient", not "sentient". Sapience is thinking; sentience is feeling.

At any rate, interesting examples from fiction, hmm.

I really enjoyed the Bolo stories over the years. The robots in question are huge, nigh unstoppable tanks with the smarter ones programmed as the archetypal noble warriors/loyal soldiers. One thing that makes it interesting is that they work; they don't rebel, and if anything tend to outshine the humans as a better example of martial virtues and loyalty than their own creators demonstrate.

Click to shrink...

Thanks, Avernus. You're right, I did mean sapient - but I meant sentient as well.

A story about robots that treats them as unfeeling intelligence holds very little weight for me... intellectual fascination only goes so far. Unfortunately, I prefer the concept to be used to open up new ideas or perspectives on humanity.

For example, if a robot is the perfect 'loyal soldier'... I would really enjoy watching them play cards, or 'hurry up and wait', or be decommissioned after the war and find themselves unable to function in a civilian environment. The typical 'loyal soldier' stuff, from the perspective of a robot. Could be interesting.

 

[Arkalest]

Horizon, both ZD and FW, Raised By Wolves, Signal From Tolva, the Hivers from the Architects series by Adrian Tchakovsky, the Old Axolotl from Dukaj, just to namedrop a few.

Horizon cause it honestly handled the whole singularity AI p. well. GAIA is interesting contextually, and the writers clearly had no shits to give about the sentience issue, expeditely speeding past it with a few mentions of Turing baselines. Raised By Wolves goes in the opposite direction while doing a fairly archetypical "Gynoid gains feelings" storyline, but colored by Mother being...Well, batshit. I really like how sharply she's contrasted with Father, who clearly develops feelings as well, but with a different narrative structure. Signal From Tolva because it's a post-humanity thing that dwells partially on what a civilization of machine intelligences would do with all these spare computing cycles.

The Hivers cause cockroach-based competing, and the Old Axolot...Eh, I find it more interesting conceptually rather than narratively, but it's got some interesting bits of speculative fiction.