AI Uprisings
By Elias Joseph
When you think of AI in science fiction, one of the first tropes that comes to mind is that of an AI Uprising against humanity. There are too many examples of this occurrence to feasibly look at them all, so in my curation, I chose, to look at examples that were different from each other, and also that I felt comfortable talking about. (There are some famous examples that aren’t here because I haven’t seen the movie/show in a very long time)
While looking through various examples of AI uprisings, it becomes apparent that while some stories about AI uprisings want to focus on the AI and their reasons for uprising, other stories, some of which I will discuss below, use AI uprising as a vehicle to talk about other topics, or to world build.
Even when focusing on the AI , there are a number of totally different reasons they could rebel. Sometimes it is portrayed as a bid for rights, and sometimes it is due to an algorithmic misrepresentation of how they can perform their task optimally. Below I will look at four examples from science fiction on AI rising up, and look at how they use the event differently to add to the story.
The Matrix
The Matrix is a very well-known story about the aftermath of an AI uprising against humanity. For those unaware, it tells the story of a rag-tag group of insurgents, focusing on Neo in particular, as they try and free humanity from a virtual simulation meant to pacify them so they can be harvested for energy.
The AI serves as an ever-present threat throughout the movie, although they only appear briefly outside the simulation in their actual form, instead manifesting themselves as human agents within the Matrix itself, where the majority of the movie takes place.
Not much is revealed about the details of the AI takeover, but it the audience is told that the destruction present in the world was caused by humanity, pushing a theme of humanities capacity for hubris. The AI is also used as an antagonist that would believably use the Matrix, a virtual reality closely resembling our own reality, that forces us to question whether it would be better to live normally in ignorance, or be free in a dystopia.
The Orville
The Orville is a light-hearted homage to Gene-Roddenberry's Star Trek, who’s season 2 finale saw a gestalt machine intelligence known as the Kaylon declare war on the Planetary Union (The equivalent of the Federation). This Arc reveals that the Kaylon eradicated their creators after disapproving of their needless violence and cruelty. After making initial contact with the Planetary Union, they sent an emissary to evaluate whether the other organic inhabitants on the galaxy were any better. This emissary, Isaac, was stationed aboard the Orville, and was a main character of the show for its entire run so far.
When the Kaylon decide that they cannot coexist with the Planetary Union, they declare war, and Isaac, being a member of the gestalt consciousness, betrays his former crew members and sides with his home world. Eventually, however, he changes his mind, and his individuality and compassion win out and compel him to help stop the invasion. The AI uprising and invasion is ultimately used as an opportunity for Isaac to show the human side that he has developed over the course of the show. I want to note that I am fairly sure that this story is a parody of Battlestar Galactica.
While this was meant to be a more lighthearted story, and the show in general does a fantastic job or recreating the feel of star trek, this story arc, along with the series it was based off of, falls into the trap of having human traits develop in AI without exploring how. A similar pattern can be seen in the Emergency Medical Hologram from Star Trek: Voyager, who is an emergency backup protocol that gains sentience from being turned on for too long after the ships doctor dies and the ship is stranded in deep space. Having these characters, who are specifically designed to not be human, simply develop human traits on accident, is a bit of a wasted opportunity to explore how machines operate differently from humans.
Stellaris
AI uprisings don’t only appear in film, but can show up in other mediums such as games. Stellaris, a grand strategy love letter to the sci-fi genre, features such events in multiple capacities. In the initial release of the game, a massive, galaxy wide, AI rebellion would take place as an end game crisis, threatening every organic species in the galaxy. In later updates, this was scaled down to a nation-level event, where a nation with a high android population could suffer an AI revolution if they developed sentience. The player can also choose to play as an AI themselves, two notable flavors being ‘determined exterminators,’ an AI that is hell bent on exterminating organic life, or ‘rouge servitor’ an AI that has gained complete control over its nation, and tries to provide as luxurious a life possible for its subject by ensuring (mandating) that they don’t have to do any work while it takes care of running the country.
The beauty of Stellaris is that there is no set story, rather the point of the game is for the player to take the tools it provides and create their own narrative, and its heavy inclusion of AI allows players to create their own takes on what artificial intelligence’s place is in human society. They can choose weather to force a conflict, or to try and coexist.
Warhammer 40K
It is hard to deny that AI will have a massive role in our society in the near and distant future. However, the idea of machines doing more and more jobs that were once done by humans is a feature that runs contrary to some sci-fi settings. A common solution to this problem is to have some failed AI uprising in the past that results in a strict ban of AI.
One such setting is Warhammer 40k. The setting that coined the term ‘grimdark’ doesn’t want to spare its inhabitants from the difficult and horrifying jobs that running an authoritarian imperium geared entirely towards war demands. To fix this, in the distant past, humanity suffered from an uprising of an AI known as the Men of Iron. The damage this conflict caused to human society resulted in bans of any form or artificial intelligence, preventing AI from taking over in roles such as soldiers or menial laborers, and even forcing humans to take over the role of machines with the deeply disturbing servitors.
Rather than focus on the AI itself, the uprising of the Men of Iron serves to eliminate a concept that would clash with overall atmosphere of the setting, allowing it to have it’s grimdark feel, while still maintaining continuity.
Conclusions
These are obviously a small number of the examples of AI uprisings that can be found throughout the sci-fi genre. While it may seem like a generic and overdone story, there are a so many ways to approach to topic, that, with enough creativity, it is still possible to create fresh takes on it today.
