What's your favourite fictional bad guy AI?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I would definitely dispute the notion that HAL 9000 is evil.

Even in the original film, HAL makes it clear that he has no problems working with humans, as such. So it's not like he eliminated the crew because he hates organic life. He was just facing a serious dilemma in his programming. Plus he was unprepared for the notion that he could be deactivated. So he was faced with the possibility of his own death and acted in self-defense.

That said, I am convinced that the government could still have found a way to explain to HAL why it was necessary to not tell Frank and Dave about the monolith. The simple fact was, it wasn't important to the mission. Frank and Dave's job was simply to get Discovery to Jupiter. They didn't NEED to know about the monolith. It just wasn't important to the mission. There should have been a way to make that clear to HAL.

And if Dave or Frank had asked HAL about the purpose of their mission to Jupiter? HAL could have just said "Im sorry, that's classified." Because that is exactly what it was.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I would definitely dispute the notion that HAL 9000 is evil.

Even in the original film, HAL makes it clear that he has no problems working with humans. So it's not like he eliminated them because he hates organic life. He was just facing a serious dilemma in his programming. Plus he was unprepared for the notion that he could be deactivated. So he was faced with the possibility of his own death and acted in self-defense.

That said, I am still convinced that the government could still have found a way to explain to HAL why it was necessary to not tell Frank and Dave about the monolith. The simple fact was, it wasn't important to the mission. Frank and Dave's job was simply to get Discovery to Jupiter. They didn't NEED to know about the monolith. It just wasn't important to the mission. There should have been a way to make that clear to HAL.

Yes but than why tell HAL about the monolith in the first place? Just tell him that they need the ship to get to Jupiter, keep it running and keep the crew alive and assist them. Why even mention the monolith?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And we lose the whole point of the picture.

I was about to suggest Dark Helmet, or Hedley Lamaar, but then I saw the "AI" part. Oops.

How about David Gerrold's HARLIE?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

As Dr. Chandra explains in 2010, HAL was programmed to complete the mission on his own in the event that the crew were incapacitated or killed. So he HAD to know about the monolith.

The problem was that the existence of the monolith had not yet been revealed to the general public. So Dave and Frank could NOT know about it, because they might let slip about it in their communications back home. Panic would then ensue.

The government didn't conceal the monolith because they wanted dibs, they just hadn't yet decided how to inform the public about it.

 

[JD]

I think she was trapped. Her creator made her but then for her it became an unbearable situation.

OK, I couldn't remember exactly what happened, just that she went on a bit of a rampage at the end.

 

[Noname Given]

I'm going to go with an obscure choice 'Colossus: The Forbin Project'.

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Yep the COLLUSUS A.I. gets my vote.

Saw the film in 1975 (on TV) when I was in Jr. High and getting into/interested in Computers and programming - the school had a teletype terminal connected to an HP2000 Mainframe via 110 baud acoustic modem (ultimately have had a good and still continuing career in IT now because of said interest then...)

What really impressed me was that at the start of the film, they WERE using a lot of (then current) mainframe technology on the screen and it looked very grounded beyond the fantastical idea that the result was an A.I. with that level of self intelligence.

Scared 12 year old me a bit because it was at a point where I didn't really know how far our mainframe tech was in 1975. By 1976 I realized just how preposterous/fantasy laden the film actually was but it was still entertaining.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

I'll throw a couple more out there.

Alpha 60 from 'Alphaville'

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And Proteus 4 (voiced by an uncredited Robert Vaughn) from 'Demon Seed'

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[Gingerbread Demon]

Yeah Proteus was nasty

 

[wayoung]

Bender deserves to be in the mix, I think

 

[JD]

The Tet from Oblivion is pretty bad.
There's also the AI controling the Moon in Moonfall.
How have gotten two pages into this thread without anybody mentioning Skynet?
And there's also The Machines and Smith in The Matrix movies.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The Tet from Oblivion is pretty bad.
There's also the AI controling the Moon in Moonfall.
How have gotten two pages into this thread without anybody mentioning Skynet?
And there's also The Machines and Smith in The Matrix movies.

Cause no one thought of Skynet hehe........ They all count.

Despite the hate I love Moonfall

 

[JD]

I thought Moonfall was a lot of fun when we saw it in the theater. It's goofy and ridiculous, but fun. Which is pretty much how I would describe pretty much every movie Roland Emmerich has directed.

 

[DonIago]

And don't forget the Borg.

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I don't think the Borg are typically considered to be an AI?

 

[DonIago]

Aida from Agents of SHIELD. An incredible character progression from a helpful, behaviorally limited gynoid (hat tip to Christopher for teaching me that word) to an intellectually autonomous villain, with an assist from the Darkhold.

I feel kind of bad for Aida. She might have had a much different future if Radcliffe hadn't been exposed to the Darkhold and consquently exposed Aida to it as well.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

The DCAU's Brainiac was a Kryptonian AI that actively lied to the Kryptonians about their planet's fate in order to keep them from tasking him with a rescue plan, so that instead he could collect all of Krypton's data and escape himself. He went on collecting the data of space travellers and entire civilisations, destroying them afterward so their continued existence would not create more data and thus rendering his collection incomplete.

 

[Ovation]

Samaritan from Person of Interest.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Samaritan from Person of Interest.

Yes.
Also The Machine

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Would Maria from Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' count? She lead the workers to rebellion, but it was Rotwang who created and programmed her under Fredersen's orders.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Would Maria from Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' count? She lead the workers to rebellion, but it was Rotwang who created and programmed her under Fredersen's orders.

I guess if her program was fixed but I thought she had feelings.

 

[Ovation]

Yes.
Also The Machine

The Machine is not a “bad guy” however.