I know this is probably a common topic. For me, I’m not sure if it’s a “trope” or just totally misinformed writing, but it’s how many authors approach alcoholism. Some examples are Girl on the Train and The House Across the Lake, among HUNDREDS. If anyone else here has struggled with alcoholism, you know it’s not just "i woke up after downing an entire bottle of whiskey but was able to shower, down a cup of coffee, and solve a murder. "
As a sci fi reader, the self proclaimed “totally objective, emotionless, logic based” AI character that turns out to not be objective and has its own motivations. You see it coming from a mile away every time because a truly emotionless character would be boring as fuck.
Hey, you leave Murderbot out of this!
But the most logical thing is to murder EVERYONE! It is the most logical beep boop beep boop
Murderbot hardly self identifies as objective and emotionless though.
Baymax I my favorite subversion of the trope. OSP had a great video that goes over this
I would disagree with that sentiment. A truly “totally objective, emotionless, logic based” character can work, but the author needs to understand how AI, analysis and algorithms work and the limitations and quirks of such AIs. I am no AI scientist, but in my field of study, Economics, we do a lot of empirical analysis, which could be supplemented with AI. In Empirical Economics a lot of policies are analysed, and we are able to achieve objective results of those policies, but the evaluation of said results cannot be done by purely objective means.
As an illustrating hypothetical, there is a policy that affects two groups of people, A and B. The policy subtracts income from the A group and gives it to the B group through a transfer. Should you implement the policy? In most cases, unless you have a situation in which the policy makes both groups worse off, you cannot objectively evaluate the policy, because you need to assign welfare weights to these groups.
Further AIs and algorithms can be objective, emotionless and logic-based but still be wrong or biased, because data can be biased, incomplete or incorrect. It’s why collecting good data is so important for science. Further, why in Economics there is always the question of intuition. Certain result are more plausible than others and those results that run counter to intuition need to be double-checked.
All of this could be explored in such an AI character.
Haha you’re giving me flashbacks to micro. I studied Econ as well. That is a good point and an AI that operates by logic in spite of its emotions could be a compelling story, but in my reading (Hyperion, Blindsight, Ancillary Justice) it’s used more of a plot twist than explored as a theme.
I am not even talking about an AI with emotions that acts against them. I am talking about an AI has no emotions, but acts on pure logic, and the goals and axioms given to it by its creators. You can explore all sorts of questions with such an AI.
As for your examples, I know the sapient AI trope is used very often. I was much more “annoyed” at you stating that an emotionless AI character would always be boring.
Those types of characters actually work great as villains, so long as the writer commits. T-1000 from Terminator 2, The Judge from Blood Meridian, Baron Harkonnen from Dune…
The real trope is when they suddenly develop empathy at their defeat. That’s what devalues the entire character imo.