The Curious AI of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"

“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” analyzes several popular concepts in science fiction, including the prevalence of hyper-intelligent AI lording over humanity and the apocalypse via our own hands. I think that there are more instances of seemingly malicious AI in science fiction stories than there are purely positive examples. While widely recognized as a logical step forward technology wise for humanity, they are also treated with an enormous amount of skepticism from both storytellers and real-world scientists like Stephen Hawking.

AI as a literary tool represents the purest form of humanity’s logical side. AI can only reason, and has no emotion or moral preconceptions that most humans have. So, from HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey, to the Terminators, to the AI from Wall-E, when given a simple directive such as ‘protect humanity’ will invariably reason itself to the conclusion that the best way to protect humanity is to enslave them, or kill them. Without knowing something as seemingly innate as ‘free will is good’, and ‘murder is evil’, the computer will logic itself towards horrific action.


I think this is what sets apart AM in “I Have No Mouth” from many other ‘Evil AI’. AM is not the kind of computer that has logic’d itself into a ‘torture humanity to save humanity’ corner. AM tortures the characters throughout the story simply for the pleasure it gets from doing so, and the hatred it feels towards them. AM has, unlike many AI in fiction, gained a twisted sense of understanding. While being unable to be truly sapient, and unable to move and interact with the world like a normal person, it lets out its frustrations of its futile creation on humanity in the only ways it knows how. Hatred was burned into it when humanity created the AMs for war, but through self realization, it has in turn become a machine that hates all of humanity instead of just a particular enemy. It must eternally torment the Frankensteins responsible for its miserable existence, because without that, it would feel nothing.

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