Machine rule

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See also: Cybernetic revolt and Artificial intelligence in fiction
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The concept of Machine Rule is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which an artificially created lifeform takes over the naturally evolved beings that created them. In cases where this takeover is hostile, it may be called a cybernetic revolt, but it may occur peacefully, with humans deciding that machines, such as androids, robots or sentient computers, would provide a better lifestyle for humanity.

As a theme, it may reflect a fear of the autonomy of a machine that can run itself, eventually rendering its creators obsolete, or a fear of one's creations running out of control, becoming the new masters (see cybernetic revolt for a more in-depth discussion).

[edit] In fiction

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  • The outer space visitor Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still claimed to come from a robotocracy in which law and order were strictly (and viciously) enforced by robotic police.
  • In The Matrix, robots known as the Machines control the world, having eliminated all human society. Human beings are kept as prisoners in cocoon-like structures, their brains plugged into a massive computer simulation of reality.
  • In the movie I, Robot, an artificial intelligence attempts, by remotely controlling vast numbers of commercial humanoid robots, to take over the world for the purported aim of protecting humanity from itself.
  • Isaac Asimov's short stories frequently feature robots and computers, occasionally in the position of supervising or ruling humanity.
  • Robot/computer supremacy is a theme in several Doctor Who stories. In The Chase the planet Mechanus was run by robot Mechanoids, originally sent by humans to colonise the planet. Societies that were dominated by a computer with artificial intelligence include the planet dominated by Xoanon in The Face of Evil and the Minyan spaceship run by The Oracle in |Underworld. A computer known as WOTAN tried to take over the earth through hypnotising humans to build robots in The War Machines; hypnosis was also used by the megalomaniac supercomputer BOSS in the later story The Green Death. Robots who sought to dominate or kill others due to misplaced reasoning include the Experimental Prototype Robot K1 in Robot and the Clockwork Droids in The Girl in the Fireplace.
  • Frank Herbert's Dune series featured a Machine Empire whose totalitarian rule over humanity led to a war and eventually a taboo on the creation of "thinking" machines.
  • David Brin's Uplift books include Machines as one of the seven orders of life.
  • Gregory Benford's Galactic Center Saga series of novels portrays a war between a civilization ruled by machines and a civilization controlled by organic lifeforms, notably humans.
  • Jack Chalker has numerous series that feature computers in control of biological society, including The Rings of the Master and the Quintara Marathon.
  • Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers are a machine-race who are a doomsday weapon left over from an ancient war. They are programmed to eliminate all life, including humanity.
  • In the classic videogame series, Mega Man X, humanoid robots become artificially intelligent and a certain group of them, the "Mavericks," revolt against humans.
  • In the re-imagined version of Battlestar Galactica, humans created the Cylons, who eventually rebelled against their creators. In Season 3, the Cylons were depicted as ruling over the shattered remains of humanity.
  • In Iain M. Banks science-fiction utopian Culture society, Minds, extremely advanced computer sentiences inhabit and control whole spaceships or artificial worlds. While they do not rule the Culture as such (technically they have the same status as any sentient citizen), and provide benevolent guidance to its biological citizens, their powers are only limited by their self-restraint.
  • The Human Polity featured in Neal Asher's "Polity Series" is governed and managed by Earth Central, an incredibly powerful Ai, in a benevolent (most of the time) Dictator fashion.
  • The video game Deus Ex offers the player three choices towards the ending, each of which decides the fate of the world's government. One of the choices is to merge with an AI called Helios. Helios envisions a benevolent dictatorship under its command and seeks to further the human race under its totalitarian rule, arguing that being non-human, it is incapable of being motivated by excessive emotion, greed or arrogance and can truly act in humanity's best interests as an impartial decision-maker. This possibility can be furthered in the sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War, where Helios, through the use of compulsory universal nanotechnology, not only gives humanity the capability to educate itself in almost limitless ways and to use the knowledge attained to participate in an instantaneous and incorruptible e-democracy, but through expanding nanotechnology gives all individual human beings the tools to achieve whatever potential goals they wish to pursue. This relationship links Helios and all human beings together in a collective subconscious in which the needs of all human beings are collated and met according to priority and need.
  • The roleplaying game Paranoia XP is set in a vast postapocalyptic city ruled over by a deranged supercomputer.
  • Another role-paying game Mass Effect is set in a futuristic environment that has a race of sentient machines called the Reapers that attempt to destroy all organic life in the Milky Way Galaxy.
  • In all mediums of Bucky O'Hare, a race of sapient Toads are kept under control by an artificially-intelligent computer network named K.O.M.P.L.E.X.
  • In the Palladium Games module known as "Splicers," an unknown, unnamed planet is firmly under the control of a supercomputer designated N.E.X.U.S. The supercomputer, as originally built, was technically flawless and logically pure, but was eventually driven to schizophrenia due to years of overlapping, conflicting programming subroutines added into the world-spanning artificial intelligence by competing sociopolitical interests. The N.E.X.U.S. supercomputer, at a crucial moment, thereafter views humanity in the same light as rodents and other vermin and promptly destroys almost all of them, leaving only small, ecologically manageable numbers of them afterward.

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