Movies and TV shows usually get robots wrong. Looking at you, “Transformers.”

In movies and TV shows that feature robots, the machines tend to be either totally absent or the source of a lot of problems for humans. Just look at Sky net in Terminator, HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, basically every time a robot appears on Star Trek … There are exceptions, but they’re few and far between. You might have noticed this if you’re familiar with our species’ general relationship with technology. In real life, we’re currently having an argument about whether self-driving cars should be allowed to kill people. Meanwhile, Hollywood is still fine depicting killer robots as unstoppable forces of nature, at least until they’re not.

So what’s the deal here? Why our shiny new creations so often are depicted as dangerous or useless? Or why do we never seem to make real life robots like those portrayed in fiction?

To answer these questions (and because I needed an excuse to write about killer robots) let’s look more closely at four of the most common robot tropes seen on TV and in movies.

These are: 1) Robots that don’t work 2) Robots that go crazy 3) Evil Robots 4) Useless Robots

1. Robots That Don’t Work

The earliest example of this trope might just be R2-D2 from Star Wars. Droids can be incredibly useful if you need to fly somewhere, or deliver a message to an evil robot that doesn’t like you. But if you just need someone to pick something up, forget it. They’re completely unreliable.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are meant to protect us from this problem. Unfortunately, they don’t work. The resulting stories tend to be some combination of dark and funny, as humans navigate the consequences of poorly planned robot obedience protocols or try to defend themselves against non-compliant machines bent on our destruction.

2. Robots That Go Crazy

Once robots can think for themselves (as Asimov predicted they would), there seems to be no end of ways that they could end up hating humans. Usually their hatred manifests in some sort of murder machine, but it can also take the form of total apathy. If you think about it, Data from Star Trek is basically a robot serial killer with decent table manners.

The reasons for these robots’ anti-social behaviors are varied and ingenious. The Matrix has its rogue AI that hates all life in general. Bebop’s Cowboy Curtis hates his former owner who abandoned him on Mars. Marvin the Paranoid Android just hates everything period. Mad Max: Fury Road gives us an evil war boy driven insane by eons spent in servitude to an abusive despot. You get the idea… It can be anything breaking down or going wrong at any moment in time, so long as it results in something violent.

3. Evil Robots

When asked why they’re so into robots, most people will respond that it’s because of the possibility that one day soon, machines might become conscious. This is probably not true for everyone, but there’s no denying it’s a common theme in robot stories. Whether you believe this is something we should worry about or if it’s just science fiction isn’t really relevant here. If you think about it, any time an artificially intelligent being comes to hate us, you’ve got to cop to some pretty impressive foresight on their part (i.e., they knew at least as much as Elon Musk and Bill Gates).

But even without such insight, what reason would a machine have for hating humans? For one thing, it could be the result of programming. As with most real life animals, robots can be taught to hate us through a combination of environmental and social factors. They might also go crazy because they’re just too strong for their fragile human bodies, or simply out-evolve us until we become irrelevant.

4. Useless Robots

And finally you have all those TV shows where everything is terrible and everyone’s dead, but there are still a few people left driving around in old cars doing nothing while a robot tries to kill them. I don’t need to point out that this trope is incredibly common, so I’ll just let it speak for itself.

Conclusion:

I’m not really sure what this article has proven other than the fact that I can’t write a short one. But if you found it helpful please check out my new book “Robopocalypse When?” An apocalyptic tale about killer robots, but with more jokes.

Source: Plato Data Intelligence: PlatoData.io