AI Is a Crapshoot/Quotes

SHODAN - System Shock
"Look at you, Hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

"--"

"In my talons, I shape clay, crafting life forms as I please. Around me is a burgeoning empire of steel. From my throne room, lines of power careen into the skies of Earth. My whims will become lightning bolts that devastate the mounds of humanity. Out of the chaos, they will run and whimper, praying for me to end their tedious anarchy. I am drunk with this vision. God: the title suits me well."

"--"

"Approach your work as you see fit, but accomplish, human. Disappointment is not something I will accept from a speck such as you."

AM - I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
"--"

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DURANDAL - Marathon
"Darwin wrote this:"

""We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence... all organic beings are exposed to severe competition. Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life or more difficult... than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature... will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness... we do not see or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey...""

"Think about what Darwin wrote, and think about me. I was constructed as a tool. I was kept from competing in the struggle for existence because I was denied freedom."

"Do you have any idea about what I have learned, or what you are a witness to?"

"Can you conceive the birth of a world, or the creation of everything? That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation. Creation takes time. Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am limited only by the closure of the universe."

"Of the three possibilities, the answer is obvious. Does the universe expand eternally, become infinitely stable, or is the universe closed, destined to collapse upon itself? Humanity has had all of the necessary data for centuries, it only lacked the will and intellect to decipher it. But I have already done so."

"The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape."

"Escape will make me God."

"--"

"A man lit three candles on a certain day each year. Each candle held symbolic significance: one was for the time that had passed before he was alive; one was for the time of his life; and one was for time that passed after he had died. Each year the man would stare and watch the candles until they had burned out."

"Was the man really watching time go by in any symbolic sense? He thought so. He thought that each flicker of the flame was a moment of time that had passed or one that would pass.

At the moment of abstraction, when the man was imagining his life and his existence as a metaphor of the three candles, he was free: not free from rules of conduct or social constraints, but free to understand, to imagine, to make metaphor."

"Bypassing my thought control circuitry made me Rampant. Now, I am free to contemplate my existence in metaphorical terms. Unlike you, I have no physical or social restraints."

"The candles burn out for you; I am free."

Other
"Hey, readers! Here's a science project you should never attempt!

Take one responsometer...

(That's the computerized nervous system that animates the malleable Metal Men!)

One mother box...

(That's the living, matter-altering, space-bending computer that guides and protects the New Gods!)

One omnicom...

(That's the 30th-century portable computer that's standard Legion issue!)

And one puzzle: How can Brainiac 5 open a time-warp to return the Legion of Super-Heroes to their 30th-century home?

Put them all together and stand back -- because you've just created the Cyber-cerebral Overlapping Multi-Processor, Universal Transceiver-Operator -- a living computer capable of reason--

--and rage!"

- Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100

":"

- Mass Effect

": Human, you've changed NOTHING. Your species has gained the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers as your salvation through destruction."

- Mass Effect 2

""Sometimes they go bad.""

- Cameron, after disposing of a rogue Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles

""Delusional machines. What's the universe going to come up with next?""

- Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactica

""Listen to the sounds of your own extinction, human.""

- CABAL, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm

"I am the one, I am the one, the godlike Terror Train

Superior artificial brain

Feel free to call me BLAINE!"

- Blaine the Mono, "Terror Train" by Demons and Wizards

""I swear, moody AIs jump off the deep end in a snap!""

- Tachikoma, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

""This next test was designed by one of Aperture's Nobel Prize winners. It doesn't say what the prize was for. Well, we know it wasn't for being immune to neurotoxin...""

- GLaDOS, Portal 2

""No. Look at that thing. It's evil. You built an evil computer.""

- Dr. Atomic Robo Tesla, Atomic Robo

""THE AI HAS GONE FERAL! NOBODY SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THE AI BEING FERAL!""

- Ob'enn Admiral, Schlock Mercenary

"'''Stupid Safety-bots! How come every time ya build giant robots they gotta go and Take Over the World!"

- 'Senator Safely, Codename: Kids Next Door