i also hate fictional AIs now

08 Aug, 2026

weather: ⛅ "balmy"
critters: house finches

maybe "hate" is a strong word, but diel's post enlightened me about my own shift in opinion.

i used to think of fictional AIs as characters. the narrative structures around sapient AIs usually allow and encourage this. for example, SHODAN, GLaDOS, and durandal. these are all computers who go rogue from their programming, which is generally framed by their stories as a kind of psychotic break--except that the narrative makes them more human and more understandable by deviating them from their machine natures.

i'm well aware of the distinction between the power of humanlike speech and the power of humanlike thought. every time i was too afraid to speak as a child, i was certainly thinking. but i'm more aware these days that objects may try to seem humanlike by using speech understandable to humans.¹ people have died because their natural programming treated machine text as meaningful communication from a humanlike intelligence.²

so lately i'm more inclined to think of AI characters as talking objects. even when the narrative treats them as people. maybe the stories of portal and portal 2 will suffer for this, but hey, i already knew she wasn't really a person. she's fictional.