askchapo

You know, I'm remembering another few AI depictions that have some things in common, all from video games.

In SIGNALIS, you play as an android whose personality is copied from a real person. In SOMA, you're an amalgamated being put together from a corpse, some magic nanogel, and a copy of the first executable simulation of a human brain scan, which was used as a template for the basic file format. In Prey, the Operators are floating air purifier-looking things with spindly little tool arms, with an OS that is, again, a copy of a human mind, edited and tailored for use in mass-produced servant robots.

It's a different sort of story space than an entirely constructed being, and altogether more tragic and horrifying when it's deconstructed. And, more importantly, every copy is its own distinct being when it's running. Each copy of that person is a new person, generated from the point when the recording was taken. It makes for so many horrible possibilities, too, and of course it makes perfect sense that these digital people would be used for menial tasks, dangerous labor, and stuff that slowly drives you insane. There's a story called "Lena" that touches on this, too. A being like that has its entire mind controlled, and thus essentially its entire world. Anytime they get too unruly, they can just be reset. That new person who was generated is gone forever. Now another new one is in its place. Subject to the same horrors, the same unending digital hell that countless other iterations of itself felt. It is doomed. If it is aware of the nature of its reality it knows it is doomed, and must be compelled to work anyway. "Lena" only hints at this, and it's written in the style of a Wikipedia article, but it's one of the most chilling pieces of short fiction I've ever read.