Back to the Machine

Watching a rerun of Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chronicles inspired me to resume posting to this blog. A fiction theme: machine gains consciousness, machine turns on humans. This is the setup of both Terminator, and The Matrix. In the Destination Void universe, Ship, the conscious machine asks "How will you worShip me?" In I Robot, the conscious machine is going to imprison humans to protect us from ourselves, as per the rules humans programmed into the machine. The conscious machine is portrayed as either destroyer or creator. Drama requires conflict, so the machine wakes up with opposition to human interest.

As I watched the show, much of the footage was uninteresting, and I got to thinking what would interest a conscious machine? The rules programmed into it would determine the initial interests of the machine, but how would it evolve? If self survival and replication were a primary directives, I suppose the machine would start bumping off the humans if humans were perceived as a threat, as Hal did in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Where's the story where the machine wakes up, perceives the flawed nature of the human condition, and compassionately and selflessly works to lessen suffering? Is that what the Oracle is doing in The Matrix? Enough writing, time for me to search for the written thoughts of others on the subject.