However, http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/dike_Richardson

And he actually scaled it back to the point where it made more sense. A tactical strike to clear a local region for resettlement for the Enclave is a tad more logical than poisoning earths air and reducing the population of all humanoid life on the planet to a mere 1,000 total. But that's beside the point.

Point is, a human did it first. Eden's plan wasn't part and parcel to him being an AI, as much as it was him being President of the Enclave.

Good point, I didn't know the background behind Eden's motive fully.

To add to that, I was also say that you could pick and choose alot of terrible humans too. Caesar kills and enslaves thousands in the American southwest, the Master (once a human) was hell-bent on painfully dipping the West Coast. Humans bombed each other right to hell in the Great War etc. etc.

All in all, AI's have done a lot less evil relatively speaking. The Calculator is about the most "evil" AI there is in Fallout lore. And even then its not really sentient in the sense that John Henry Eden or Harkness are. Just a program inadvertently doing its job.

Which is the other recurring theme I see in sci-fi portrayls of robot uprisings. There's no real malice involved, it's just that the creator(s) failed to triple-check their programming conditions that allow for the uprising to happen.

Really, seems like the more I think of it, genuine malice in portrayls of robot uprisings are few and far between.

The key difference is that an android with self-awareness can be potentially limitless, a human cannot achieve that. For example, Mr. House, despite his despotic and robotic appearance, could still be waylaid by a mere man or woman -i.e. you could still appeal to his emotions and waltz into his inner sanctum. His human qualities are/were his Achille's heel.

It doesn't matter how much 'evil' AI have done as it's important to note that the post-apoc world is still young and androids are new to the playing field. The post-apoc world is already full of depraved lunatics and maniacs - do we really need to add the possibility of rogue androids into that mix?

The calculator was inadvertently just doing his task with a total lack of empathy. An android with a goal is, to me, more dangerous than a program executing it's script.

If Eden was a true AI, wouldn't it have been able to see the flaw of the FEV plan and see how morally wrong it was? Autumn saw how wrong it was and changed his mind. Why didn't Eden, if it a AI with emotions and empathy, not see this as an "evil" plan? Seems like you are saying Eden was not an AI, as in the end it went with it's programming of it being the "leader" of the Enclave.

Seems to me Eden isn't making a decision, but his programming is, according to what you said. If he is an AI, then he is consciously making the decision to follow through with said plan, even when the human element of the Enclave have changed their mind, and thus, Eden is evil.

Not really it can be as smart as his circuits and memeory can handle.With limits being quite common when programming things.

I think if a human is psychotic enough, just like an AI there's nothing you can say that's going to stop them or appeal to their emotions.

Well no, not necessarily. Because that would imply that "True AI" and intelligence/sentience is defined by morality.

And its not, since obviously humans are capable of just as bad, if not far worse things. Case in point: Richardson, who gave Eden his idea.

Eden's programming wasn't telling him to "kill the humans." He was following through with a previously established Enclave national policy. A directive, mind you, that the Fallout 2 human Enclave had no trouble following through with at all. Were the Fallout 2 Enclave all robots? Was Richardson an AI super-computer? (Hopefully) No. So why would Eden be judged sentient/non-sentient by different standards?

True AI's and humans are both equally capable of both evil and good. Doesn't mean that just because a True AI did a "evil deed" he's suddenly not sentient.

I'd honestly question how valid the assumption is that the "human" Enclave have changed their minds. Doesn't seem like the soldiers in the wastes have any sort of hesitancy in gunning down wastelanders, but regardless. See my above point.

Doesn't really matter, because morality =/= sentience.

Otherwise the argument would imply that no human incapable of empathy is sentient or capable of higher-order thinking. Which is obviously just flat-out wrong.

To my understanding, and based on what I read in Eden's dialogue txt file, he was aware of Richardson's original plan but altered it because he found out it failed out west. It sounds more like he was acting on his own intuition.

I'm toeing the line in the sand with it because we really don't know enough about their capacities for intelligence.

All this talk about the theoretical capabilities of an AI reminds of a coversation in one if the Transformer shows.

Paraphrased...

"Arcee, you turn into a motorcycle. Why can't you fix the engine on my bike?"
"You're made from a bunch of organs. Can you fix your intestines?"

The difference between Eden and Autumn is adaptability. It's questionable whether Eden was following 'programming.' But, it's agreeable that he was acting on original Enclave goals. When you think about it, Eden's hubris was his downfall - his inability to see the road ahead and the possible alternatives. Eden wanted to start over by wiping the slate clean in a specific area (it ends up doing more harm than good - truth be told). Autumn wanted to start over by using the water purifier to gather support and sympathy to their cause. Eden saw a weapon; Autumn saw a rallying cry.

So, Eden is AI. Eden decides to kill humans. Eden shows true nature of AI and that in a fraction of a second will determine fate of humans without a second thought. Thus, all AI must be destroyed, as they are out to get us.

Fellow Americans, it is clearly evident that these monstrosities must be hunted down and destroyed. Ready your Yuma Flats! God Bless America. Kill em all.

That might be valid if humans aren't capable of doing the same thing.

Humans kill themselves. To protect humans, we must destroy what threatens them. Humans threaten humans. Therefore we must KILL ALL HUMANS.

I've seen the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaSqH8lhB0M

Unless it would empirically proven that Eden was physically incapable of adapting, that's sort of moot.

Humans are capable of hanging onto obsolete ideas well past relevance, and often to their own determent. They're also capable of following orders without question or believing firmly in some vague notion of "tradition" and "maintaining values."

True AI's are capable of both this and adaption.

But really, I wouldn't put such a rosy view on Autumn's goals. Lets be realistic here, any wastelanders living under Autumn would have been second class citizens at best, and slaves at worst. Autumn craved power. If he was planning on "garnering sympathy" then shooting up a bystander scientist to prove a point wasn't the best first impression. And its not like the Enclave soldiers showed any signs of having any sympathy whatsoever. The genetic compliance checkpoints and heaps of wastelander and ghoul bodies are proof positive of that.

I choose nothing over my fellow humans. I would like them to have the same rights as the humans but I won't kill other humans to achieve that end.

Bumble, tell the nice people how I feel about slavery.

Bryan wilks, tell the nice people how I feel about slavery.

Clover ::tugs at leash:: tell these meat bags how daddy feels about slavery.

If I sell kids into slavery and keep another woman on a leash, why should the tin man be any different? If your in my neck of the wasteland you'll be of use to me... one way or another.

Which is exactly what an android would think. To protect ourselves, we must strike first, and kill the androids, before they pull a Skynet on us.

I liken Eden to AI like Hal 9000 - choosing extreme solutions instead of inroads. Hal's solution to his problem was to kill the crew because he was conflicted over having to lie to them about the true nature of their mission. Eden's solution to restoring the USA is to wipe the slate clean, and dialogue with him reveals that he feels it is the only way to do so. Eden knows that the original plan to eliminate mutant life utterly failed and yet he's trying to do it again. He isn't adapting to the situation that the world is in, he's trying to pave over it.

As far as Autumn goes, he isn't a saint, but he's the lesser of two evils. Assuming that Autumn was going become a totalitarian [censored] is hard to say - conjecture at most. We'll never know. We do know that Eden wanted to murder hundreds if not thousands of people by poisoning the purifier, something that even Autumn felt was too extreme. We have to remember that the Brotherhood of Steel originally began their exodus in the East Coast by 'cleansing' the Pitt - now known as the Scourge. They weren't just killing Trogs and nearly wiped out the entire city in a single night. This event ultimately changed the Brotherhood.

My point is, don't hang Autumn out to dry like that. He might be an [censored], but the faction he opposes continues to hunt down mutants and ghouls, shun Megaton Wastelanders (opening fire on them), and portraying pure disdain for wastelanders in general - they don't like people outside of the BoS and they aren't afraid to express it.

The wasteland has a severe shortage of saints and an ample supply of sinners.

I take issue with this idea because it is adding to the problem. This is exactly like the Iran/nuclear program debacle, and a lot of people contend that "well, we all have nuclear weapons so why do we care if Iran has nuclear weapons." https://youtu.be/dsGUYnFAvdY?t=4m21s really shed light on this so I recommend watching that - they put it into words better.

It roughly translate into, "well humans are already capable of doing the same thing, so who cares if Androids do it, too?"

That's the problem. Androids aren't human - they're beyond it. Strength, intelligence, reproduction, etc. They're physically and mentally more adept from the get go, and we've seen sentient and self-aware AI choose extreme solutions to problems. Again, we already have a problem with depraved human individuals, why add to the problem by allowing androids the freedom to possibly go down the same road and cause even more trouble.

Humans can tire out and fade into history, an android doesn't suffer from the same issues.

That just seems like odd logic to me. And also a rather cynical outlook on humanity if our aim should be to destroy/oppress anything that begins to resemble sentience/intelligence matching us (be they robots or something else) just because we don't like the idea of more human-like things coming in and doing more human-stuff: namely being dikes.

I mean, yeah there's a great potential for evil in humanity, but there's also a great potential for good as well. Which suggests that there's also great potential for good in sentient constructs.

By anyway, I'm getting off track. Back to Fallout. Just for the record, I'm pro-Institute unless something about them radically changes my mind. I'm really not concerned at all about android rights in Fallout either. But my characters have also generally been pro-authority in the past, and not too keen on being freedom-fighters or abolitionists. (Always sided with Ashur for instance) so I don't feel too hypocritical all things considered.

But I feel like if someone is in the "slavery/opression is always wrong in Fallout no matter the context, no matter the reason or justification" camp then I'd find it strange if they sided with the Institute on the basis of "Keeping them toasters in their place." But that's just my opinion I guess.

That was my original point.

Even then, shouldn't androids who are self ware be cared for and supervised like children until they at least gain life experience? Despite the fact they are self aware, they have no real life experiences and wisdom to guide them. You wouldn't send your 5 year old child out into society and hope for the best. You would nurture, raise, supervise and guide your child until you feel they are responsible and wise enough to make decisions for themselves.

Kara does indeed propose an interesting ethical dilemma about the right to freedom of choice for androids. I honestly would have kept Kara for myself as a companion and at least let her experience life at a supervised pace and have a familiar face to return to, similar to caring for a child. Dude really expects Kara to 'stay out of trouble' being released and sold to the general public a computer chip robot? Lol, I know it's just a video game, though anyone with common sense would not expect Kara to join the others and 'stay out of trouble'.

Many interesting debates can arise from this game. For instance, why do we care about Kara? One minute, she was nothing more than plastic body parts, wires, circuits, microprocessors and data chips fused together with a voice box. Now that her physical appearance has altered into a human female who is self aware, the sad dramatic, minor chords music cues in, and we suddenly attach a concern for Kara's self awareness and her desire for freedom of choice.

I voted for my first character, which is different ideology. Basically he doesnt give a [censored] tho. He might change his mind, who knows. Hes never met an android tho.

But my 2nd character who will be an ex slave from the Pitt, will of course be sternly against the slavery of androids. She sees the pain that she once was in in their eyes.

Third character, bad guy genius, will look at androids as nothing more than machines. Tools to be used by their creators.

Fair enough.

There's no wrong or right answer to this discussion anyway since it's a fictional setting .

I often ask this question:

Would the response to Kara have been the same if the android had ultimately resembled a very unattractive individual?

I voted a little bit of both because for me personally it depends on the individual character and how I feel about them. I didn't like Harkness in 3 for example so I always pretended to help him until he gave me his gun after which I sold him out to Zimmer every time. Lol I have no doubt I'll likely do the same thing to at least one of the androids in 4. It all depends on how polite and respectful to me they are. Harkness was always an A-hole to me and threatening me even when i was polite so he got what he deserved.

Why did you do this? Why did you have to start this useless topic all over again? I just disproved all the arguments of the pro-life side. It was over, noone had to say anything anymore. Now you have the same people here in this topic saying the same things I counterargued in the last one. This topic is absolutly unessential.

Edit: Also I'm not going to put anymore effort into this [censored]. When people still believe that machines are alive even though I disproved them over and over again without them beeing able to counterargue anymore, they just don't give an inch and can't be helped anymore, because they want their naive and false point of view to be true so hard, that they don't care about disporves and logic anymore. Thery're just going to repeat themselfs because they lack of arguments.

He is back, and he still thinks he proved anything...

Anyway, since the player character is an android himself, with implanted memory (Spoiler, I guess), not granting them the same rights as humans is a bit self-derogatory...

Actually, robots have the potential to meet all requirements of life, as you determined in the last thread.

Shape- Robot body.

Movement- Robot body.

Metabolism- Energy from batteries or another power source.

Stimulus- Robot body.

Regulation- Robot body.

Reproduction- Robot body has hands/manipulators.

Development- Adaptive AI.

Evolution- Robot has hands/manipulators.

Heredity- Robot has hands/manipulators.

Reproduction, Evolution, and Hereditary traits all can be performed through mechanical means of reproduction- taking raw materials and creating a next generation that would hopefully be an improvement over the current generation. The only difference between artifical and organic versions is that it is primarily goal-oriented.