The Powet Top 5 – AIs that have AI in their name

Welcome to the Powet Top 5, where we explore the top (and bottom) 5 items we think are relevant to any of a variety of topics that span the imagination. Sit back, read, and respond.

Artificial intelligence or AI as it’s known for short describes the minds of robots, computer systems, pretty much software. This intelligence is the basis for some of our favourite sci fi characters. This is not a list of the best AIs. This is a more specific list of only the best AIs with AI in their name. How common is that? Very common, as it would turn out. Are all of these intentional? Hard to say for sure but I think most of them are.

Keep reading to see my top 5 favourite artificial intelligences with A and I in their names.

5. Lain from Serial Experiments Lain

(Warning: This section contains spoilers for the end of the series)

Serial Experiments Lain is a pretty messed up anime about a young girl named Lain who has bizarre experiences using her computer. Lain begins to learn about weird things going on in “The Wired” which is like the Internet, and eventually learns there’s another version of herself in cyberspace that seems purely digital. There are in some sense two Lains and you could say that one is the AI.

They’re really both facets of the same person and are both created by this weird guy who thinks he’s a God. Lain is programmed and made like a machine, making her an artificial intelligence.

Lain is a really weird character. She’s pretty emo and she’s always wearing weird things like her famous teddy bear suit pyjamas. She pretty much acts like a normal human because for the most part that’s pretty much what we’re lead to believe she is.

4. AndrAIa from Reboot

If most of my picks are just me being full of it, this one is not! AndrAIa’s name has the AI capitalized as a sign that it was absolutely intentional! Her name may also be a reference to Andrea Libman who provides the character’s voice. AndrAIa is a game sprite from a video game which visits Mainframe in Reboot. Upon first meeting her in the game Enzo is not aware of her true identity and is shocked to find out, but ultimately comes to terms with it. The problem is that AndrAIa must disappear with the game when it ends, win or lose, but thanks to some quick thinking she stores her backup on Enzo’s icon and escapes the game!

How is AndrAIa more AI than the other characters in Reboot? I’m not sure she is. Most characters however, were never really made to have AI, but as a game character it makes sense that AndrAIa would be programmed to react in some way. Of course AndrAIa, like all characters in the show, expresses much more intelligence and emotion than any software logically should. Is this some crazy super future computer system where this is just commonplace? We never get many specifics about what this Tron rip off world is really all about…

AndrAIa as a character becomes pretty well fleshed out as she joins the cast and is Enzo’s friend for about half of the second season. Eventually when the show got really stupid AndrAIa along with Enzo got stuck in some games and becomes old and hardcore. Enzo, now called Matrix, was tough and rugged and AndrAIa was all grown up and sexy. Her character became totally stupid and uninteresting, just like the entire horrible third season of the show that I don’t want to talk about anymore. Young AndrAIa and Enzo eventually come back but it’s too little too late.

3. David from Prometheus

David is a fascinating robot. He doesn’t seem much like a computer but more like an artificial biological machine. His thoughts seem elaborate but private so we never really know what’s going on in his mind, but can infer things pretty well from the events of the film. He aspires to be more human, has a strong sense of duty, seems somewhat hostile towards the humans who surround him but still willing to help them when possible.

The character gets a lot of flack from idiots who don’t understand the movie. They think his actions are random when they are anything but. David does some pretty ethically questionable things throughout the movie but these are all done in following very straightforward orders. Even then he shows an interest in following the desires of the crew such as when he asks Holloway how much he would really be willing to sacrifice to succeed. He is pretty much asking for permission to put an alien seed in him…

David ultimately is able to be his own man when he is released from the command of Weyland. He chooses to use this freedom in his pursuit of knowledge and to continue to help the people around him. He is an interesting character that poses interesting questions about the nature of intelligence and the place of AI in our future. Given how idiotic people were in interpreting the film one has to wonder if we’re all that prepared for robots in our lives…

2. David from A. I. Artificial Intelligence

David is a robot that is meant to look and act in every sense like a boy. In the world of A.I. robots are meant to serve man and David is something new, unique and totally different. He is inserted into a family that has lost a son and he is there to fill the void and give them everything a human child would.

This works out only shortly for David’s human family as their son makes a miraculous recovery and he’s not really needed anymore. After a near fatal accident he’s out on his own to live in the world in a journey of self discovery. David’s child like mind makes him look at the world in a unique way, searching for a way to become a real boy.

Ultimately David truly does become special as he is the only robot of his kind to remain after some sort of unseen robot apocalypse. He is uniquely poised to teach the future’s robots about humanity. In the final culmination of his journey he is finally able to make peace with his mother who abandoned him and dream, which in a sense insinuates he has achieved some level of humanity not expected of most robots.

This movie is truly great and David is a big part of that. It explores important questions about robotics, AI, what it means to be intelligent and what our responsibilities will be towards robots of the future. While this film was tragically under appreciated in it’s day it seems to have garnered some level of respect over time as a truly great science fiction film and one of Steven Spielberg’s best.

1. Ai from Video Girl Ai

Ai is a Japanese word that can mean a great many things! It’s a name. It can mean love, sadness and … well it can mean “artificial intelligence” if we’re talking about something created, and we are! Ai Amano is a video girl. She comes out of a VHS tape and exists to comfort men who are heartbroken. Ai is created with a specific purpose to be the perfect girl to cheer a guy up but things go wrong when the protagonist Yota plays her in a broken VCR!

Video Girl Ai is a popular manga series which is also a 6 episode anime series and a kind of ridiculous looking live action movie. The titular character Ai isn’t really the main character of the story but a lot of it revolves around her and her journey in finding her place in the world. When she was played in a broken VCR things went weird. She became a little different, got smaller breasts, became more tomboy like and had a feisty attitude. Beyond this Ai also developed the ability to love, something a Video Girl should not be doing with her clients.

The result of all these changes is unexpectedly that Ai has become someone that much more attractive to Yota than the ideal girl would have been which speaks to us about what it actually is to be ideal and how the unexpected nuances are what really make us who we are. As an example of artificial intelligence it is only in being broken that Ai truly achieves what we could call a kind of sentience. Above questions that this may raise about how we interact with artificial intelligence it also raises questions about escorts and sex trade workers as Ai is sort of an anime/manga version of Pretty Woman who tries to keep it professional but can’t help but have her feelings get in the way.

Though the anime series was quite short and gives us no final closure on Ai’s story the manga series goes on for quite a while and does ultimately give us some satisfying closure which I won’t bother to spoil the specifics about but fans of good anime and manga should certainly check this one out.

So what are your favourite AIs with AI in their name? Did I miss any? I probably did. A couple come to mind but if there are more, please feel free to add a comment to let us know who that might be.