6. VIKI in I, Robot (2004)

VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) is one of the creepiest-looking AIs. She’s a giant face made of a matrix of gray pixels, with stern eyes as black as coal, looming over the army of robots she programs to launch a revolution. In the future of I, Robot, robots handle tasks like childcare and household chores—the mundane kinds of things we want AI doing, not creating art. Even though there are the Three Laws of Robotics to keep them from harming humans, the robots end up usurping them. VIKI concludes that humans are the greatest threat to their own survival, so she sets out to save us by creating a technocratic dictatorship. “Despite your best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth, and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction,” she says. VIKI in I, Robot proves that whatever rules we write for artificial intelligence, the machine could potentially outsmart us or find a loophole we can’t even see to get around them.