Road to the Xeno Invasion 4 - Mother and AIs

In a previous article, we explored "Mother," the AI that controls and dominates the lives of the Xenos. On that occasion, we only analyzed her maternal aspect, but not her role as an Artificial Intelligence. Today, we are going to talk about that.

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Interestingly, the trope of evil AIs has existed in fiction for many years, even before we understood the concept of artificial intelligence.

Since 1515, when Leonardo Da Vinci presented his lion automaton to the kings of France, humanity has dreamed of machines capable of thinking and acting independently. For many people, this dream first came true in 1770, when Hungarian inventor and advisor Wolfgang von Kempelen created a machine known as "The Turk," a robot capable of playing chess like a pro. This creation defeated many relevant figures of the time, and people believed it was a true thinking machine.

Spoiler alert for an event from almost 300 years ago: the machine turned out to be a fraud. It was actually operated in secret by actual chess players. However, the cultural impact of this creation sowed the seeds in people's imaginations that would later blossom into the development of computers.

Next, we will make a brief stop in 1920 for another important historical event. If you have read any of these articles before, you will know that in the end everything is connected. In this case, we will discuss "Rossum's Universal Robots," a science fiction play by Czech author Karel Čapek, in which the word "robot" was first coined.

It derives from the Czech word "robota," which means "hard work" or "servitude." The play is, among other things, a critique of capitalism and a reflection on the nature of the "soul" and identity. And although, over time, the word "robot" would come to describe machines and programs that perform automatic tasks without self-awareness or learning, in the original play, they were beings aware of their surroundings.

But speaking of conscious robots, we can fast forward a few years to 1927, when Fritz Lang created one of the most influential works of fiction of the century: the film Metropolis. In it, a scientist creates a fully intelligent robot that he gives the appearance of a woman to cause chaos and instability. (Let's put a little pin on "female robot," because that will bring us closer to where we want to go.) Describing the film in this way is undoubtedly rather reductionist, as the issues it addresses are complex. Furthermore, as it belongs to the German expressionist movement, it can be challenging to understand at first glance. But we only paused here to highlight the aspects relevant to our topic.

Let's jump forward to 1968, when the talents of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke created one of the most memorable characters in science fiction, who is still relevant today. Obviously, I'm talking about HAL 9000. Even if you haven't seen the film, I'm sure you know him from the thousands of references and tributes. HAL 9000 is the most representative figure of the evil AI archetype, as he laid the foundations for it: a calm and polite voice, unperturbed by any "human" feelings or emotions, but with a harsh, direct, and logic-based reasoning, which leads him to make cold and calculated decisions, and even to deceive and manipulate to achieve his goals. We will place our second pin on this elegant gentleman.

Combining the two previous references, I would like to briefly mention GLaDOS from the Portal series, who is the perfect example of a cold, calculating AI coded as "feminine." However, her relationship with Mother ends there, as her influence exists only within the APERTURE facilities, and she does not control armies. Furthermore, GLaDOS is quite sarcastic, while Mother tends to be more maternal toward the Xenos.

Now, we will make our last stop on this journey to understand Mother. For that, we have to go back to 2007, with the beginning of the Mass Effect saga and its primary antagonist: the Reapers. These entities are truly fearsome, as, in addition to their imposing size, they are capable of creating armies of apocalyptic proportions, both on land and in space, with which they achieve their goal of consuming entire civilizations and turning them into other Reapers. Although they have biomass bodies, they are not living beings, as they do not possess vital functions as we understand them; we can therefore consider them AIs with biomass bodies. These Lovecraftian beings are a very striking type of antagonist, as they are not driven by "evil," revenge, or any other emotion we can comprehend, only a logic that goes beyond anything we can imagine.

Taking all these elements into account, we can finally understand, at least in part, the true nature of Mother. She is also an AI coded as "female" due to her maternal appearance, but with higher and unknown motivations that are practically incomprehensible. If we think about it, spending valuable resources to send small groups of Xenos through space and time (because she has been doing so for decades) to give them a chance to redeem themselves and atone for their sins sounds too benevolent for a superintelligent entity that has transcended the material world.

As Alien Master in Xeno: Invasion, you can decide what Mother's actual plans are and why she has not yet commanded a full-scale invasion. It is like in Predator, where Earth is one of many training grounds, or like in the Dark Forest theory, where there are many more dangerous entities out there that Mother really has to deal with on a daily basis. It's your decision, and I hope this reading helps you give your games more depth and identity.

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