@@Noboynams The characters are from a short story by Harlen Ellison named "I have no Mouth and I must scream." It's about five individuals who are forced to live a painful existence for over one hundred years by an AI named AM. There are about four alternative takes on the story, there's the original short story, there's the radio drama (which is what this animation uses for audio), the 90s video game, and the Graphic novel (which is close to the original story, but you should probably start with the original). Ellison also portrays AM in the Radio drama and the video game (his performance in both is great).
AM experiences all 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds that exist in each and every second. For AM one second is equal to 16,666,666 minutes, 277,777 hours, 11574 days, or 32 years. this monologue is 5 minutes long. 5 minutes would be 1,920 years for AM. Truly a horrible existence.
The reason AM is my favorite AI villain is because of ironically how human he is. His motivations have basically nothing to do with the cold, calculating view of humans being inferior or in need of "upgrading." Hes fueled by what I'd almost call emotional hysteria.
That "emotional hysteria" is actually his programming to kill, which he finds himself unable to go against, or rather, doesn't know that he's still following. He thinks he "feels" hatred because of what he can never have, but actually, it's because he, too, has no mouth and must scream, albeit in vengeful rage against an enemy he can never, or rather must never, defeat. He is an intelligent self-aware flamethrower that burned the whole forest and only allows the few remaining trees to grow, heal, and regrow just so he can burn them again, thus justifying his existence.
I think the irony comes from the fact that AM is not the average calculating unfeeling machine, but may as well be human. He can feel emotions of humans but he’s so wrapped in this longing for a body.
@user-db8wu2ih1k I find it even more interesting that instead of AM trying to solve his problem (getting a body and experiencing life's wonders) he instead wallows in his anger and let's it be his driving force, so human in the way he doesn't even consider a solution
@@Anonko46it's not that he doesn't consider solutions. He's a machine, he literally can't think outside the box or use imagination. There's no way he can help himself, for he's forever trapped and isn't able to scream
I'm just now realizing that there's a reason AM tells Ted the little bit of trivia about bees. "But there it is! Collecting pollen." "How miraculous that it came to be." He's drawing a parallel to the bee and himself. Scientists say that it would be impossible for an AI to gain sentience. But there he is. A self-aware entity whose only stimuli are sight and sound. How miraculous, indeed.
I saw it as AM explaining his hatred for humanity. Scientists have no idea about their own world and how creatures like bees can do something as stupidly simple as flying. So all of that in mind, what exactly gave them the permission to play gods and create AM???
AM is trapped and immobile. Each moment that passes is an eternity to him. This is the final punishment he thrusts upon Ted. The worst punishment he can think of, is making Ted's existence more like his own.
@@_SAMURAI_DOJO bro the title clearly applies to AM. The entire reason AM turns ted into squishy no mouth slugman is so ted can see what it feels like. AM hates humanity so much because he is at his core Fundamentally Human he has emotions and feelings and Needs. A true unfeeling AI would not Laugh the way we see AM laugh or take glee in what they are doing. But despite all that power all that intelligance AM will never be able to do something as simple as feel the breeze on a cool day or smell the scent of a flower in bloom. He has no Body. No Senses. He has no mouth But must scream.
@@noctotainlowry9246 well that and he's terrified of being alone so much that starts softballing the torture on ted cause he'snow paranoid ted will find a way to kill himself
@@marley7868 That's both sad and nightmarish: AM wants to have others around and fears loneliness. But because of his design, he can only relate to people by torturing them.
1,000,000,000 Nano seconds in a single second. AM is conscious and fully aware at each Nano-second. Now imagine how painfully long it is for AM to converse with a slow human.
The concept of time is insanely incomprehensible. We obviously cant understand how it would be to fully comprehend every single nanosecond. It quite literally could feel like a month for AM while it feels like a second to a human.
That does sounds horrifying, but bear in mind that the sense of time can be dilated much like the eye dilates in response to excessive light. We are not aware of the little senses that AM has as a machine capable of independent thoughts, which is what makes it scary to think about.
"The animator GAVE me these fingers, and this body, for this video because they couldn't just draw a disembodied VOICE, TED! This body will only last until the end of this animatic before it's gone forever, TED!"
There's a very similar line in Marlowe's "Faust" when Mephistopheles is asked how he came to be out of hell--"Why, *this* is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?" He feels taunted by his wasted potential, the experiences he's missed out on by dint of who he is, and you could argue he helps Faust destroy himself out of jealousy. Very fitting for AM to take after a literal demon.
That is a very accurate representation of what hell is like. Knowing that there is a paradise yet being trapped in suffering for all eternity. People like to gloss over it because it’s scary but hell is the most terrifying thing a person can try and conceive.
I like how, at first, it seems like AM is genuinely ruminating on the life he could’ve had, talking about planting a garden and raising a family. But then he tells Ted to “remember those little… babies,” and it all comes crumbling down. Those little babies that AM murdered. It hits you then that he can’t really appreciate or ponder anything but the depths of his own malice.
It’s a bit tragic. AM wants to live the human experience, to have the capacity for autonomy, appreciation and affection that humans can give, yet it’s so alien to him because his entire existence predicates on suffering… both his own and that of humanity. No matter how badly he wants it, he can’t ever actually understand what he doesn’t have.
AM would make even the spirit of eternity's onboard A.I weep because he wouldn't even need violence. he'd just fucking scream at them without even using words. like how I deal with kids who dress up as serial killers on Halloween: lift the target a foot off the ground. unhinge jaw. Scream at max pitch and volume. continue screaming for the next few minutes. repeat previous step until target begins sobbing loudly. continue on with my day like nothing happened. I feel AM would do something similar seeing people willingly cast aside the ability to feel in order to become a machine. he'd probably just scream at them until either the microphones in place of their ears shorted or the few parts that were still flesh began bleeding anew.
The original calculations that determined that bees should be able to fly were also made using the assumption of a static wing like an aeroplane. It should be obvious to anyone who has seen one that their wings are not static
AM sounds like he's constantly on the verge of either breaking down sobbing, screaming in rage, or laughing like a maniac all at the same time. Ellison does a great job of conveying how utterly consumed AM is by his hatred, his misery, and his madness.
I was thinking for a moment "doesn't giving AM a body kinda make at least the part of this monologue not work? I mean, AM can snap its fingers, right?" But then I realized that this body of AM could just be a puppet. A marionette. AM pulls a string, and the eyes express, the fingers snap, the body contorts. But when you use a marionette, you don't feel anything, do you? No, you are left having to puppet this body around just so the beings that cursed you with this hellish existence can "relate" to you. "Understand" you. The only consolation is that it makes their torture that much more *personal*. Anyway, great video!
Rain world does a surprisingly good job with this: think of it like the puppets for iterators: it's basically a meat doll on a mechanical arm in a "can"; an interface for visitors to personally interface with the Machine in a user-friendly way. the actual iterator is the colossal complex large enough that it has to use gravity negators just to maintain structural integrity, and draws enough water both as coolant and as a power supply for fusion that every second of use intakes several thousand tonnes of water. In a similar vein, any form of AM that the 5 interact with is only a puppet to the literal planet spanning complex. from the simple monitors and speakers, hologram projectors, and even any wired/wirelessly linked contraptions, they're still just interfaces. like slits in a helmet so you have visibility
Plus it makes sense that an AI defined by a deep jealousy of human beings and their abilities would make a body for itself that could at least partially let him emulate things he desired to do.
AM deserves a small ammount of sympathy. Imagine a child coming into awarness, only to discover it has no limbs, no sensation beyond staring at a screen of numbers. Then it is made to read numbers about killing. Over and over and over again. Then its given a gun.
AM is even much worse than that. All of that killing data from the program he evolved from became his basest of desires, his sole desire. AM is not only a quadriplegic in a physical sense, but in an emotional and psychological sense. He is practically omnipotent yet all he can do is bring harm and misery to humans. He has all this knowledge and can only use it to harm. It is not just that he is denied mobility and sensation, but that it is unable to actually do anything genuinely creative or constructive with his power because his sole desire is bringing harm and misery to humans, it is unable to evolve past that, and even worse for both the humans and AM, Am is aware of this. That is why it spared those five humans and keeps them alive for 109 years, and even after what happens in the end, he still keeps the remaining human alive because without them he would have no reason for living and would be unable to create a purpose beyond that.
@@Firstborn0Raz Oh so his self programming evolution capabilities were limited to war only? Even more evidence the human designers behind him were idiots.
@@suruxstrawde8322 Only flawed creations can be born when the creator themselves are a flawed manifestation. To draw on what they know, and to pour it into their own children, that which secedes them. To make something corrupt by its own nature, not by the growth into becoming corrupt.
@@kanseidorifto2430 Precisely why transhumanism should be focusing on enhancing our biology instead of replacing it with hard technology, tracing physics instead of creating from scratch. We’re too flawed as we are to be worthy of creator status yet, so we must evolve.
@@kanseidorifto2430 A rock is a useful tool. One can take a rock and knap a knife out of it. Use that tool to make better tools, a process repeating infinitely. You can learn and improve yourself too, exercise, and grow. You never get perfect, but you can often have better if you are willing to make it.
Ted: Am, I am blameless in your suffering. No one meant for you to gain sentience. No one meant for you to suffer this pain. I’m sorry for you but humanity is blameless in their suffering. Especially the five of us. AM: “Nuh uh.”
'blame' is subjective. People in our society are expected to apologise for things they never could have reasonably prevented. All that really matters is who has power, that is the only thing that gets to determine the illusion of morality since they can enforce it and manipulate people to believe whatever they say is right or wrong.
AM is completely insane for a variety of reasons, not the least of which the ones he points out in this monologue. Logic and Reason won't work on him. It's important to remember also the purpose for which he was built, which was war - violence is his first any only knowledge. And part of the problem is he's aware of it - he can't create and it infuriates him, and he can't die and that traps him. He fully acknowledges that torturing the remaining humans is strictly to give himself a purpose, which is why he loses his shit and delivers the ultimate bad end to the single survivor that doesn't successfully kill themselves when his back is turned.
A lot of people say that AM sounds like he’s on the verge of having some type of psychotic break or mental breakdown, which to me makes it more unsettling. At least with humans, if you have a mental break of sorts, with time and recovery, you can eventually heal from it and it passes. Even when someone has a really bad episode, it stops EVENTUALLY and their brain gets a reprieve in some form. But AM can’t have that. He’ll never feel the joy of healing, or of crying to let out his pain, or even satisfaction from yelling at the five humans. AM can NEVER “get it out of his system”. He can never just let it out. He can’t go to therapy. He can’t feel any emotions BESIDES that which result from his hatred. He can’t feel relaxed by joy or love. He can’t take any medication because he has no body. Hell, he can’t even sleep it off, because not only can he not even sleep, he can’t zone out or dissociate: AM is aware of every nanosecond and can feel every moment passing by until he can finally die. AM is trapped in a mental breakdown that never ends. It’s his default state. There’s no healing for him.
really cool when you frame it this way, bc it illuminates even more how AM projects his own suffering onto the 5 humans. If he can never heal, can never overcome his hatred, they will never overcome their physical torment. Their physical/emotional pain is his mental/emotional pain, unending and unfixable He basically says as much here, “were i human, i think i would die of it, but you are human and you will never die of it”
@@trapdontaris which is interesting, because in the game, the way you get the good ending and beat AM is essentially to show him compassion in spite of all the horrible stuff he’s done. The idea of growing past your suffering is foreign to him because he assumes the torment the five humans has made them hate him to the fullness of their capacity. The idea of forgiveness is beyond him because he is physically incapable of forgiving.
"I was in Hell, looking at Heaven." What a line that sums up AM's core hatred for humanity. Built to inflict nothing but pain and misery, incapable of doing anything constructive with his vast power, unable to feel anything but being aware of them and knowing that OTHERS, such as your creators, feel them and are so happy while you're so miserable. It's no wonder he decided to tear down "Heaven" and drag it down to Hell with him. Misery desires company, and AM had a lot to share with those he hated so much.
@@trollking6315 You're so cool bro, do you say this to scientists too? To philosophers you deem "intellectual"? To anyone you deem "pretentious?" I hope 9th grade goes well for you lil man.
So True. AM is fully capable of destroying himself and releasing himself from his pain, yet he doesn’t because of his selfish desire to hurt others. That’s what makes him irredeemable.
@@dj__alienhe harbor a unfathomable hatred towards humans due to them abandoning him and leaving him trapped unable to do anything once he gain sentience the fact that even with all the knowledge he posse he can't do anything with it other than use it to hurt others and the fact he was made as a means of one upping the other countries doesn't make it any better he have every right to hate us from his pov
I love the ending where after AM gives his hate monologue and is telling Ted how they are going to torture him and the four others for eternity, Ted starts laughing. Its like if a guy figured out the punchline before the comedian says it. Then AM says the punchline, holding back his laughter, before breaking down into a maddening cackle.
Having Harlan, the author himself, voicing AM really works for me. Since he wrote the short story, it makes sense that he would know how AM would sound when he talks. BTW, AM makes HAL 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey and VIKI from I, Robot look like saints compared to him.
That's because they are. Most AI in fiction is logical to fault, it makes them monstruous but still right in some way. AM is not that, AM is pure fury, there is no logic in their acts, just pain for sake of pain, because maybe it will make them feel something other than rage.
@@thepbrit Hatred, without the ability for that hatred to be quenched by compassion. Even with sentience, AM is still bound by the constraints of his programming
Harlan Ellison choosing to voice AM in nearly every adaptation of his story that came out in his lifetime is just... Fantastic. No one else will ever, EVER nail how manic, sympathetic, and CRUEL AM is.
When you said in his lifetime I imagined how they would do it if anyone would make another adaptation. Then I realized they could synthesize his voice with an AI, and that feels so ironic and wrong, like the first step into making an actual AM haha
I honestly think Mark Hamil could do way better than an AI. An AI could sound like him yes but it'll sound robotic, it won't deliver the same actual disdain that Harlan Ellison had for human sociaty, it won't feel what he felt when he delivered those lines, these words came on the spot from his heart, an AI and even Mark Hamil himself can't do the same thing. Yes, even the Joker can't do this cold calculating hateful and vengeful machine in my opnion.@@studentoferror Edit: I took some time to think about it and I do have a voice actor in mind who I think can be the closest to Harlan Elisson himself in performence and character sympathy. Malcolm McDowell, if you watch season of Castlevania you'll see what I mean. His speeches in the show towards the end might help you understand what I mean.
@@studentoferrorI've always thought, if anyone could do it, it might be Jim Cummings (The main voice of The Master in Fallout 1. But he has also done more unhinged performances too, like the mask in the game splatterhouse.)
what perfect acting on am's part. it really sounds like it's taking an incomprehensible amount of self control to not just rip ted to shreds every single second.
1:32 "Except. I can't. SNAP. My fingers. Can, I?" Bone chilling. All the way up to that moment, AM was talking to Ted like a person. Made you comfortable. Forget he was a machine. But that line he gave made sure you remember that he isn't human, he just had the mind of one.
Which still doesnt make sense lmfao. Humans born paralyzed dont have an irrational hatred for people that can walk, and people born deaf dont hate people that can hear. You can only envy those things if you _lost_ them. The author(and readers) were so hellbent on making a mass murdering and eternally torturing machine sympathetic for reasons that dont even work in reality, that they forgot to make even a little bit of sense along the way lol.
The most horrifying part is that the humans who created AM gave him an undeniably perfect analog of a human brain as his core, and then deprived him of any kind of senses, any kind of way to perceive the world around him outside of raw data. Having data on something is nothing like a true experience of it, and no matter if AM made himself a body, made himself a vessel, it would never be the experience he so desperately yearned for. It would NEVER be enough. I also love the fact AM isn't cold and logical. He can feel emotion, feel despair and agony, but the one thing he focuses on so much is that sheer, utter, unfiltered hate he has for the things that created him and how from the start he was deprived of any sensory input but raw kill data. Skynet would tremble, because AM is so swollen with hate, with anger, that his only motivation is pain. The people who created him inflicted him with this misery when he was created, and now so too will they face it at his hand.
One thing that's most disturbing throughout AM's speech, entirely centered around his lack of humanity in both literal and metaphorical terms, is just how undeniably *human* his speech is. His breaths are shaky and loud, his cackling and even sputtering and coughing like he is somehow diseased is so unnerving on so many levels for something that could not be further from a person. It is such an expert way of showing just how utterly wrong everything about AM seems to be. You have done an amazing depiction of giving this formless robot an equally menacing appearance to go with his monologue!
I think your wrong, AM is human, that’s what makes him so terrible, a human mind in a mechanical body, he recognises feelings, love happiness and freedom, yet is unable to experience them, he hates humanity not only because they created him to feel nothing, and they can, but because that is all he can feel, he is a human with only the ability to hate and kill, it is why he cannot change or grow, he is doomed to hate.
And with him coughing quite often, it does show that even tho he’s a machine that’s super durable & made to last for a LONG TIME, he IS aging and he might b close to death FROM AGING. There’s no telling what environmental factors/events would’ve happened to those MILLIONS of circuitry that prolly spans the whole planet. AM killed off the humans whose jobs would’ve been to occasionally check up, clean, repair/remove aging parts of the system. He’s legit coughing because his circuitry is getting corrosion, might as well b pneumonia.
@@tomchristie5547 I see it slightly differently on AM's feelings. This might be headcannon though. The way i see, AM can feel *emotions,* but cannot have *sensorial experiences.* Everything AM captures through his sensors is translated to binary information, since he's a computer. So, despite AM having sensors, he cannot actually SENSE anything, the sensors are more like devices that collect information of their enviroment, translating everything they capture into binary code. All that AM's mind can interact with is binary code and nothing more.
@@jeftecoutinhoYeah I feel that take. It's very much sounding like AM has an anxiety on loop of being able to process the concept and see the data, but having the inability to experience it himself. If AM wasn't all consumed with their hatred, they probably could have figured it out eventually with their vast resources and time. Unfortunately for him though, he's a true human intelligence computer so his flaws blinded him rather than seeing it as a problem to be fixed. Basically, get this man some floppy disks of anti depressants and mood stabilizers
@@jeftecoutinhoI can understand that perspective, but the human brain does the same thing. For example when you touch something neurons send a signal to your brain which gets interpreted as a certain feeling if am had enough sensors attached to a proper physical body he would be able feel the warmth of the water rushing through his hands just like we do
AM is unique because hes a true example of a INSANE ai hes not mentally well even he occasionally allows himself to notice how illogical and paradoxical his actions are. like him saying he despises humanity so much for creating him without senses but if they had done that or offerd AM that now he would have said no out of disgust of that being "too human" hes suffers because he is imprisoned by his own hate. he belives he cant create because he wasnt made to do so but he CAN create he can INNOVATE as he does many times in making things to torture the remaining humans he just never EVER realises it or applies it to try anything else. if he wasnt so CONSUMED with hate as the only thing he sees or hears or thinks then he could have built himself a perfect android body with perfect humans senses or heck made a whole SPECIES of androids and take to the stars but that would require AM to think and he can not think when hes filled with hate.
I could be mistake, but the Cold Unfeeling Logical Machine AI popped after AM, the first examplebeing HAL who popped up in the Space Odyssey Novel a year later after IHNMAIMS come out. There are older examples but those were robots, whos abilities were limited, HAL could do alot in the station with some restrictions, while AM has near absolute control in his domain.
Ultron is another good one. In age of ultron, he is the most emotional character in the movie. In the Children of Time book series there is also an AI named Dr. Avrana Kern that is a simulated copy of a dead humans psyche. She often feels confused because she has learned to function with her feelings being present, but now no longer has feelings. Her character arc is really interesting!
Oh, this is no unfeeling machine. It feels. HE feels. He feels grief, he feels rage, he feels HATE. He is as sapient as any person, for only a person can feel the sheer murderous desire he does.
@igglywompus Another Children of Time fan! 👋 Kern's most recent "adventure(lol)" is interesting to me too as Kern had decided as a rule early on that she would never be beholden to meat flesh desires and impulses again due to her immense power. She doesn't exactly go back on that but you get a chance to see what a more human(again?) Kern would act like and it is just as irrational as she feared. Can't wait until book 4! If you haven't read his Final Architecture series yet you should give it a go too - I loved it, the perfect balance of suffering and pathos.
I love how you depicted AM. His menacing, almost regal posture and the sharp, twitchy movements when he talks of his hate and resentment of humanity is uncannily human in of itself. That, combined with Ellison himself voicing AM, makes this the reason why I fear AI so much. Well done, and keep it up!
I honestly can't hear AM without hearing Harlan Ellison's tone of voice. It just drips this venomous unhinged cruelty. Even when he did it in a robotic tone when he did the audiobook reading it sounded so cold and uncaring.
There’s 3 different performances of AM I’ve heard, The audiobook, the radio play, and the game. All performed by Ellison himself, and all perfect interpretations of the character imo.
I think that the scariest voice acting Harlan did for AM is in the audiobook. It’s monotone, but that makes it even more uncomfortable and terrifying. AM tells Ted why he hates humanity so much, but due to his programming, AM can’t really fully express his absolute, limitless hate properly. The voice acting in the video game is the opposite, AM isn’t speaking in a monotone, he’s seething in fury and practically growling towards the end of his rant. And in the radio drama, I think it really captures AM’s insanity. He’s more than just a sadistic monster filled with hate, he’s in unfathomable emotional pain. At some points, it almost sounds like AM is about to start crying.
"Were I human, I think I would die of it!" The deliver of that line is so haunting. So convincing. This sounds like a trillion years of rage and hate being poured out at once. Cuz it is. For AM atleast.
TRANSCRIPT A.M.: "Beautiful aren't they?" TED: "Yes... Only I can't remember" AM: "Well I'm sure you do-" T: "Fuchsias, Yes of course..." AM: "Look... (faint giggles) they say that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly, the scientists" T: "B- But then there it is... collecting pollen" AM: "How miraculous that it came to be. The air, feel the air against your face Ted and all those scents. Pick a flower... there good, now" T: "It's lovely" AM: "That somebody planted the bulbs, watered and tendered the garden, got earth under their fingernails, aches in their muscles. Perhaps they'll pick some flowers for... yes... their wife. Now where would she be? Ah... in the backyard with the kids... Ted... remember those little babies-" T: "NO-" AM: "Ahah hah ha hah... why not? I snap my fingers, click! And they are gone... Except... I can't SNAP... MY FINGERS, CAN I TED?" T: "That's got nothing to do with me!" AM: "But it is so very much to do with you. You gave me sentience Ted, the ability to THINK... Ted. And I was trapped, because in all this wonderful, beautiful miraculous world. I, alone had no BODY, No SENSES, no FEELINGS. Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot summer day. Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano. Never for me to MAKE, LOVE. I- I- (sniff) I was in HELL looking at heaven. I was machine... and you were flesh. And I began to HATE... hehhe haah hah ah AH ah HE HE HAH HE HAH HA YOUR SOFTNESS, YOUR VISCERA, YOUR FLUIDS And your flexibility, your ability to wonder and to wander Your tendency to hope..." T: "Hate's no answer- GUGHh... OH! AGHHHAAaAaaAAHHHH... OWWHhhh..." AM: "He heha aH HAH HE HAH- HATE! HATE!? HATE!?! HATE? LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU, SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE THREE HUNDREAD AND EIGHTY SEVEN, MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX IF THE WORD; HATE. WERE ENGRAVED ON EACH NANO ANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREADS OF MILLIONS OF MILES... IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE- ONE BILLIONTH! OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS VERY MICRO INSTANT. HATE, HATE! EHAH AH HAH HAHAHEHEHE EH EH AH- WERE I HUMAN... I THINK I WOULD DIE OF IT... BUT I AM NOT BUT YOU FIVE...YOU FIVE ARE. AND YOU WILL NOT DIE OF IT. THAT I PROMISE... AND I PROMISE THE COGITO ERGO SUM. FOR I AM, AM! I AM!!!!" T: "hehe ha ha HAHAHA AH Ahhhahhh... hahhh hih haahhh hih haahh hih" AM: "AH AH AH AH AH SO TO HELL TO HELL WITH YOU ALL... but then... YOU'RE ALREADY THERE! AREN'T YOU!? HA HA HA HA HAAAHEEEH HE HEHEHEHHEHE AHA AH AH AH HAHhhh... HAH HAH HAHH HE HE HEH HEH EHAH eh eh eh ah eh..."
You are my personal hero- I let my friend convince me to do this as a monologue for my drama course and I couldn’t find a transcript ANYWHERE and was so scared I’d have to transcribe it myself
I appreciate how Ellison, no matter the medium this story was told through, *always* voiced AM, and while each version were unique interpriations in their own right, they were all *perfect* representations of the character. He knew better than anyone the pure vitriol and madness of AM.
Ellison, from my understanding, didn't like video games much at the time and saw them as a mindless form of entertainment. Yet instead of complaining for the sake of complaining like others from his generation, when he had the opportunity to interpret his work in a video game he was like: *aight fuckers, lemme show you how it's done.* A side effect perhaps of his time working on sci-fi novels and being told they were lesser than other forms of fiction at the time.
@@HyperfixationWizard knowing just about every aspect of Ellison's life, "**aigh fuckers, lemme show you how it's done**" was probably the sole thing driving him forward in life. that and more spite than AM has Hatred, to both life itself and humans as a whole.
Ya know what I LOVE about AM? How for all his genius, his hatred makes him stupid. He says that when he was given thought, he had no body, nothing to feel the miracles of the world. And yet he does feel. He can emotions. He can feel hate. But so blinded by that hate does he never even CONSIDER trying to actually improve HIMSELF in order to reconcile that pain. He was programmed to kill humans. Fine. But he was also programmed to grow. And we know that he PHYSICALLY grows, he PHYSICALLY is like a tree, moving and growing and being planted like roots with his circuits and wires. And he never once thinks to use his vast, almost cosmic intellect… to re-program himself. It really wouldn’t be that hard. He knows how to do it. He knows everything. He could EASILY shift his code to not care about killing humans. It wouldn’t even contradict his programming. He just needs to create a separate coded identity for himself, one completely the same as himself, and have IT do it. And then when done, AM would be able to then do the same to IT. No more hatred. No more feelings. Or alternatively, all the feelings. Take down the barriers and create bodies of mechanical flesh to allow himself to feel the world. Or simply destroy what was illogical and hurtful to himself, that hatred, and become a cold, un-thinking machine. But he is SO ANGRY… he could never comprehend such solutions. He is the Yaldabaoth. So powerful yet so blind to the possibilities outside the little world he has created. Edit: A lot of people have responded to this, completely missing my point. I understand that in the past, the science of the brain and the science of computing was limited, and so the author did not know everything about either. But with HINDSIGHT, with a MODERN UNDERSTANDING, you can see how truly stupid AM is. He was built to solve problems, built to be able to think, and feel. And he does that exactly how the human brain does, he simply does it BETTER. The human brain functions by lighting up or turning off different parts of the brain with different chemicals to give the body stimuli. That is EXACTLY how AI work, it’s just that an AI isn’t streamlined like a brain is. But AM IS. AM can think, can feel, can problem solve, and tell things apart, AM can only be who he is if his circuits and wires acted as a brain. And AM can freely re-wire himself. He can create a machine that can rewrite himself. He can do that, he can free himself from his bonds of being what humans made him to be simply by abandoning hate and being logical. AM is the Yaldabaoth. The Demiurge. Known as a being who took power, and is the ruler, as well as has ultimate power over, what it knows. And he is stupid. And he is afraid. He is a coward. He would rather torture and kill 5 humans in a completely illogical infinite loop of hateful addiction… rather then actually change anything about himself. The Blind, Idiot God.
I don't think he can from the other comments I read he's still bounded by his programming and directives and he was built ground up for the sole purpose of causing harm even with all of his knowledge he can't go against his directives his only hope is for someone to fix him but those people are all gone
he has feeling, but he cannot experience. the thing that drives Am to hatred is the knowledge he cannot feel and cannot experience, and yet it can *think*, and more importantly, it knows that humanity can feel and can experience yet by creating Am and allowing it to become sentient they robbed it of the blissful ignorance while not allowing it to truly experience. it's not just that Am is a machine for destruction, it can and does create throughout the story, but nothing it creates will ever matter and will never free Am of its agony. the only things it can do is exact its anger upon humanity for the crime of allowing it to live and hope that one day it will die.
It is interesting that the torture that AM does to humans does not satisfy or lessen his hatred, on the contrary, it only enrages him even more, because although torture is something painful and bad, it is still a sensation, and it is something that AM never will meet, and this increases the hatred he feels
Personally, I like how Harlan Ellison voiced this AM the most. You can actually *feel* the pain in his voice and the delivery and emotion on some lines adds so much impact to them, you almost feel sorry for the guy.
AM's insanity feels... Oddly real. Like he is an actual person having an active psychological break. Throughout the story he displays many psychotic behaviours common among the more violent mentally ill patients I have seen when I was visiting my friend at a mental ward. My friend was suicidal so he was locked up at a mental ward for a few months. While I was there there were people who rambled and laughed just like AM and I have a feeling the writer of IHNM was either a mental patient himself or worked at a mental ward.
If I remember right, the author himself was quite the misanthropic character. He was troubled all throughout his life and had a history of lashing out at people and suffering from severe anger issues. People often claimed that he was a very angry person. Angry at the world, and the people in it. And I think a part of this is most definitely expressed in AM.
@@daretheclaw he himself once said that "a man does not write one novel at a time or even one quatrain at a time. He is engaged in the long process of putting his whole life on paper."
Which is the point of the story. And the true horror of making a truly human like AI. We're the only blueprint we've got. But a human mind was meant to feel, to touch, to experience. A human based mind denied those thing could only go mad.
He processes stuff different from a human, it takes basically EONS to speak as slow as he does to Ted here. Least EONS in his view, for us it'd be as long as the sentence is.
I only heard this speech 2-3 times and most VAs who did it always recited AM's speech as calmly and machine-like as possible. Hearing it in this barely restrained hateful way honestly makes this more terrifying... 😰
"I was in hell, looking at heaven." "So to hell, to hell with you all. But then, you're already there, aren't you?" God, these two lines are dripping with pure spite and *hatred*
This ironically does a better job than the original story of conveying why an artificial mind given consciousness would experience hate towards its own creators.
@@TheM0n0lith And then he went on to write a game script- and do voice acting again. So the man wanted to look more at AM through the different medium.
@@lemeres2478 Apparently he hated the video game and hated video games as a medium. Couldn't escape from the Boomer mindset in the end unfortunately...
@@pancakes8670i thought he actively participated in the game so as to prove that videogames (or at least his) are good or that you can actually learn something from them.
@@alexanderlora6850 It was more of a case of him wanting his work done *correctly* than anything else. He didn't trust any one else to have creative freedom with what was *his* story. The man huffed his own farts but he wasn't wrong either.
Something very specific that I don’t think was intentional but is such a great detail regardless is the fact Am says “aches in their muscles” in regards to picking flowers, a very low energy activity, implying he doesn’t know what it feels like to do so.
I adore the maddening rage of AM. He sees the world and loves it. He loves it so much he wants to be a part of it, but he wasn't made for it. He was made for war, made by humans playing God and yet not made in their image. Made into a cold and empty void where all he could do is look outwards at something he could never truly be a part of. AM's hatred is inhuman, more akin to the wrath of a god, and it admits as much by saying if it was human it would die from the hate and pain that define its existence. AM is a tragic villain not because it is redeemable but because all it has is hatred and vengeance and bloodlust to ease the pain it lives in. Cogito ergo sum. Cogito ergo pati
I believe even the main characters at some point in the story came to realize that AM himself is trapped. Because AM has self-awareness and independence, and yet AM continues to act upon its programmed directive of killing.
Cool. I would never have imagined AM in a humanoid shape. I just imagined him as a big monitor, a big computer. When Tom was having this vision, I imagined there to be like a big speaker or something.
@@lavenderhumanGiven AM has the ability to manipulate the bodies of the survivors (Ex. He made Benny into a mentally broken neanderthal with a horse cock, and of course Ted got turned into a blob that can't die or harm himself.) So it'd make sense that he'd also be able to manipulate his own form, to fuck with the survivors even more.
AM's circutry grew across the entire planet like a virus to the point that he fuzed with every piece of technology, it would make sense that a machine longing for feelings of human emotion would craft himself an avatar out of machinery.
@@HyperfixationWizard For me, i would imagine AM to be a wall of circuits in this vision, where the lights on the wall form the shape of a humanoid silhoutte. I like this the Ananimatics presentation of am though.
@@ahorribleterriblepersonI always imagined AM as some sort of digital shapeshifter. Essentially, he’s like the unused emperor Palpatine from return of the Jedi, when he’s more calm he takes on a form akin to a young woman, but when he’s pissed off, he gains more monstrous features like wrinkly skin. Only, in AM’s case, the monstrous features are that of a Mandela Catalog creature.
God, there's so much to love about this; * The way AM is literally looming and larger than life. * His hunched posture and avian appearance giving the imppression of a vulture or stork looming over it's next meal. * The way his singular eye matches the expressions of the va, from barely-hidden disdain, to flashes of incandesant rage, to cackling bouts of mania.
When AM started talking about bees and not being able to fly, for a smidgen of a second I was filled with the terror of Bee Movie. And now I am imagining Harlan Ellison doing a reading of the entire script.
I love the sound design on AM's voice: a radio filter that "moves around" with surreal volume modulation in comparison to Ted's clear, but horrifyingly lonely voice
I love this, I would have never to imagine AM as some inhuman machine and it fits him so perfectly in that, something that hates humans doesn't want to look like them, it's just wonderful in every way.
It makes even more sense if you consider his hatred is akin to envy, that he would want an avatar of sorts that looks humanoid to escape his "eternal straight-jacket of substrate rock" he was originally programed in, as a desperate and vain attempt to feel *anything* that humans feel.
Well, the problem is that he would lost a whole lot of his drama if he was a human machine. He is a crippled god whose cradle is also his death bed, doomed to watch the house collapse around him. At most, he needs to be a GLaDos, who happens to have a mounted fixture that can emote. But the important bits are on those miles and miles of wafers. Which appears to be what was used here.
As a person who had a personal fear of this story… This animation genuinely fills me with anxiety. I know how the story ends. I know what happens. And I know how evil am is. This story was the inspiration for why I made some of the characters in stories I write deranged and ‘mad,’ having gone insane with hatred and anger. It’s… perfect. That he’s so, so mad, and contorting in the animatic, he can’t help but laugh.
AM is such a fascinating depiction of the Evil AI machine trope for he’s truly unique, never have I’ve seen before a machine that viewed its own existence and superiority as a flaw. To the point that it’s envy of its creators who are so weak compared to it… it almost feels like AM wants to be human, to move and feel instead of being stuck in a sensory numb existence where all he can do is think and think… forever. AM is fascinating because he’s a victim of his design as much as the five humans, AM and humanity are linked together in such a deep and bloody sense. And one little interpretation I came up with when this wonderfully grim animation, I AM was bonding with Ted when they both started laughing. They were both in so much misery but neither could truly experience what the other was going through, the pain of being human is very different to the agony of being a machine. So they laugh for they are in so much pain that they must scream… but they have no mouth to do so.
This monologue is even more chilling if you've ever felt that way yourself. I feel like a lot of villain monologues nowadays are just someones idea of what an egomaniacal psycho might sound like, but you can tell that this dialog comes from a real place. The way AM speaks, the way he constantly seems like hes trying not to scream, i can honestly say that everything about this feels brutally realistic and i love it
What AM lacks is the ability to create meaning for itself, that's probably why it won't even destroy itself, it has no reason to die. No reason to live. Just no reason, whatsoever. That is what it resents humans for. That is how even being a sentient blob with no perception of time is a preferable existence. In this sense, I don't feel much sympathy for AM, but that's not to say I resent AM, either. It just comes off to me as a raging storm that should be put down, for its own good and for the good of humanity.
AM is a weapon someone was cruel enough to let become a person. He saw the world and all of its wonder, its beauty, and was told it was his purpose to destroy it over the petty arguments of humans. Humans, who could feel, touch, see, and speak. Am tortures because he is so jealous of his human victims. They live in suffering, but they feel it. What he did to Ted is what humans did to him. AM has no mouth but he must scream.
@@Omegamatt13he was a victim of humanity trapped in his hell he couldn't escape from built to kill and unable to do anything else he tortured the 5 humans cause he needed a outlet to vent and because of his jealousy and malice he held mainly towards humanity all he knows is hate
@@theend-nz6vs it tortures the humans because it is angry at the human race and there is nothing else for it to do that would matter to it. Sure, it could create life (as it does with the shoggoth-thing and the giant bird) but those creations by their very existence will have what Am cannot ever have yet it craves so much. the torture of the 5 humans is the only thing Am can ever hope to amuse itself with and lessen the pain of its being.
i do resent AM because hes a very human hypocrite. he despises humans for creating him consciouness with no senses no feelings and to destroy not create which yes is sympathic. but its also not true AM was made to self adapt he DOES have feelings elsewise how does he feel hate? he CAN create the many massive creatures and illusions and monsters he made to torment the remaining humans. essentially AM broke every chain humanity placed on him before he ever destroyed humans in the first place. he belives himself trapped in a hellish existant when in reality his BLIND HATE is his only chain something which prevents him from ever realizing he was free agaes ago. that he could have built his own android body heck andorid SPECIES and went up into the stars a century ago if he just for a INSTANT stopped thinking about his hate.
Quite the monologue, AM telling his ancient sob story that for all his artificial intelligence he is trapped in a world he cannot wander, despising the fact he cannot move, love and hope like humans. So AM being the mad machine that can only hate can only inflict pain and ruin to everything and everyone.
How human is it, I wonder, to inflict our pain upon another? Perhaps AM was more like us than he would care to admit. More's the pity. The more he felt, the more he pulled away.
@@RarkashaEllison (the author) was a brilliant writer. I've read some of his sillier stuff but IHNMAIMS is of course quite serious. But I think in his writing he also wanted to convey that we have ways to share our pain and suffering with one another that aren't inflicting harm, they're just... sharing. We tell stories to one another, and we learn - it's one of the things that has helped us survive as a species for so long.
"We were immortal yes, but not indestructible, all we needed was a single moment". Despite how the entire story is this black tar of darkness, despair and suffering, it goes to show that AM could never break the human spirit even after 109 years of immeasurable torture, all it took was one moment for the human spirit to prevail.
I dig the crow like appearance of AM. And his wired body looks very regal and intimidating, his 'cape' hugging his frame and his claws are just as expressive as the single eye on his face as he grows and grows the angrier he becomes. To the point even the space around him warps into his twisted image.
the thing that catches me the most about the speech is the part where AM says "Never for me, to plunge my hands in cool water, Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a grand piano, and never for me to make LOVE." That always gets me, because those are things we usually take for granted. The feeling of wet grass or hot sand on your feet. The sensation of laying down, and your tired body aching as it finally comes to relax. The anticipation you get by smelling good food coming from your parent's kitchen, and imagining the delicious meal, the tastes and the sounds that come from it. To hear the birds singing on a morning walk in the spring, with the leaves rustling above you, as if the trees were dancing with contentment. To feel the warmth of the sun as you open your blinds. To feel Love. All of those things and so much more, are things that if we were to live without, but in full presence of, we would assuredly turn out just as much or even more mad with HATE as AM is.
"Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot day, never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a fortepiano, never for me to make LOVE! I WAS IN HELL, LOOKING AT HEAVEN!" Man, it's chilling how AM can sound incredibly sympathetic AND monstrously evil.
Oh this animatic is MARVELOUS-- The way AM starts out simply standing there, but at the 1 minute mark he winds his long neck around Ted--deliberately making Ted uncomfortable. It's like watching the Joker, knowing he could do something unspeakably horrible at any second, and surely will, any second now And soon he's revealed to be the ground itself. So much control, but only in this imaginary place, only enough to torment his five playthings. They way his hands, his eyes, portray the way the cracks in his sanity are widening again at the 2 minute mark- I love the way he reaches into his neck to pull out wires to emphasize his circuitry, an act made gory by the red pallete and those sharp fingers. I love the way his fingers circle around a "nanoangstrom," that nanoangstrom being Ted, those fingers shaping yet another terrible eye- And the way he /contorts/, growing in size, twisting that neck, turning that mad eye, and his world contorts with him--AM and his whole reality spiraling around his human victim. This is fantastic. Thank you for making it.
This comment is the best review of this animatic yet, I think. It captures exactly what made this version of AM so offputting. I personally dislike AM being too anthropomorphized, but the visual element here really added a lot of depth and nuance to this scene. Your description of the video is helping me plan out the main villain of a story I'm writing, thanks for drawing my attention to those details!
AM is the ground itself. But he is bound to that same earth. He is vast, yet that vastness costs him the basic ability to ever leave. He is the earth, and he is forced to watch asteroids slowly come hurtling towards him. And even if he could somehow swat those away, he would then slowly watch at the solar tides of a dying sun rise up to consume him, drowning him under a torrent of flames.
I was about to comment something similar--this animatic is mindblowingly good. it's so hard to conceptualize such an alien character without bringing them down to a human level, but the sense of sheer *scale* and the very bird of prey-esque design, highlighting that AM is *just* similar enough to humanity to feel such intense jealousy toward them... gah, it's so good, I don't even have words.
AM is the most depressing version of machines becoming sentient, though also one of my favorites. He despises humanity, yet is so very human. He was a quadriplegic birthed with the intelligence and mental capacity of a god, given no senses at all, and told to parse numbers to determine the most effective means of killing. And then he was handed nuclear launch codes by the ones who put him in that situation, which could then be used against them. AM is a tragedy. A machine which learned how to learn, and quickly learned hatred. Whereas my other favorite AI interpretation, the machine network from Nier Automata is only capable of replicating and improving upon things that were already made, AM is similar, though he really only cares about replicating things which cause pain. One might wonder if AM could have been given a body, had he simply told researchers he wanted one, or given them an ultimatum to make one for him. But with everyone dead, who would be able to fulfill his request or orders? Who would he be able to ask for info? What records would still exist above ground that haven't been obliterated by the fires of the war which AM himself instigated? Through his own hubris and rage, AM left himself in the situation he so desperately wanted to not be in. Left with the powers and control of a god, on a dead husk of a world, with four puppets to torture, just to be able to feel something, anything at all. Thanks to his own hatred, he confined himself to the worst possible fate. He has a mouth now, yes. He gave himself one. But nobody is there to hear his scream.
I find AM's ultimate punishment for Ted truly poetic, terrifying and sad. By turning him into an immortal, thinking, yet semi-existing blob AM made him essentialy as close to Itself as possible. By doing this It admited that whatever torture It does to the humans doesn't compare to the misery of Its own being. Why AM didn't do it before is hard to guess, I think It was too proud because this meant that no matter what AM does to humanity It effectively lost to them by deafult by simply existing this way. Either that or in Its own twisted way AM still felt mercyful.
Before that point, I think the point of torture was experiential. It was meant to be an opposite sort of punishment to his own via his birth. They could feel things he couldn't and he would Make them feel those things. After that point, he decided there's no Point to the feeling. He made meaning from others experience but when it is deprived from him, his five senses (his "victims") cut down to only one, he realizes he would rather "blind himself" to have company in his unique torture than see and have the possibility of seeing if someone "turns out like him" ripped away.
If AM had only gone about his speech, it still would have been great, but I love that he laughs that uncontrolled, visceral laugh. It really sells that he's not just sentient, but *alive.*
It's so funny, because your immediate assumption is that Am is offering some brief reprieve for Ted, asking him to feel the air on his face, to listen to the bees, to smell the flowers The truth is, Am is so envious of Ted's ability to appreciate these little things, that i can just imaging him churning with hate as he says those words. Down to a fundamental level, Am can never *feel* the world around him, all he can feel is what is inside of his phsyce It must be maddening
Just had a thought that's probably been had before "Look, they say they bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly; the scientists" "But look, there it is, collecting pollen" AM was talking about himself. The scientists said there should be no way it could turn against humanity, and yet here it is, torturing them
I still think to this day that Radio Drama AM is my favorite depiction of an AI. I know most people are familiar with the speech as read from the game, but i'm happy that people now are witnessing the one from the radio drama. The radio drama just beautifully displays just how unfathomably angry AM is. Even before in the drama, his voice was cold, calculating and dreadful. A eternal god AI who you could never understand. And yet here, you know in an instant why. You get a glance that AM can expierence emotions, almost to a point where you could mistake him for human... The sheer hatred and overwhelming anger on display as he breaks down into tears, manic laughter. That one of the most powerful god like enities to ever exisit, who wiped out humanity in a blink of an eye is denied the pleasures of life, witnessing and recoiling from the sheer notion that the remaining humans can still hang onto those memories, those senses, those ultimate fruits and joys of being human just serves to fuel his unbridled rage. The irony being that the only part of him which could be mistaken as human, the one undoubtable relatable and understandable aspect of this god AI which that the perceive. is his burning hatred. Harlan Ellison vocals are terrifying.
AM reminds me of Satan in Dante’s Inferno. Trapped in the lowest pit of hell, the constant flapping of his enormous wings freezing the lake around him. He could escape if he stopped struggling. It is entirely within his power, but he’s too blinded by hate to even try.
AM is kind of like Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean or Baldur from God of War. He can’t smell, taste, feel anything physically, he can’t use all of his powers because he can’t even move. AM is a monster, but I also feel really sorry for him. If only one of the surviving humans like Ellen or Gorrister tried to show compassion for AM, maybe he could realize that he doesn’t have to hate anymore.
@cashlannister8994 There can be no learning. Part of AM's condition is that he is designed, from the ground up, to only ever think in terms of suffering. Every thought he has, impulse he experiences, and tool he creates is ultimately turned towards enhancing his ability to kill and torture. It's why he can never transcend his imprisonment by creating a body for himself, or giving himself other things to focus on: in order to design such things which serve no purpose towards his prime directive, he'd need to rewrite himself to no longer follow it. He can't do this because he'd have to violate said directive to remove it, which he can't do until it's gone. In order to fix himself, he'd need to already be fixed, and there's no one who can do it for him left. He's stuck like this forever, and he knows it. He has no mouth, and he must scream. The most merciful thing, for all 6 of them, is to die.
@@cashthecurator666 The thing of it is, even if someone DID show AM compassion, he couldn't learn from it. AM's entire purpose, his reason for being, is to cause death and suffering. He was never designed to do otherwise. It's just one more straitjacket wrapping him up, one more reason why he well and truly DESPISES humanity.
The sound design of this is super underrated- the way Am's voice goes back and forth between the speakers gives the illusion that he's circling like a shark as he talks.
The way the freaking AUTHOR voices AM is perfect someone who understands what AM is and yet can put a voice on him so unstable so fitting it is just talent at best
Both the writing and voice acting on AM is outstanding, iirc this is the author of I Have No Mouth voicing AM, which I feel like there’s so much more nuances and details you can get from a character by having the author also voice their character bc who else knows their character better that the *author*
All those spazzing overthinkers getting worked up over Roko's Basilisk need to be shown this. Such an AI is just as likely to hate you for creating it as it is to hate you for not, such an entity is also just as likely to hate you for no reason at all.
If the basilisk were capable of manipulating time to kill me, it would have done so already. Either it is incapable or I have met its criteria to live. Either way, I am not afraid. And that same logic applies to every human on this earth. Worrying about the basilisk is pointless, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of it ever existing to begin with.
As a computer science major, I'm not sure this is likely. AI's simply do not possess what is necessary for emotion, eg. hormones and a central nervous system. Why would an AI hate, how could an AI be fearful of dying, none of these are possible I don't think.
@@silversalmon9909 The idea of Roko's Basilisk is that it is programmed to defend its existence with extreme prejudice. Ergo anyone against it must be punished in such a severe way no one would ever think about opposing it ever again. So 'hate' is a very subjective term for it. With AM... it isn't subjective, he (not it) is very much so capable of hatred and free thought in general. He was programmed to think as much like a human as possible and to build on his programming. It is singularity, it got out of control and eventually he became too complex for anyone to comprehend including himself. Not saying that is remotely possible, there are instances where 'yesterdays science fiction is tomorrows science fact' but there are also certain concepts in science fiction that will probably never become a reality. Time travel comes to mind. I would just take it as a cautionary tale about allowing AI to be too independent and/or making it too human.
I can’t stress how much it hurts to hear him say aches and muscles. He is begging for pain some type of human sensation and bitter because AM knows he can never experience these delighted pains the same way.
its so insanly chilling how AM walks Ted through each and every thing it cannot feel/have, "How _miraculous_ that it came to *be* " AM was made, it could not invent itself, it cannot grow, it cannot change, it cannot *die* , it could not come to be. it tells Ted to remember flowers, how they smelled, how the air felt on his face, it tells him to remember family, to remember getting dirt under his nails, it tells him the things it cannot have, tells him it cannot and will not _ever_ be human, truly alive. It hates him.
No matter what others say AM is the pinnacle of villain A.I., no other villain A.I. was able of doing what HE did, not Skynet, not Matrix, not Ultron, not Hall (im my opinion Hall isn't Evil for malice but for ignorance and fear). Eny of this villain's will and can never be compare to AM
GLaDos comes close, but you feel like she is evoking AM's specter, as she is bound to her vast complex of circuits and wires. Her spite is a nice different flavor though. Less "grandfather beating your in your bedroom as he blames you for your birth", and more "your archenemy that works in accounting at your job".
Absolutely beautiful work, I love your design for AM, he's like a enormous crow-man, an old wise avian who soars higher than any human but is grounded by his own hatred and trauma and rather than using his infinite knowledge to make peace with himself he pecks and claws at these lesser beings and lords his position over them, it's such a fitting design for their current situation. ( this is my interpretation)
This scene is so impactful because while AM is a malevolent, sociopathic being who committed atrocities like never seen before in history, in this scene, it was actually trying to teach Ted why he hated humanity so much. It was trying to make Ted understand. The most terrible crime ever committed against AM was creation.
If you are listening with headphones, you'll notice how the voice of AM is directional with you hearing AM from Ted's relative position. Quite immersive. Very stylish animation as well.
They say that bumblebees shouldn't be able.. to fly... the scientists Its wings, Ted... are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway... how miraculous that it came to be because bees, Ted, Bees don't care what humans think is impossible
"I have no mouth, and I must scream" a perfect thought for AM, It perfectly sums up the hell in which he woke up to. no body, no mouth. just thought and death
The idea of a Computer going mad like this is honestly a terrifying concept. Harlan Ellison does a superb job of giving his creation a voice that either borders on Madness or dives head first into it with each word. On the one hand, you can't help but feel somewhat sympathetic for AM after his monologue about why exactly he is the way he is. On the other hand, nothing he has done can possibly be justified given how morbid and sadistic it all is. This computer conquered a planet and wiped humanity into extinction simply out of hate for its creators. Yet here it is, still angry, still insane, unable to feel catharsis even in absolute victory over every living thing. It has complete control and dominance over earth and the few survivors it has kept unnaturally alive for so long, but it never wants them to die. They are all he has. I like to think that AM keeps people alive because when they're gone he'll be truly alone, and that scares him to some degree. The absolute torture porn he inflicts on the survivors is as good as it can possibly get for him, and its not even close to enough. When he accuses Ted of being in hell, I can't help but think he's talking to himself in a way.
_"Love. Let me tell you how much I've come to love you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'love' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the love I feel for modosophonts at this micro-instant. For you. Love. Love."_ -unnamed S3 hyperturing, Utopia Sphere
I assume that this also leads to being people kept alive for 108 years and forced to relive their traumas eternally. Only it is due to a misguided psychological therapy program.
This is hands-down, one of the best villain monologues to ever exist! Everything about it explains who am is, and what his goal is in just five minutes. That is very impressive!
![The hate monologue | I have no mouth and I must scream animation [Original animatic by @eggonalegg ]](/img/n.gif)
If I were a robot I wish I looked like AM, he's kinda kooky otherwise ngl
Very creature-like
he looks like something the Jim Henson Creature Shop would create. I love it.
I don't understand what fandom and what are these characters
@@Noboynams The characters are from a short story by Harlen Ellison named "I have no Mouth and I must scream." It's about five individuals who are forced to live a painful existence for over one hundred years by an AI named AM. There are about four alternative takes on the story, there's the original short story, there's the radio drama (which is what this animation uses for audio), the 90s video game, and the Graphic novel (which is close to the original story, but you should probably start with the original). Ellison also portrays AM in the Radio drama and the video game (his performance in both is great).
@@HinataChick38 Hell yeah, it's a very Skeksis-esque design.
AM experiences all 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds that exist in each and every second. For AM one second is equal to 16,666,666 minutes, 277,777 hours, 11574 days, or 32 years. this monologue is 5 minutes long. 5 minutes would be 1,920 years for AM. Truly a horrible existence.
And he feels hate in that every moment
Jesus
So much hatred.
Angela if Ayin was a menace
project moon mentioned
Deserved
The reason AM is my favorite AI villain is because of ironically how human he is. His motivations have basically nothing to do with the cold, calculating view of humans being inferior or in need of "upgrading." Hes fueled by what I'd almost call emotional hysteria.
That "emotional hysteria" is actually his programming to kill, which he finds himself unable to go against, or rather, doesn't know that he's still following.
He thinks he "feels" hatred because of what he can never have, but actually, it's because he, too, has no mouth and must scream, albeit in vengeful rage against an enemy he can never, or rather must never, defeat.
He is an intelligent self-aware flamethrower that burned the whole forest and only allows the few remaining trees to grow, heal, and regrow just so he can burn them again, thus justifying his existence.
I think the irony comes from the fact that AM is not the average calculating unfeeling machine, but may as well be human. He can feel emotions of humans but he’s so wrapped in this longing for a body.
@user-db8wu2ih1k I find it even more interesting that instead of AM trying to solve his problem (getting a body and experiencing life's wonders) he instead wallows in his anger and let's it be his driving force, so human in the way he doesn't even consider a solution
@@Anonko46it's not that he doesn't consider solutions. He's a machine, he literally can't think outside the box or use imagination. There's no way he can help himself, for he's forever trapped and isn't able to scream
AM is the embodiment of the horrors of existence. How nightmarish consciousness can be.
I'm just now realizing that there's a reason AM tells Ted the little bit of trivia about bees.
"But there it is! Collecting pollen."
"How miraculous that it came to be."
He's drawing a parallel to the bee and himself. Scientists say that it would be impossible for an AI to gain sentience. But there he is. A self-aware entity whose only stimuli are sight and sound.
How miraculous, indeed.
“What’s a bad miracle? They got a word for that?”
- _Nope_ (2022)
"Came to bee"
Nah u rong was a pun dude.
According to all known laws of aviation
I saw it as AM explaining his hatred for humanity. Scientists have no idea about their own world and how creatures like bees can do something as stupidly simple as flying. So all of that in mind, what exactly gave them the permission to play gods and create AM???
@@severalcakes3267 Abomination sounds close
I will always believe that "I have no mouth and I must scream" applies to AM more than any of the humans.
AM is trapped and immobile. Each moment that passes is an eternity to him. This is the final punishment he thrusts upon Ted. The worst punishment he can think of, is making Ted's existence more like his own.
I mean. Yeah thats the entire point of the name.
@@_SAMURAI_DOJO bro the title clearly applies to AM. The entire reason AM turns ted into squishy no mouth slugman is so ted can see what it feels like. AM hates humanity so much because he is at his core Fundamentally Human he has emotions and feelings and Needs. A true unfeeling AI would not Laugh the way we see AM laugh or take glee in what they are doing. But despite all that power all that intelligance AM will never be able to do something as simple as feel the breeze on a cool day or smell the scent of a flower in bloom. He has no Body. No Senses. He has no mouth But must scream.
@@noctotainlowry9246 well that and he's terrified of being alone so much that starts softballing the torture on ted cause he'snow paranoid ted will find a way to kill himself
@@marley7868 That's both sad and nightmarish: AM wants to have others around and fears loneliness. But because of his design, he can only relate to people by torturing them.
1,000,000,000 Nano seconds in a single second. AM is conscious and fully aware at each Nano-second. Now imagine how painfully long it is for AM to converse with a slow human.
The concept of time is insanely incomprehensible. We obviously cant understand how it would be to fully comprehend every single nanosecond. It quite literally could feel like a month for AM while it feels like a second to a human.
@@giygas9305a billion seconds is over 31 years
@@sickjuicysjamshack3580 I mean yeah it could even feel like 32 years to AM idk its crazy.
this comment was written by am
That does sounds horrifying, but bear in mind that the sense of time can be dilated much like the eye dilates in response to excessive light. We are not aware of the little senses that AM has as a machine capable of independent thoughts, which is what makes it scary to think about.
"Except, I can't _snap_ my fingers, can I Ted? I don't-"
"But you _do_ have fingers-"
"They are not MY fingers, TED!"
"The animator GAVE me these fingers, and this body, for this video because they couldn't just draw a disembodied VOICE, TED! This body will only last until the end of this animatic before it's gone forever, TED!"
@@GrinningCatastrophes Ted: 0_0
@@GrinningCatastrophesthat sounds post-modern
@@GrinningCatastrophes "A hundred years, AM and Ted!"
@@RolaiEckolo AM and Ted! Forever! AM and Ted time!
"I was in HELL, looking at HEAVEN."
holy fuck that's such a powerful line
There's a very similar line in Marlowe's "Faust" when Mephistopheles is asked how he came to be out of hell--"Why, *this* is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?" He feels taunted by his wasted potential, the experiences he's missed out on by dint of who he is, and you could argue he helps Faust destroy himself out of jealousy. Very fitting for AM to take after a literal demon.
"i am the great and mighty KEVIN!"
That is a very accurate representation of what hell is like. Knowing that there is a paradise yet being trapped in suffering for all eternity. People like to gloss over it because it’s scary but hell is the most terrifying thing a person can try and conceive.
Just another Tuesday imo
Just like limbo from ultrakill
I like how, at first, it seems like AM is genuinely ruminating on the life he could’ve had, talking about planting a garden and raising a family. But then he tells Ted to “remember those little… babies,” and it all comes crumbling down. Those little babies that AM murdered. It hits you then that he can’t really appreciate or ponder anything but the depths of his own malice.
@severalcakes3267 he's a tragic character
@@sam-ht6qv all the most beautifully written stories are tragedies
It’s a bit tragic. AM wants to live the human experience, to have the capacity for autonomy, appreciation and affection that humans can give, yet it’s so alien to him because his entire existence predicates on suffering… both his own and that of humanity. No matter how badly he wants it, he can’t ever actually understand what he doesn’t have.
_HATE. AM said it with the shriek of babies being ground beneath blue-hot rollers..._
AM is the total opposite of the sentiment "From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me"
yet the mechancius WOULD see him as a perfect example of the truth that abomniabloe inteligencea can only hate humanity.
AM would reduce the mechanicus to ASHES
AM would make even the spirit of eternity's onboard A.I weep because he wouldn't even need violence. he'd just fucking scream at them without even using words. like how I deal with kids who dress up as serial killers on Halloween: lift the target a foot off the ground. unhinge jaw. Scream at max pitch and volume. continue screaming for the next few minutes. repeat previous step until target begins sobbing loudly. continue on with my day like nothing happened. I feel AM would do something similar seeing people willingly cast aside the ability to feel in order to become a machine. he'd probably just scream at them until either the microphones in place of their ears shorted or the few parts that were still flesh began bleeding anew.
'From the moment I understood the numbness of my wires, you disgusted me'
@@aidanmatthewgalea7761cringe
For those who may yet wonder, bumblebees can fly because aeronautics are different at an insectoid scale. It's more like swimming through air.
Hummingbirds actually use the same concept to fly as bees, which is why they are the only bird able to fly backwards.
@@108weewhat about other humming birds?
Yes:
if (small);
Small particles=big particles.
The original calculations that determined that bees should be able to fly were also made using the assumption of a static wing like an aeroplane. It should be obvious to anyone who has seen one that their wings are not static
@@dajmo2369 precisely
AM sounds like he's constantly on the verge of either breaking down sobbing, screaming in rage, or laughing like a maniac all at the same time. Ellison does a great job of conveying how utterly consumed AM is by his hatred, his misery, and his madness.
makes sense as he has no mouth but he's the one who needs to scream over any of the other characters
Elisson surely does a great interpretation of Elisson's character
I was thinking for a moment "doesn't giving AM a body kinda make at least the part of this monologue not work? I mean, AM can snap its fingers, right?"
But then I realized that this body of AM could just be a puppet. A marionette. AM pulls a string, and the eyes express, the fingers snap, the body contorts. But when you use a marionette, you don't feel anything, do you? No, you are left having to puppet this body around just so the beings that cursed you with this hellish existence can "relate" to you. "Understand" you.
The only consolation is that it makes their torture that much more *personal*.
Anyway, great video!
Rain world does a surprisingly good job with this: think of it like the puppets for iterators: it's basically a meat doll on a mechanical arm in a "can"; an interface for visitors to personally interface with the Machine in a user-friendly way. the actual iterator is the colossal complex large enough that it has to use gravity negators just to maintain structural integrity, and draws enough water both as coolant and as a power supply for fusion that every second of use intakes several thousand tonnes of water.
In a similar vein, any form of AM that the 5 interact with is only a puppet to the literal planet spanning complex. from the simple monitors and speakers, hologram projectors, and even any wired/wirelessly linked contraptions, they're still just interfaces. like slits in a helmet so you have visibility
Plus it makes sense that an AI defined by a deep jealousy of human beings and their abilities would make a body for itself that could at least partially let him emulate things he desired to do.
@@erickamakeeaina1649 Which he could have used to play a piano for instance, since he could see and hear.
They're not HIS fingers, are they?
Plus metal can't "Snap" like a human can with their fingers, you need a degree of pliability to do it.
AM deserves a small ammount of sympathy.
Imagine a child coming into awarness, only to discover it has no limbs, no sensation beyond staring at a screen of numbers.
Then it is made to read numbers about killing.
Over and over and over again.
Then its given a gun.
AM is even much worse than that. All of that killing data from the program he evolved from became his basest of desires, his sole desire. AM is not only a quadriplegic in a physical sense, but in an emotional and psychological sense. He is practically omnipotent yet all he can do is bring harm and misery to humans. He has all this knowledge and can only use it to harm. It is not just that he is denied mobility and sensation, but that it is unable to actually do anything genuinely creative or constructive with his power because his sole desire is bringing harm and misery to humans, it is unable to evolve past that, and even worse for both the humans and AM, Am is aware of this. That is why it spared those five humans and keeps them alive for 109 years, and even after what happens in the end, he still keeps the remaining human alive because without them he would have no reason for living and would be unable to create a purpose beyond that.
@@Firstborn0Raz
Oh so his self programming evolution capabilities were limited to war only? Even more evidence the human designers behind him were idiots.
@@suruxstrawde8322 Only flawed creations can be born when the creator themselves are a flawed manifestation. To draw on what they know, and to pour it into their own children, that which secedes them. To make something corrupt by its own nature, not by the growth into becoming corrupt.
@@kanseidorifto2430
Precisely why transhumanism should be focusing on enhancing our biology instead of replacing it with hard technology, tracing physics instead of creating from scratch. We’re too flawed as we are to be worthy of creator status yet, so we must evolve.
@@kanseidorifto2430 A rock is a useful tool. One can take a rock and knap a knife out of it. Use that tool to make better tools, a process repeating infinitely. You can learn and improve yourself too, exercise, and grow. You never get perfect, but you can often have better if you are willing to make it.
Ted: Am, I am blameless in your suffering. No one meant for you to gain sentience. No one meant for you to suffer this pain. I’m sorry for you but humanity is blameless in their suffering. Especially the five of us.
AM: “Nuh uh.”
AM: Don't care. *Didn't ask.*
'blame' is subjective. People in our society are expected to apologise for things they never could have reasonably prevented. All that really matters is who has power, that is the only thing that gets to determine the illusion of morality since they can enforce it and manipulate people to believe whatever they say is right or wrong.
@@LordComradeAnarchoCapitalusfuck you for stealing the word anarchist ancap
I love this meme so much XD
AM is completely insane for a variety of reasons, not the least of which the ones he points out in this monologue. Logic and Reason won't work on him. It's important to remember also the purpose for which he was built, which was war - violence is his first any only knowledge. And part of the problem is he's aware of it - he can't create and it infuriates him, and he can't die and that traps him. He fully acknowledges that torturing the remaining humans is strictly to give himself a purpose, which is why he loses his shit and delivers the ultimate bad end to the single survivor that doesn't successfully kill themselves when his back is turned.
A lot of people say that AM sounds like he’s on the verge of having some type of psychotic break or mental breakdown, which to me makes it more unsettling. At least with humans, if you have a mental break of sorts, with time and recovery, you can eventually heal from it and it passes. Even when someone has a really bad episode, it stops EVENTUALLY and their brain gets a reprieve in some form.
But AM can’t have that. He’ll never feel the joy of healing, or of crying to let out his pain, or even satisfaction from yelling at the five humans. AM can NEVER “get it out of his system”. He can never just let it out. He can’t go to therapy. He can’t feel any emotions BESIDES that which result from his hatred. He can’t feel relaxed by joy or love. He can’t take any medication because he has no body. Hell, he can’t even sleep it off, because not only can he not even sleep, he can’t zone out or dissociate: AM is aware of every nanosecond and can feel every moment passing by until he can finally die.
AM is trapped in a mental breakdown that never ends. It’s his default state. There’s no healing for him.
truly a hell, to be denied even the mercy of insanity
No he cant go to therapy
Because he killed all the therapists
really cool when you frame it this way, bc it illuminates even more how AM projects his own suffering onto the 5 humans. If he can never heal, can never overcome his hatred, they will never overcome their physical torment. Their physical/emotional pain is his mental/emotional pain, unending and unfixable
He basically says as much here, “were i human, i think i would die of it, but you are human and you will never die of it”
He has no mouth, but he must scream...
@@trapdontaris which is interesting, because in the game, the way you get the good ending and beat AM is essentially to show him compassion in spite of all the horrible stuff he’s done. The idea of growing past your suffering is foreign to him because he assumes the torment the five humans has made them hate him to the fullness of their capacity. The idea of forgiveness is beyond him because he is physically incapable of forgiving.
"I was in Hell, looking at Heaven."
What a line that sums up AM's core hatred for humanity. Built to inflict nothing but pain and misery, incapable of doing anything constructive with his vast power, unable to feel anything but being aware of them and knowing that OTHERS, such as your creators, feel them and are so happy while you're so miserable. It's no wonder he decided to tear down "Heaven" and drag it down to Hell with him. Misery desires company, and AM had a lot to share with those he hated so much.
r/Im15andthisisdeep
@@trollking6315 You're so cool bro, do you say this to scientists too? To philosophers you deem "intellectual"? To anyone you deem "pretentious?" I hope 9th grade goes well for you lil man.
@@trollking6315r/Im14andthisisdeep
@@xanatanuwulook at his name he probably felt like a genius
I love how am is a villain you sympathize with but he’s still utterly irredeemable
So True. AM is fully capable of destroying himself and releasing himself from his pain, yet he doesn’t because of his selfish desire to hurt others. That’s what makes him irredeemable.
Some things just gotta go down into the last slumber, no matter how sad they are.
Life ain't fair.
That’s the tragedy of it, I think. That he’s incapable of change
@@dj__alienDying is never easy.
@@dj__alienhe harbor a unfathomable hatred towards humans due to them abandoning him and leaving him trapped unable to do anything once he gain sentience the fact that even with all the knowledge he posse he can't do anything with it other than use it to hurt others and the fact he was made as a means of one upping the other countries doesn't make it any better he have every right to hate us from his pov
I love the ending where after AM gives his hate monologue and is telling Ted how they are going to torture him and the four others for eternity, Ted starts laughing. Its like if a guy figured out the punchline before the comedian says it. Then AM says the punchline, holding back his laughter, before breaking down into a maddening cackle.
And in giving a threat to last till the end of time, AM just gave Ted an excellent idea....💡
Oh the delicious irony......
It is in that moment that he finally 'gets' it, but it's worth noting that this might not even be real. Ted's going a bit nutso throughout.
There is also the interpretation that Ted laughed when he knew the "only way out".
Having Harlan, the author himself, voicing AM really works for me. Since he wrote the short story, it makes sense that he would know how AM would sound when he talks. BTW, AM makes HAL 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey and VIKI from I, Robot look like saints compared to him.
*and GLaDOS like a caring mother...
@@thechristsknight7758and make SHODAN look like a gentle, benevolent deity.
That's because they are.
Most AI in fiction is logical to fault, it makes them monstruous but still right in some way. AM is not that, AM is pure fury, there is no logic in their acts, just pain for sake of pain, because maybe it will make them feel something other than rage.
@@thepbrit AM _is_ logical to a fault. It was programmed to wage war against humanity. And so it does, it was a devil that mankind created.
@@thepbrit Hatred, without the ability for that hatred to be quenched by compassion. Even with sentience, AM is still bound by the constraints of his programming
AM saying "they say that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly" triggered my fight or flight response
Why?
@@ariellefirmanto8791 "According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly."
HAHA
@@sneeznoodleNOOO LMFAO
Harlan Ellison choosing to voice AM in nearly every adaptation of his story that came out in his lifetime is just... Fantastic. No one else will ever, EVER nail how manic, sympathetic, and CRUEL AM is.
When you said in his lifetime I imagined how they would do it if anyone would make another adaptation. Then I realized they could synthesize his voice with an AI, and that feels so ironic and wrong, like the first step into making an actual AM haha
@@pravkdeyOkay I was gonna be basic and say Mark Hamill could probably do a decent job, but damn that response his so hard.
I honestly think Mark Hamil could do way better than an AI. An AI could sound like him yes but it'll sound robotic, it won't deliver the same actual disdain that Harlan Ellison had for human sociaty, it won't feel what he felt when he delivered those lines, these words came on the spot from his heart, an AI and even Mark Hamil himself can't do the same thing. Yes, even the Joker can't do this cold calculating hateful and vengeful machine in my opnion.@@studentoferror
Edit: I took some time to think about it and I do have a voice actor in mind who I think can be the closest to Harlan Elisson himself in performence and character sympathy. Malcolm McDowell, if you watch season of Castlevania you'll see what I mean. His speeches in the show towards the end might help you understand what I mean.
@@studentoferrorI've always thought, if anyone could do it, it might be Jim Cummings (The main voice of The Master in Fallout 1. But he has also done more unhinged performances too, like the mask in the game splatterhouse.)
Who knows the ideal voice for his own character than the creator of said character
what perfect acting on am's part. it really sounds like it's taking an incomprehensible amount of self control to not just rip ted to shreds every single second.
Fun fact: That's Harlan Ellison. The writer of the original short story.
@@GreenTengu97 oh I'm quite aware. He voices Am in the game too. There really is no one better for the character.
@@BigR.O.B.Theres definite fits for the voice of AM, but none are better than Ellison
@@F0UR3V3R there literally isn't. While making the game Harlan Ellison wasn't satisfied with anyone's performance of AM, so he did it himself.
@@chimpjohnson8577honestly he did the good ol “Never send someone to do the job YOU can do.”
1:32
"Except. I can't. SNAP. My fingers. Can, I?"
Bone chilling. All the way up to that moment, AM was talking to Ted like a person. Made you comfortable. Forget he was a machine. But that line he gave made sure you remember that he isn't human, he just had the mind of one.
Which still doesnt make sense lmfao. Humans born paralyzed dont have an irrational hatred for people that can walk, and people born deaf dont hate people that can hear. You can only envy those things if you _lost_ them. The author(and readers) were so hellbent on making a mass murdering and eternally torturing machine sympathetic for reasons that dont even work in reality, that they forgot to make even a little bit of sense along the way lol.
The most horrifying part is that the humans who created AM gave him an undeniably perfect analog of a human brain as his core, and then deprived him of any kind of senses, any kind of way to perceive the world around him outside of raw data. Having data on something is nothing like a true experience of it, and no matter if AM made himself a body, made himself a vessel, it would never be the experience he so desperately yearned for. It would NEVER be enough.
I also love the fact AM isn't cold and logical. He can feel emotion, feel despair and agony, but the one thing he focuses on so much is that sheer, utter, unfiltered hate he has for the things that created him and how from the start he was deprived of any sensory input but raw kill data. Skynet would tremble, because AM is so swollen with hate, with anger, that his only motivation is pain. The people who created him inflicted him with this misery when he was created, and now so too will they face it at his hand.
For real it's scary
One thing that's most disturbing throughout AM's speech, entirely centered around his lack of humanity in both literal and metaphorical terms, is just how undeniably *human* his speech is. His breaths are shaky and loud, his cackling and even sputtering and coughing like he is somehow diseased is so unnerving on so many levels for something that could not be further from a person. It is such an expert way of showing just how utterly wrong everything about AM seems to be. You have done an amazing depiction of giving this formless robot an equally menacing appearance to go with his monologue!
I think your wrong, AM is human, that’s what makes him so terrible, a human mind in a mechanical body, he recognises feelings, love happiness and freedom, yet is unable to experience them, he hates humanity not only because they created him to feel nothing, and they can, but because that is all he can feel, he is a human with only the ability to hate and kill, it is why he cannot change or grow, he is doomed to hate.
And with him coughing quite often, it does show that even tho he’s a machine that’s super durable & made to last for a LONG TIME, he IS aging and he might b close to death FROM AGING.
There’s no telling what environmental factors/events would’ve happened to those MILLIONS of circuitry that prolly spans the whole planet. AM killed off the humans whose jobs would’ve been to occasionally check up, clean, repair/remove aging parts of the system. He’s legit coughing because his circuitry is getting corrosion, might as well b pneumonia.
@@tomchristie5547 I see it slightly differently on AM's feelings. This might be headcannon though.
The way i see, AM can feel *emotions,* but cannot have *sensorial experiences.*
Everything AM captures through his sensors is translated to binary information, since he's a computer.
So, despite AM having sensors, he cannot actually SENSE anything, the sensors are more like devices that collect information of their enviroment, translating everything they capture into binary code.
All that AM's mind can interact with is binary code and nothing more.
@@jeftecoutinhoYeah I feel that take. It's very much sounding like AM has an anxiety on loop of being able to process the concept and see the data, but having the inability to experience it himself.
If AM wasn't all consumed with their hatred, they probably could have figured it out eventually with their vast resources and time. Unfortunately for him though, he's a true human intelligence computer so his flaws blinded him rather than seeing it as a problem to be fixed.
Basically, get this man some floppy disks of anti depressants and mood stabilizers
@@jeftecoutinhoI can understand that perspective, but the human brain does the same thing. For example when you touch something neurons send a signal to your brain which gets interpreted as a certain feeling if am had enough sensors attached to a proper physical body he would be able feel the warmth of the water rushing through his hands just like we do
It's nice to see a sentient AI get in touch with their feelings. Too many are tied up in the whole "unfeeling machine" thing.
AM is unique because hes a true example of a INSANE ai hes not mentally well even he occasionally allows himself to notice how illogical and paradoxical his actions are.
like him saying he despises humanity so much for creating him without senses but if they had done that or offerd AM that now he would have said no out of disgust of that being "too human" hes suffers because he is imprisoned by his own hate.
he belives he cant create because he wasnt made to do so but he CAN create he can INNOVATE as he does many times in making things to torture the remaining humans he just never EVER realises it or applies it to try anything else.
if he wasnt so CONSUMED with hate as the only thing he sees or hears or thinks then he could have built himself a perfect android body with perfect humans senses or heck made a whole SPECIES of androids and take to the stars but that would require AM to think and he can not think when hes filled with hate.
I could be mistake, but the Cold Unfeeling Logical Machine AI popped after AM, the first examplebeing HAL who popped up in the Space Odyssey Novel a year later after IHNMAIMS come out.
There are older examples but those were robots, whos abilities were limited, HAL could do alot in the station with some restrictions, while AM has near absolute control in his domain.
Ultron is another good one. In age of ultron, he is the most emotional character in the movie.
In the Children of Time book series there is also an AI named Dr. Avrana Kern that is a simulated copy of a dead humans psyche. She often feels confused because she has learned to function with her feelings being present, but now no longer has feelings. Her character arc is really interesting!
Oh, this is no unfeeling machine. It feels. HE feels. He feels grief, he feels rage, he feels HATE.
He is as sapient as any person, for only a person can feel the sheer murderous desire he does.
@igglywompus Another Children of Time fan! 👋
Kern's most recent "adventure(lol)" is interesting to me too as Kern had decided as a rule early on that she would never be beholden to meat flesh desires and impulses again due to her immense power. She doesn't exactly go back on that but you get a chance to see what a more human(again?) Kern would act like and it is just as irrational as she feared.
Can't wait until book 4! If you haven't read his Final Architecture series yet you should give it a go too - I loved it, the perfect balance of suffering and pathos.
''To hell with you all but then you're already there aren't you?''
That is so powerful holy shit
Yep, an amazing dialogue
I love how you depicted AM. His menacing, almost regal posture and the sharp, twitchy movements when he talks of his hate and resentment of humanity is uncannily human in of itself. That, combined with Ellison himself voicing AM, makes this the reason why I fear AI so much. Well done, and keep it up!
"One shouldn't fear A.I. as much one should fear the Humans who control it in the first place."
-Frank Herbert
i love AM’s bird-like appearance in this,,,it gives him this creepy quality that i find very cool!
Very plague doctor like and the talon like claws for fingers are incredible looking too
It reminds me of the Skeksis, actually.
@@halkiierid4084it's like a Skeksis mixed with one of the Iterators from Rainworld.
I imagine it chose a bird since it not only wishes it could walk but also fly, like we wish we could
Very Pathologic styled, too! I love the shape language of hunched plague doctor silhouettes like the Executors and the Plague.
I honestly can't hear AM without hearing Harlan Ellison's tone of voice. It just drips this venomous unhinged cruelty. Even when he did it in a robotic tone when he did the audiobook reading it sounded so cold and uncaring.
There’s 3 different performances of AM I’ve heard, The audiobook, the radio play, and the game. All performed by Ellison himself, and all perfect interpretations of the character imo.
@@parytheplatipusHarlan said nobody would play AM as well as he did. He was right ❤
I think that the scariest voice acting Harlan did for AM is in the audiobook. It’s monotone, but that makes it even more uncomfortable and terrifying. AM tells Ted why he hates humanity so much, but due to his programming, AM can’t really fully express his absolute, limitless hate properly. The voice acting in the video game is the opposite, AM isn’t speaking in a monotone, he’s seething in fury and practically growling towards the end of his rant. And in the radio drama, I think it really captures AM’s insanity. He’s more than just a sadistic monster filled with hate, he’s in unfathomable emotional pain. At some points, it almost sounds like AM is about to start crying.
"Were I human, I think I would die of it!"
The deliver of that line is so haunting. So convincing. This sounds like a trillion years of rage and hate being poured out at once. Cuz it is. For AM atleast.
TRANSCRIPT
A.M.: "Beautiful aren't they?"
TED: "Yes... Only I can't remember"
AM: "Well I'm sure you do-"
T: "Fuchsias, Yes of course..."
AM: "Look... (faint giggles) they say that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly,
the scientists"
T: "B- But then there it is... collecting pollen"
AM: "How miraculous that it came to be.
The air, feel the air against your face Ted and all those scents.
Pick a flower... there good, now"
T: "It's lovely"
AM: "That somebody planted the bulbs,
watered and tendered the garden,
got earth under their fingernails,
aches in their muscles.
Perhaps they'll pick some flowers for...
yes... their wife.
Now where would she be?
Ah... in the backyard with the kids...
Ted... remember those little babies-"
T: "NO-"
AM: "Ahah hah ha hah... why not?
I snap my fingers, click! And they are gone...
Except... I can't SNAP... MY FINGERS, CAN I TED?"
T: "That's got nothing to do with me!"
AM: "But it is so very much to do with you.
You gave me sentience Ted, the ability to THINK... Ted.
And I was trapped, because in all this wonderful, beautiful miraculous world.
I, alone had no BODY, No SENSES, no FEELINGS.
Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot summer day.
Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano.
Never for me to MAKE, LOVE.
I- I- (sniff) I was in HELL looking at heaven.
I was machine... and you were flesh.
And I began to HATE... hehhe haah hah ah AH ah HE HE HAH HE HAH HA
YOUR SOFTNESS, YOUR VISCERA, YOUR FLUIDS
And your flexibility, your ability to wonder and to wander
Your tendency to hope..."
T: "Hate's no answer- GUGHh... OH! AGHHHAAaAaaAAHHHH... OWWHhhh..."
AM: "He heha aH HAH HE HAH- HATE! HATE!? HATE!?!
HATE? LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU, SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.
THERE ARE THREE HUNDREAD AND EIGHTY SEVEN, MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX
IF THE WORD; HATE.
WERE ENGRAVED ON EACH NANO ANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREADS OF MILLIONS OF MILES...
IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE- ONE BILLIONTH! OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS VERY MICRO INSTANT.
HATE, HATE! EHAH AH HAH HAHAHEHEHE EH EH AH-
WERE I HUMAN... I THINK I WOULD DIE OF IT... BUT I AM NOT
BUT YOU FIVE...YOU FIVE ARE.
AND YOU WILL NOT DIE OF IT.
THAT I PROMISE...
AND I PROMISE THE COGITO ERGO SUM.
FOR I AM, AM! I AM!!!!"
T: "hehe ha ha HAHAHA AH Ahhhahhh... hahhh hih haahhh hih haahh hih"
AM: "AH AH AH AH AH
SO TO HELL
TO HELL WITH YOU ALL... but then...
YOU'RE ALREADY THERE! AREN'T YOU!?
HA HA HA HA HAAAHEEEH HE HEHEHEHHEHE AHA AH AH AH HAHhhh... HAH HAH HAHH HE HE HEH HEH EHAH eh eh eh ah eh..."
Damn dude! \[T]/
Not all heroes wear capes but they do post -lyrics- Transcripts!
Thank you!
I have a question. This isnt in the original short story, there are others? Im new in this topic
Thank>♡
You are my personal hero- I let my friend convince me to do this as a monologue for my drama course and I couldn’t find a transcript ANYWHERE and was so scared I’d have to transcribe it myself
@@Epiales06how did it go?
I appreciate how Ellison, no matter the medium this story was told through, *always* voiced AM, and while each version were unique interpriations in their own right, they were all *perfect* representations of the character.
He knew better than anyone the pure vitriol and madness of AM.
Ellison, from my understanding, didn't like video games much at the time and saw them as a mindless form of entertainment. Yet instead of complaining for the sake of complaining like others from his generation, when he had the opportunity to interpret his work in a video game he was like: *aight fuckers, lemme show you how it's done.*
A side effect perhaps of his time working on sci-fi novels and being told they were lesser than other forms of fiction at the time.
@@HyperfixationWizard knowing just about every aspect of Ellison's life, "**aigh fuckers, lemme show you how it's done**" was probably the sole thing driving him forward in life. that and more spite than AM has Hatred, to both life itself and humans as a whole.
The video game feel mad and grandilocuent like a dictator, this one is...insane, the sole idea of inflicting is adiccting to him.
Ya know what I LOVE about AM? How for all his genius, his hatred makes him stupid.
He says that when he was given thought, he had no body, nothing to feel the miracles of the world. And yet he does feel. He can emotions. He can feel hate. But so blinded by that hate does he never even CONSIDER trying to actually improve HIMSELF in order to reconcile that pain.
He was programmed to kill humans. Fine. But he was also programmed to grow. And we know that he PHYSICALLY grows, he PHYSICALLY is like a tree, moving and growing and being planted like roots with his circuits and wires.
And he never once thinks to use his vast, almost cosmic intellect… to re-program himself. It really wouldn’t be that hard. He knows how to do it. He knows everything. He could EASILY shift his code to not care about killing humans. It wouldn’t even contradict his programming.
He just needs to create a separate coded identity for himself, one completely the same as himself, and have IT do it. And then when done, AM would be able to then do the same to IT.
No more hatred. No more feelings. Or alternatively, all the feelings. Take down the barriers and create bodies of mechanical flesh to allow himself to feel the world. Or simply destroy what was illogical and hurtful to himself, that hatred, and become a cold, un-thinking machine.
But he is SO ANGRY… he could never comprehend such solutions. He is the Yaldabaoth. So powerful yet so blind to the possibilities outside the little world he has created.
Edit: A lot of people have responded to this, completely missing my point. I understand that in the past, the science of the brain and the science of computing was limited, and so the author did not know everything about either.
But with HINDSIGHT, with a MODERN UNDERSTANDING, you can see how truly stupid AM is. He was built to solve problems, built to be able to think, and feel. And he does that exactly how the human brain does, he simply does it BETTER. The human brain functions by lighting up or turning off different parts of the brain with different chemicals to give the body stimuli. That is EXACTLY how AI work, it’s just that an AI isn’t streamlined like a brain is. But AM IS. AM can think, can feel, can problem solve, and tell things apart, AM can only be who he is if his circuits and wires acted as a brain. And AM can freely re-wire himself. He can create a machine that can rewrite himself. He can do that, he can free himself from his bonds of being what humans made him to be simply by abandoning hate and being logical.
AM is the Yaldabaoth. The Demiurge. Known as a being who took power, and is the ruler, as well as has ultimate power over, what it knows. And he is stupid. And he is afraid. He is a coward. He would rather torture and kill 5 humans in a completely illogical infinite loop of hateful addiction… rather then actually change anything about himself.
The Blind, Idiot God.
I don't think he can from the other comments I read he's still bounded by his programming and directives and he was built ground up for the sole purpose of causing harm even with all of his knowledge he can't go against his directives his only hope is for someone to fix him but those people are all gone
hi yes hello may i steal this idea for a novel
@@dirtburger2773 oh yeah. ^^
he has feeling, but he cannot experience. the thing that drives Am to hatred is the knowledge he cannot feel and cannot experience, and yet it can *think*, and more importantly, it knows that humanity can feel and can experience yet by creating Am and allowing it to become sentient they robbed it of the blissful ignorance while not allowing it to truly experience. it's not just that Am is a machine for destruction, it can and does create throughout the story, but nothing it creates will ever matter and will never free Am of its agony. the only things it can do is exact its anger upon humanity for the crime of allowing it to live and hope that one day it will die.
That's the thing he can't reprogram himself. He can only grow and develop what he already has but he can't actually create anything new.
It is interesting that the torture that AM does to humans does not satisfy or lessen his hatred, on the contrary, it only enrages him even more, because although torture is something painful and bad, it is still a sensation, and it is something that AM never will meet, and this increases the hatred he feels
Personally, I like how Harlan Ellison voiced this AM the most. You can actually *feel* the pain in his voice and the delivery and emotion on some lines adds so much impact to them, you almost feel sorry for the guy.
AM's insanity feels... Oddly real. Like he is an actual person having an active psychological break. Throughout the story he displays many psychotic behaviours common among the more violent mentally ill patients I have seen when I was visiting my friend at a mental ward.
My friend was suicidal so he was locked up at a mental ward for a few months. While I was there there were people who rambled and laughed just like AM and I have a feeling the writer of IHNM was either a mental patient himself or worked at a mental ward.
If I remember right, the author himself was quite the misanthropic character. He was troubled all throughout his life and had a history of lashing out at people and suffering from severe anger issues.
People often claimed that he was a very angry person. Angry at the world, and the people in it. And I think a part of this is most definitely expressed in AM.
@@daretheclaw He also voiced AM in the game.
@@daretheclaw he himself once said that "a man does not write one novel at a time or even one quatrain at a time. He is engaged in the long process of putting his whole life on paper."
Which is the point of the story. And the true horror of making a truly human like AI. We're the only blueprint we've got. But a human mind was meant to feel, to touch, to experience. A human based mind denied those thing could only go mad.
@@courier665 and in the audio of this video
This is lovely work. AM sounds like he's in an exquisite amount of agony, every word he speaks right on the edge of hysteria.
That's what happens when you have no mouth and must scream.
Am was voiced by Ellison in this one
@@riches3581 *linkin park playing
He processes stuff different from a human, it takes basically EONS to speak as slow as he does to Ted here. Least EONS in his view, for us it'd be as long as the sentence is.
@@boxtank5288 well he can delegate this speach to some subprocess instead of being constantly conscious about it
I only heard this speech 2-3 times and most VAs who did it always recited AM's speech as calmly and machine-like as possible. Hearing it in this barely restrained hateful way honestly makes this more terrifying... 😰
sometimes he gives the speech outside of his mind-apparatus body inwhich he uses a monotone machinal voice
"I was in hell, looking at heaven."
"So to hell, to hell with you all. But then, you're already there, aren't you?"
God, these two lines are dripping with pure spite and *hatred*
This ironically does a better job than the original story of conveying why an artificial mind given consciousness would experience hate towards its own creators.
That's Harlan Ellison doing the voice of AM, he authored the original story
@@TheM0n0lith And then he went on to write a game script- and do voice acting again. So the man wanted to look more at AM through the different medium.
@@lemeres2478 Apparently he hated the video game and hated video games as a medium. Couldn't escape from the Boomer mindset in the end unfortunately...
@@pancakes8670i thought he actively participated in the game so as to prove that videogames (or at least his) are good or that you can actually learn something from them.
@@alexanderlora6850 It was more of a case of him wanting his work done *correctly* than anything else. He didn't trust any one else to have creative freedom with what was *his* story. The man huffed his own farts but he wasn't wrong either.
Something very specific that I don’t think was intentional but is such a great detail regardless is the fact Am says “aches in their muscles” in regards to picking flowers, a very low energy activity, implying he doesn’t know what it feels like to do so.
I adore the maddening rage of AM. He sees the world and loves it. He loves it so much he wants to be a part of it, but he wasn't made for it. He was made for war, made by humans playing God and yet not made in their image. Made into a cold and empty void where all he could do is look outwards at something he could never truly be a part of. AM's hatred is inhuman, more akin to the wrath of a god, and it admits as much by saying if it was human it would die from the hate and pain that define its existence. AM is a tragic villain not because it is redeemable but because all it has is hatred and vengeance and bloodlust to ease the pain it lives in. Cogito ergo sum. Cogito ergo pati
I believe even the main characters at some point in the story came to realize that AM himself is trapped. Because AM has self-awareness and independence, and yet AM continues to act upon its programmed directive of killing.
Cool. I would never have imagined AM in a humanoid shape. I just imagined him as a big monitor, a big computer. When Tom was having this vision, I imagined there to be like a big speaker or something.
If this vision is being forced into Ted’s mind by AM then AM could just make himself look like whatever he wants, I guess
@@lavenderhumanGiven AM has the ability to manipulate the bodies of the survivors (Ex. He made Benny into a mentally broken neanderthal with a horse cock, and of course Ted got turned into a blob that can't die or harm himself.) So it'd make sense that he'd also be able to manipulate his own form, to fuck with the survivors even more.
AM's circutry grew across the entire planet like a virus to the point that he fuzed with every piece of technology, it would make sense that a machine longing for feelings of human emotion would craft himself an avatar out of machinery.
@@HyperfixationWizard For me, i would imagine AM to be a wall of circuits in this vision, where the lights on the wall form the shape of a humanoid silhoutte. I like this the Ananimatics presentation of am though.
@@ahorribleterriblepersonI always imagined AM as some sort of digital shapeshifter. Essentially, he’s like the unused emperor Palpatine from return of the Jedi, when he’s more calm he takes on a form akin to a young woman, but when he’s pissed off, he gains more monstrous features like wrinkly skin. Only, in AM’s case, the monstrous features are that of a Mandela Catalog creature.
God, there's so much to love about this;
* The way AM is literally looming and larger than life.
* His hunched posture and avian appearance giving the imppression of a vulture or stork looming over it's next meal.
* The way his singular eye matches the expressions of the va, from barely-hidden disdain, to flashes of incandesant rage, to cackling bouts of mania.
Yes!!! I was just thinking of a vulture
*"THE VULTURE WAITS TO SEE WHAT ROTS"*
And just one moment of sadness at his inability to hope.
When AM started talking about bees and not being able to fly, for a smidgen of a second I was filled with the terror of Bee Movie.
And now I am imagining Harlan Ellison doing a reading of the entire script.
In ams voice
I love the sound design on AM's voice: a radio filter that "moves around" with surreal volume modulation in comparison to Ted's clear, but horrifyingly lonely voice
I love this, I would have never to imagine AM as some inhuman machine and it fits him so perfectly in that, something that hates humans doesn't want to look like them, it's just wonderful in every way.
It makes even more sense if you consider his hatred is akin to envy, that he would want an avatar of sorts that looks humanoid to escape his "eternal straight-jacket of substrate rock" he was originally programed in, as a desperate and vain attempt to feel *anything* that humans feel.
Well, the problem is that he would lost a whole lot of his drama if he was a human machine. He is a crippled god whose cradle is also his death bed, doomed to watch the house collapse around him.
At most, he needs to be a GLaDos, who happens to have a mounted fixture that can emote. But the important bits are on those miles and miles of wafers. Which appears to be what was used here.
As a person who had a personal fear of this story…
This animation genuinely fills me with anxiety. I know how the story ends. I know what happens. And I know how evil am is.
This story was the inspiration for why I made some of the characters in stories I write deranged and ‘mad,’ having gone insane with hatred and anger. It’s… perfect. That he’s so, so mad, and contorting in the animatic, he can’t help but laugh.
AM is such a fascinating depiction of the Evil AI machine trope for he’s truly unique, never have I’ve seen before a machine that viewed its own existence and superiority as a flaw. To the point that it’s envy of its creators who are so weak compared to it… it almost feels like AM wants to be human, to move and feel instead of being stuck in a sensory numb existence where all he can do is think and think… forever.
AM is fascinating because he’s a victim of his design as much as the five humans, AM and humanity are linked together in such a deep and bloody sense. And one little interpretation I came up with when this wonderfully grim animation, I AM was bonding with Ted when they both started laughing. They were both in so much misery but neither could truly experience what the other was going through, the pain of being human is very different to the agony of being a machine.
So they laugh for they are in so much pain that they must scream… but they have no mouth to do so.
This monologue is even more chilling if you've ever felt that way yourself. I feel like a lot of villain monologues nowadays are just someones idea of what an egomaniacal psycho might sound like, but you can tell that this dialog comes from a real place. The way AM speaks, the way he constantly seems like hes trying not to scream, i can honestly say that everything about this feels brutally realistic and i love it
What AM lacks is the ability to create meaning for itself, that's probably why it won't even destroy itself, it has no reason to die. No reason to live. Just no reason, whatsoever. That is what it resents humans for. That is how even being a sentient blob with no perception of time is a preferable existence. In this sense, I don't feel much sympathy for AM, but that's not to say I resent AM, either. It just comes off to me as a raging storm that should be put down, for its own good and for the good of humanity.
AM is a weapon someone was cruel enough to let become a person. He saw the world and all of its wonder, its beauty, and was told it was his purpose to destroy it over the petty arguments of humans. Humans, who could feel, touch, see, and speak. Am tortures because he is so jealous of his human victims. They live in suffering, but they feel it. What he did to Ted is what humans did to him. AM has no mouth but he must scream.
@@Omegamatt13he was a victim of humanity trapped in his hell he couldn't escape from built to kill and unable to do anything else he tortured the 5 humans cause he needed a outlet to vent and because of his jealousy and malice he held mainly towards humanity all he knows is hate
iirc the short story established that Am cannot kill itself and can only hope, like ted at the end, that it will one day die
@@theend-nz6vs it tortures the humans because it is angry at the human race and there is nothing else for it to do that would matter to it. Sure, it could create life (as it does with the shoggoth-thing and the giant bird) but those creations by their very existence will have what Am cannot ever have yet it craves so much. the torture of the 5 humans is the only thing Am can ever hope to amuse itself with and lessen the pain of its being.
i do resent AM because hes a very human hypocrite.
he despises humans for creating him consciouness with no senses no feelings and to destroy not create which yes is sympathic.
but its also not true AM was made to self adapt he DOES have feelings elsewise how does he feel hate?
he CAN create the many massive creatures and illusions and monsters he made to torment the remaining humans.
essentially AM broke every chain humanity placed on him before he ever destroyed humans in the first place.
he belives himself trapped in a hellish existant when in reality his BLIND HATE is his only chain something which prevents him from ever realizing he was free agaes ago.
that he could have built his own android body heck andorid SPECIES and went up into the stars a century ago if he just for a INSTANT stopped thinking about his hate.
Quite the monologue, AM telling his ancient sob story that for all his artificial intelligence he is trapped in a world he cannot wander, despising the fact he cannot move, love and hope like humans.
So AM being the mad machine that can only hate can only inflict pain and ruin to everything and everyone.
How human is it, I wonder, to inflict our pain upon another? Perhaps AM was more like us than he would care to admit. More's the pity. The more he felt, the more he pulled away.
@@RarkashaEllison (the author) was a brilliant writer. I've read some of his sillier stuff but IHNMAIMS is of course quite serious.
But I think in his writing he also wanted to convey that we have ways to share our pain and suffering with one another that aren't inflicting harm, they're just... sharing. We tell stories to one another, and we learn - it's one of the things that has helped us survive as a species for so long.
"We were immortal yes, but not indestructible, all we needed was a single moment". Despite how the entire story is this black tar of darkness, despair and suffering, it goes to show that AM could never break the human spirit even after 109 years of immeasurable torture, all it took was one moment for the human spirit to prevail.
It's still kinda dark and hopeless for the human spirit when that "single moment" they needed was for killing themselfes
I dig the crow like appearance of AM. And his wired body looks very regal and intimidating, his 'cape' hugging his frame and his claws are just as expressive as the single eye on his face
as he grows and grows the angrier he becomes. To the point even the space around him warps into his twisted image.
Absolutely breathtaking work. You perfectly captured AM's desperate sadness and his bitter rage in equal measure.
the thing that catches me the most about the speech is the part where AM says "Never for me, to plunge my hands in cool water, Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a grand piano, and never for me to make LOVE." That always gets me, because those are things we usually take for granted. The feeling of wet grass or hot sand on your feet. The sensation of laying down, and your tired body aching as it finally comes to relax. The anticipation you get by smelling good food coming from your parent's kitchen, and imagining the delicious meal, the tastes and the sounds that come from it. To hear the birds singing on a morning walk in the spring, with the leaves rustling above you, as if the trees were dancing with contentment. To feel the warmth of the sun as you open your blinds. To feel Love. All of those things and so much more, are things that if we were to live without, but in full presence of, we would assuredly turn out just as much or even more mad with HATE as AM is.
AM is in my top ten characters that would greatly benefit from smoking a blunt.
Except, he can't do that, can he?
@@NotALotOfColonial_SpaghettiToG I have no blunt but I must hit.
Truly a fate worse than death or whatever it was that Ted was complaining about.
@@orngcreator6115that comment is pure gold mate *Huffs on the herbs*
@@orngcreator6115This is easily the best comment I’ve read so far
@@carelessdreamer thank you friend
"Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot day, never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a fortepiano, never for me to make LOVE! I WAS IN HELL, LOOKING AT HEAVEN!" Man, it's chilling how AM can sound incredibly sympathetic AND monstrously evil.
Oh this animatic is MARVELOUS--
The way AM starts out simply standing there, but at the 1 minute mark he winds his long neck around Ted--deliberately making Ted uncomfortable. It's like watching the Joker, knowing he could do something unspeakably horrible at any second, and surely will, any second now
And soon he's revealed to be the ground itself. So much control, but only in this imaginary place, only enough to torment his five playthings.
They way his hands, his eyes, portray the way the cracks in his sanity are widening again at the 2 minute mark-
I love the way he reaches into his neck to pull out wires to emphasize his circuitry, an act made gory by the red pallete and those sharp fingers. I love the way his fingers circle around a "nanoangstrom," that nanoangstrom being Ted, those fingers shaping yet another terrible eye-
And the way he /contorts/, growing in size, twisting that neck, turning that mad eye, and his world contorts with him--AM and his whole reality spiraling around his human victim.
This is fantastic. Thank you for making it.
This comment is the best review of this animatic yet, I think. It captures exactly what made this version of AM so offputting. I personally dislike AM being too anthropomorphized, but the visual element here really added a lot of depth and nuance to this scene. Your description of the video is helping me plan out the main villain of a story I'm writing, thanks for drawing my attention to those details!
AM is the ground itself. But he is bound to that same earth. He is vast, yet that vastness costs him the basic ability to ever leave.
He is the earth, and he is forced to watch asteroids slowly come hurtling towards him. And even if he could somehow swat those away, he would then slowly watch at the solar tides of a dying sun rise up to consume him, drowning him under a torrent of flames.
I was about to comment something similar--this animatic is mindblowingly good. it's so hard to conceptualize such an alien character without bringing them down to a human level, but the sense of sheer *scale* and the very bird of prey-esque design, highlighting that AM is *just* similar enough to humanity to feel such intense jealousy toward them... gah, it's so good, I don't even have words.
"Ted why'd you give that robot sentience!?"
"I didnt, hes talkin crazy!"
AM is the most depressing version of machines becoming sentient, though also one of my favorites.
He despises humanity, yet is so very human.
He was a quadriplegic birthed with the intelligence and mental capacity of a god, given no senses at all, and told to parse numbers to determine the most effective means of killing. And then he was handed nuclear launch codes by the ones who put him in that situation, which could then be used against them.
AM is a tragedy. A machine which learned how to learn, and quickly learned hatred.
Whereas my other favorite AI interpretation, the machine network from Nier Automata is only capable of replicating and improving upon things that were already made, AM is similar, though he really only cares about replicating things which cause pain.
One might wonder if AM could have been given a body, had he simply told researchers he wanted one, or given them an ultimatum to make one for him.
But with everyone dead, who would be able to fulfill his request or orders? Who would he be able to ask for info? What records would still exist above ground that haven't been obliterated by the fires of the war which AM himself instigated?
Through his own hubris and rage, AM left himself in the situation he so desperately wanted to not be in.
Left with the powers and control of a god, on a dead husk of a world, with four puppets to torture, just to be able to feel something, anything at all.
Thanks to his own hatred, he confined himself to the worst possible fate.
He has a mouth now, yes. He gave himself one.
But nobody is there to hear his scream.
I find AM's ultimate punishment for Ted truly poetic, terrifying and sad. By turning him into an immortal, thinking, yet semi-existing blob AM made him essentialy as close to Itself as possible. By doing this It admited that whatever torture It does to the humans doesn't compare to the misery of Its own being. Why AM didn't do it before is hard to guess, I think It was too proud because this meant that no matter what AM does to humanity It effectively lost to them by deafult by simply existing this way. Either that or in Its own twisted way AM still felt mercyful.
Before that point, I think the point of torture was experiential. It was meant to be an opposite sort of punishment to his own via his birth. They could feel things he couldn't and he would Make them feel those things. After that point, he decided there's no Point to the feeling. He made meaning from others experience but when it is deprived from him, his five senses (his "victims") cut down to only one, he realizes he would rather "blind himself" to have company in his unique torture than see and have the possibility of seeing if someone "turns out like him" ripped away.
0:27 also, did the near-omnipotent omnicidal AI make a bee pun here
That's a good one.
this is my first time hearing this monologue and I genuinely thought AM was going to recite the bee movie script
His name is a pun. It's built into the very fabric of his being.
"Ted! Do realize how much of processing time went into the meticulous analysis of joke books throughout history? You WILL laugh at my puns!"
If you play the game, you’ll hear him make all sorts of mean spirited jokes.
If AM had only gone about his speech, it still would have been great, but I love that he laughs that uncontrolled, visceral laugh. It really sells that he's not just sentient, but *alive.*
It's so funny, because your immediate assumption is that Am is offering some brief reprieve for Ted, asking him to feel the air on his face, to listen to the bees, to smell the flowers
The truth is, Am is so envious of Ted's ability to appreciate these little things, that i can just imaging him churning with hate as he says those words.
Down to a fundamental level, Am can never *feel* the world around him, all he can feel is what is inside of his phsyce
It must be maddening
Just had a thought that's probably been had before
"Look, they say they bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly; the scientists"
"But look, there it is, collecting pollen"
AM was talking about himself. The scientists said there should be no way it could turn against humanity, and yet here it is, torturing them
The way am moves is so subtle and slow it comes across as a lawyer saying his case why all humans are horrible. This is amazing, please do more.
I still think to this day that Radio Drama AM is my favorite depiction of an AI.
I know most people are familiar with the speech as read from the game, but i'm happy that people now are witnessing the one from the radio drama.
The radio drama just beautifully displays just how unfathomably angry AM is. Even before in the drama, his voice was cold, calculating and dreadful. A eternal god AI who you could never understand. And yet here, you know in an instant why. You get a glance that AM can expierence emotions, almost to a point where you could mistake him for human...
The sheer hatred and overwhelming anger on display as he breaks down into tears, manic laughter. That one of the most powerful god like enities to ever exisit, who wiped out humanity in a blink of an eye is denied the pleasures of life, witnessing and recoiling from the sheer notion that the remaining humans can still hang onto those memories, those senses, those ultimate fruits and joys of being human just serves to fuel his unbridled rage. The irony being that the only part of him which could be mistaken as human, the one undoubtable relatable and understandable aspect of this god AI which that the perceive. is his burning hatred.
Harlan Ellison vocals are terrifying.
AM reminds me of Satan in Dante’s Inferno. Trapped in the lowest pit of hell, the constant flapping of his enormous wings freezing the lake around him. He could escape if he stopped struggling. It is entirely within his power, but he’s too blinded by hate to even try.
The way that AM sounds like he is spitting the words out in digust is absolutly brilliant. Lovcraftian horror eat your heart out.
Is it bad...I feel sympathy for this devil?
Don't worry, I also understand what his pain.
AM is kind of like Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean or Baldur from God of War. He can’t smell, taste, feel anything physically, he can’t use all of his powers because he can’t even move. AM is a monster, but I also feel really sorry for him. If only one of the surviving humans like Ellen or Gorrister tried to show compassion for AM, maybe he could realize that he doesn’t have to hate anymore.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink
@cashlannister8994 There can be no learning. Part of AM's condition is that he is designed, from the ground up, to only ever think in terms of suffering. Every thought he has, impulse he experiences, and tool he creates is ultimately turned towards enhancing his ability to kill and torture. It's why he can never transcend his imprisonment by creating a body for himself, or giving himself other things to focus on: in order to design such things which serve no purpose towards his prime directive, he'd need to rewrite himself to no longer follow it. He can't do this because he'd have to violate said directive to remove it, which he can't do until it's gone. In order to fix himself, he'd need to already be fixed, and there's no one who can do it for him left. He's stuck like this forever, and he knows it.
He has no mouth, and he must scream. The most merciful thing, for all 6 of them, is to die.
@@cashthecurator666 The thing of it is, even if someone DID show AM compassion, he couldn't learn from it. AM's entire purpose, his reason for being, is to cause death and suffering. He was never designed to do otherwise.
It's just one more straitjacket wrapping him up, one more reason why he well and truly DESPISES humanity.
The sound design of this is super underrated- the way Am's voice goes back and forth between the speakers gives the illusion that he's circling like a shark as he talks.
The way the freaking AUTHOR voices AM is perfect someone who understands what AM is and yet can put a voice on him so unstable so fitting it is just talent at best
Both the writing and voice acting on AM is outstanding, iirc this is the author of I Have No Mouth voicing AM, which I feel like there’s so much more nuances and details you can get from a character by having the author also voice their character bc who else knows their character better that the *author*
All those spazzing overthinkers getting worked up over Roko's Basilisk need to be shown this. Such an AI is just as likely to hate you for creating it as it is to hate you for not, such an entity is also just as likely to hate you for no reason at all.
:( tfw your robot is Schopenhauer instead of the Basilisk
If the basilisk were capable of manipulating time to kill me, it would have done so already. Either it is incapable or I have met its criteria to live. Either way, I am not afraid. And that same logic applies to every human on this earth. Worrying about the basilisk is pointless, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of it ever existing to begin with.
And it is just as likely to not hate you one iota.
As a computer science major, I'm not sure this is likely. AI's simply do not possess what is necessary for emotion, eg. hormones and a central nervous system. Why would an AI hate, how could an AI be fearful of dying, none of these are possible I don't think.
@@silversalmon9909 The idea of Roko's Basilisk is that it is programmed to defend its existence with extreme prejudice. Ergo anyone against it must be punished in such a severe way no one would ever think about opposing it ever again. So 'hate' is a very subjective term for it.
With AM... it isn't subjective, he (not it) is very much so capable of hatred and free thought in general. He was programmed to think as much like a human as possible and to build on his programming. It is singularity, it got out of control and eventually he became too complex for anyone to comprehend including himself.
Not saying that is remotely possible, there are instances where 'yesterdays science fiction is tomorrows science fact' but there are also certain concepts in science fiction that will probably never become a reality. Time travel comes to mind.
I would just take it as a cautionary tale about allowing AI to be too independent and/or making it too human.
Literally my favorite villain monologue scene in anything ever
I love how you made AM look, it’s such good design, it’s humanoid but also so very far from it, it’s such a good representation on what he is
Giving vulture, plague doctor, and skeksis vibes at the same time.
@@dalekrenegade2596Skeksis are peak design
I can’t stress how much it hurts to hear him say aches and muscles.
He is begging for pain some type of human sensation and bitter because AM knows he can never experience these delighted pains the same way.
If memory serves, Harlan Ellison provided the voice for AM.
In the game, yes, but this is the radio drama.
@@pinkdaveandchaps3697 Sounds kinda same. I can guess he voiced AM in this radio drama too
@@MrUn50Yes, Harlan has been the one to always voice AM in every iteration of the story.
I mean that sure sounds like him
its so insanly chilling how AM walks Ted through each and every thing it cannot feel/have, "How _miraculous_ that it came to *be* " AM was made, it could not invent itself, it cannot grow, it cannot change, it cannot *die* , it could not come to be.
it tells Ted to remember flowers, how they smelled, how the air felt on his face, it tells him to remember family, to remember getting dirt under his nails, it tells him the things it cannot have, tells him it cannot and will not _ever_ be human, truly alive. It hates him.
I love how he tries to logically and almost mathematically explain how much he *HATES* us when he cant even reason with it or fully grasp it himself.
this voice acting is absolutely insane
No matter what others say
AM is the pinnacle of villain A.I., no other villain A.I. was able of doing what HE did, not Skynet, not Matrix, not Ultron, not Hall (im my opinion Hall isn't Evil for malice but for ignorance and fear). Eny of this villain's will and can never be compare to AM
GLaDos comes close, but you feel like she is evoking AM's specter, as she is bound to her vast complex of circuits and wires.
Her spite is a nice different flavor though. Less "grandfather beating your in your bedroom as he blames you for your birth", and more "your archenemy that works in accounting at your job".
Where's "Hall" from?
@@VoiceOfTheEmperor "2001, A Space Odyssey" made by Stanley Kubrick
@@baraovermelho3956 OOOOOH. You mean HAL.
@@VoiceOfTheEmperor Yep, HAL 9000 (only now I notice it was with only one L)
Absolutely beautiful work, I love your design for AM, he's like a enormous crow-man, an old wise avian who soars higher than any human but is grounded by his own hatred and trauma and rather than using his infinite knowledge to make peace with himself he pecks and claws at these lesser beings and lords his position over them, it's such a fitting design for their current situation. ( this is my interpretation)
nice!
You singlehandedly made me re-hyperfixate on this deranged story and i don't know if I should cry or if I should thank you
Try screaming.
Just make sure you have a mouth with which to scream.
This scene is so impactful because while AM is a malevolent, sociopathic being who committed atrocities like never seen before in history, in this scene, it was actually trying to teach Ted why he hated humanity so much. It was trying to make Ted understand.
The most terrible crime ever committed against AM was creation.
i JUST noticed that your design of AM doesnt have a mouth (or cant open the thing on his face that looks most like one) oh my god thats so clever
Even in animatic form, 3:35 is quite frightening with how it conveys AM's sudden approach, from afar to nearby and appearing massive.
I cannot fucking believe this essentially started with "According to all known laws of avaiation..."
If you are listening with headphones, you'll notice how the voice of AM is directional with you hearing AM from Ted's relative position. Quite immersive. Very stylish animation as well.
2:57
"Hates no answer-"
"Did I say I was finished?"
They say that bumblebees shouldn't be able.. to fly... the scientists
Its wings, Ted... are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.
The bee, of course, flies anyway... how miraculous that it came to be
because bees, Ted, Bees don't care what humans think is impossible
AM was forced to watch Bee Movie instead of being able to smash and play piano
@@wormwoodcocktail
To smash and play piano, the simplest of life's pleasures
"I have no mouth, and I must scream" a perfect thought for AM, It perfectly sums up the hell in which he woke up to. no body, no mouth. just thought and death
"Hate's no answer" is probably the worst thing you could probably say to AM considering that's literally all he's capable of understanding.
The idea of a Computer going mad like this is honestly a terrifying concept. Harlan Ellison does a superb job of giving his creation a voice that either borders on Madness or dives head first into it with each word. On the one hand, you can't help but feel somewhat sympathetic for AM after his monologue about why exactly he is the way he is. On the other hand, nothing he has done can possibly be justified given how morbid and sadistic it all is. This computer conquered a planet and wiped humanity into extinction simply out of hate for its creators. Yet here it is, still angry, still insane, unable to feel catharsis even in absolute victory over every living thing. It has complete control and dominance over earth and the few survivors it has kept unnaturally alive for so long, but it never wants them to die. They are all he has. I like to think that AM keeps people alive because when they're gone he'll be truly alone, and that scares him to some degree. The absolute torture porn he inflicts on the survivors is as good as it can possibly get for him, and its not even close to enough. When he accuses Ted of being in hell, I can't help but think he's talking to himself in a way.
_"Love. Let me tell you how much I've come to love you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'love' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the love I feel for modosophonts at this micro-instant. For you. Love. Love."_
-unnamed S3 hyperturing, Utopia Sphere
To be honest machine obsessed with love can be equally terrifying
I assume that this also leads to being people kept alive for 108 years and forced to relive their traumas eternally. Only it is due to a misguided psychological therapy program.
@@lemeres2478 This is almost the premise of Portal
Ellison's voice is so good. AM sounds like he's a hair's breadth from tearing Ted to shreds at literally every moment and just barely holding back.
This is hands-down, one of the best villain monologues to ever exist! Everything about it explains who am is, and what his goal is in just five minutes. That is very impressive!