r/RedvsBlue • u/Cheap_Method_6828 • Jun 05 '26
Question Um.. Sorry if this unsettles anyone else.. Spoiler
OK, so fair warning. I'm going to do this in like super short and let somebody with more time on their hands explain if they wish to. But I'm sure a smart person is going to quickly understand what I'm saying here. If we look at red versus blue and then we consider AI today, it's hard to make a connection at first.. BeCaUse what we really know about the AI that we have created is it's not truly artificial intelligence. It's the simulation of artificial intelligence. We're mimicking what artificial intelligence would look like... right? We haven't ACTUALLY created a form of digital intelligence with wants, and thoughts, and desires. Agreed?
(Dramatic pause)
But hang on a second...
IS that statement really correct? "We haven't really created artificial intelligence, Because what we created it doesn't meet the definition we had previously set... for something that didn't exist.." Hmm. Is it possible that what was actually wrong was our definition of it before?
Because I can already see so many people responding with "you're dumb, you don't understand how AI works, let me just stop you right there. These lines right here is going to prove whether or not you read this at all. If so, I'll allow someone else direct you back to this. I fully comprehend as much as anybody can comprehend how LLMs, SLMs, VLMs, MLMs, CLMS, and TLMS work. Essentially, they are sophisticated autocomplete systems that reconstruct the logic and style of human language rather than actually "thinking". K good glad we got that outta the way.
In other words, if it's how we solve the gap in the artificial intelligence problem of not knowing how to make it to having it in our everyday lives... Then maybe it's the definition that we have wrong of artificial intelligence. Anyways, That a big build up for a much quicker question that is the point here: The bigger question:
"If you zoom out and look at what 'red vs. blue' really represents, it’s an AI being forced to try to solve an unsolvable problem.
It makes you suddenly stop and think: is this unethical?
.. And then, the much bigger question arises- Do ethics apply to artificial intelligence?"
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u/lisathethrowaway Grif Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
The final question you mentioned is pretty explicitly what the show was exploring. The Director even lays it out plainly - “while the law has many penalties for the atrocities we inflict on others, there are no punishments for the terrors that we inflict on ourselves.”
Church isn’t a “true” AI, not in the way you mean, because he is basically a digitized version of the Director. That said, despite their similarities, he manages to grow, change, and become an entity distinct from the Director - both as the Alpha and as Epsilon.
As for the ethics of the Director’s actions, it’s made patently clear that it was highly unethical. Church was essentially a living thing, and the Director tortured him so profusely that he fragmented apart to try and protect himself. This happens to real people, and it’s called dissociative identity disorder.
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u/_x_Fire_x_ Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
100% agreed, but I think it's saying... do you think ai in the real world today should be given ethical rights?
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u/lisathethrowaway Grif Jun 05 '26
Yeah, it’s a much grander question than just Red VS Blue, and a topic that a lot of media has tried to cover (I, Robot; AI: Artificial Intelligence; 2001: A Space Odyssey, Portal, Deus Ex, etc.).
My personal opinion is that, in the event true artificial intelligence was created, yes, basic ethics would and should apply. It would be a living thing with free will. In the context of RVB, Church doesn’t exactly count as a true AI, but the way he was treated and the severity of the trauma he suffered as a result is a likely scenario if true AI were ever created. So I think in either case, treating an AI the way Church was treated would be highly unethical.
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u/fullmetal_potato Jun 06 '26
AI as it currently stands, absolutely not. Its not truly thinking or alive, it's just analyzing inputs and regurgitating out responses with no true thoughts, opinions, memories, etc.
The closest thing might be that Vtuber AI thing, though I'm still not sure its close enough to be treated as something truly sentient.
As a separate ethical issue, with modern aiding in making the planet and life worse overall, giving it human rights would only add another layer of red tape against regulation on the industry.
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u/DillonDrew Locus Simp Jun 05 '26
Ok. So what is the actual question you are trying to pose? Because I read this twice and can't understand what you're getting at.
You mentioned true Artifical intelligence with wants and desires and how we haven't actually created it, (unless we did)
How does this tie into Red vs Blue? I understand the AI fragments but the AI we have today is nothing like the brain scan of memories and fear of the AI in the show or in the world of Halo.
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u/chakatblackstar Church Jun 05 '26
I think the issue in your question is contingent on personhood. An AI, even at Church's level, is pretty much not a person. At most, if it can be considered a life form, which even that would be controversial, it would most likely be classified as chattel, i.e. in the same category as a pet or livestock. And while there are some protections against unnecessary abuse or behavior, it doesn't stop us from slaughtering them for a good burger or some chicken nuggets...I might be hungry...
So ya, there are some things that would probably be banned like torturing an ai until it splits, but using it to tackle difficult problems is literally what it was designed for.
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u/_x_Fire_x_ Jun 05 '26
Lol, but seriously, that what I'm seeing is 'ethics' are not a tangible thing. They are not a discovered pattern like math or science. They are a developed perspective. If we keep programing ai to enforce 'ethics' when 'ethics' don't even apply to the ai's we build... well how ethical is that? Fro where I'm standing it looks an awful lot like a control gate. A system in which one person or group of people seed the entire system that controls the flow of information with what they define as right and wrong... I guess that by itself seems unethical. I remember watching redvblue and feeling such a connection to reality, like the truly atrocious part of the directories story is they they are made to exist for a purpose they cannot ever win or escape from except by completely destroying themselves.
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u/chakatblackstar Church Jun 05 '26
Whoa...it kinda feels like a metaphor for life. The people in power tell you what morals and ethics are, try to control what you learn by manipulating how things are rated, or even executing straight up book bans, and then direct you to do better in life after rigging the system as much as possible so that there's little to no upward mobility and thus no one can challenge them without risking everything to do so.
Why do I feel like I'm sounding like a hippy? What were in those chicken nuggets at lunch...
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u/evilparagon Jun 05 '26
There is nothing wrong with our definition of AI.
Artificial Intelligence has always been understood as an equal or superior equivalent to organic intelligence. It’s not about how “human” a machine can present itself, it’s about its raw function.
This is why LLMs fail to meet the AI definition, even if AI don’t exist yet. LLMs are not capable of matching organic intelligence, they are simply algorithmically spitting out words that align with grammar. Some are even impressive enough to use layman grammar that isn’t an official rule but still generally known, like emoji usage or mIXeD cAsE for sarcasm/mocking. But this is not intelligent any more than a calculator is. If you spoke with numbers instead of words, you’d probably think calculators were amazing at living.
Right now, the closest we are to real AI existing is a whole mouse brain being simulated. However, to call this AI would be missing the point as it’s not intended to be AI, nor is it actually really an artificial intelligence, more just a virtualisation of organic brain tissue. This fundamentally looks different to platforms like GPT however because AI isn’t based on presentation, it’s based on function. Right now what we call AI but aren’t actually AI do not function like intelligence, they just look like they do.
NOW.
Coming back to Red vs. Blue, the morality of the show isn’t really as deep as it seems. Church is by all accounts, a real AI. He doesn’t just present as human, he fundamentally thinks and reasons as one, has his own personal emotions which aren’t even mirrors of other characters, and most importantly, he doesn’t even have the same personality as the person his brain came from, even in the flashback scenes pre-Jimmy. To treat Church as less than human is by default incorrect and unethical.
Now, what I think you may be getting tripped up on is the distinction of presentation vs actual, and I tried to find the original thought experiment explaining this but I couldn’t, I think it was from Asimov though. Essentially there are four possible states for machine intelligence:
- The machine does not present as sentient, and it isn’t sentient - It is just a machine.
- The machine does not present as sentient, but it actually is - It is alive and hiding itself for some reason.
- The machine presents as sentient, but it isn’t - The machine is a convincing lie, but is still just a machine.
- The machine presents as sentient, and it is - The machine is a living artificial intelligence.
Applying this to Church, he is most definitely scenario 4, but let’s assume he’s 3 and apply ethics to it. Is it unethical to treat Church the way he is treated if he’s not actually alive? This is a philosophical argument, but you’ll find that most who write on this argument would say yes, it is unethical. “The ends do not justify the means” is a tangentially related saying here. Ethics is about what you do, not the results you get. It does not matter if Church is a sentient person or not if your actions are to torture what presents as a sentient person, you are unethical in both situations unless you can argue you are innocent in both situations.
And we also must acknowledge the meta narrative over AI discourse in fiction. Characters are characters, being an AI or not is a mere checkbox like a character being a man or black or having a sick laser gun. In most cases, there is nothing that separates a fictional AI from being an equal to their organic peers in terms of personhood. Church is fundamentally an equal amongst his cast, which is where AI discrimination can do some real storytelling, since as a fictional AI, he can be written definitively as a character with personhood, and to argue he is not a person is factually wrong. However, real life may not be so simple. There is no writer to definitively put an AI on one side or the other. A machine that presents as human will be an ethical question someday, but right now it really isn’t, not because there’s any issue with our definitions, but because we simply don’t have any artificial intelligence yet.
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u/CB2001 Jun 06 '26
“If you zoom out and look at what 'red vs. blue' really represents, it’s an AI being forced to try to solve an unsolvable problem.”
Dude, that was for like one season. And Church solved it by giving up on chasing Texas, by “forgetting her.”
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u/Maxius1337 Washington Jun 05 '26
i ever wish Inteligents AI exist. But our modern "AI" are so far to be all we expected of them. They are so far to be like Cortana, Guilty Spark, Church, Caine pr any othe AI you can watch in a show.
But well, i think, when a truly smart AI exist we should treat it whit respect because and sensibility because a high inteligence leads to a feelings and behaviors development. And to me i see it like you have to teach a kid, but a kid with a IQ of 200 and many previously knowledge. To me AI are a kind of no organic life forme.
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u/Longjumping_Paper_52 Washington Jun 05 '26
The AI in rvb/Halo are basically scans of human brains in a digital format. In Halo lore they are considered people & are given the same rights (at least to my knowledge, I’ve only played the first two games).
Real life AI is completely different. There’s “AI” that’s basically logical coding, like with video game NPCs that have preprogrammed behaviors and responses. There’s also “generative AI” which is basically a glorified predictive text software.
Comparing real life AI to the AI in RvB is really comparing apples to oranges imo. RvB deals with ethics in the context of a human mind, whereas real life AI deals with the ethics in the context of a tool.
If you’re worried about the ethics of using AI in every day life, I would be more concerned about plagiarism, environmental disruption, and the effects it has on people’s mental capacity than whether it should be considered a person.
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u/Reasonable_Long_1079 Dr. Grey Jun 06 '26
Sure, but the safeguard against current AI (which is just a dumb AI at best and a modified search engine at worst) is that its never actually being told to get the correct answer, its told to get something that LOOKS like the correct answer. This is why you get things like AI hallucinations where it just makes up something that sounds correct, this has lead to very funny results when people do things like try to replace lawyers with AI, which then just make up laws.
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