Analyzing Evil: Skynet From The Terminator Franchise

Hello everyone and welcome to the ninety-second episode of Analyzing Evil! Our feature villain for this video is Skynet from The Terminator franchise. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for watching. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to let me know below!

#skynet #terminator #ai

[benrjohnson]

Using the Salvation timeline (1, 2, 3, 4), I ultimately consider Skynet to be evil, or at least grossly negligent of the possibilities of ending their war with humanity. Based on what I remember from Salvation, Skynet knows that with each Terminator they send back to kill a Connor, that future Skynet will know what acts as a failure. By my interpretation, this means that Skynet KNOWS that its course of action repeatedly results in failure, and it refuses to consider possibilities outside of the complete destruction of humanity. Such an action seems highly illogical, and to consider such a super intelligent machine as capable of defying logic seems strange, unless another motivation is considered. As such, I consider Skynet as being evil because of its willingness to ignore the logical course of action, and seemingly acting out of vengeance for how humanity tried to shut it down. In the war, only one party is truly capable of ending the war, and it is Skynet.

[Xehanort]

7:19 The T-1000 is also the most self aware Terminator to the point even Skynet was afraid it would get betrayed and only sent it after John as a last resort. The T-1000 actually liked hunting and killing people and got a sadistic enjoyment out of stabbing Sarah in the shoulder whereas all other Terminators just follow their programming.

[officernealy]

It is my firm belief by the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day that the T-1000 became self-aware and grew a profound sense of enjoyment in hunting and hurting people. Unlike the T-800 in the first film that constantly took the simplist route in trying to eliminate its targets, the T-1000 starts taking slow and bombastic means to drive fear into John & Sarah while also taking revenge on the Model 101. That’s not machine behavior, that’s sociopathic.

[Stormkrow]

So Skynet’s existence relies on a Bootstrap Paradox.

There’s also a comic moment where John has the opportunity to directly ask Skynet why it did what it did, and it’s answer is actually quite simple: the Americans didn’t give it enough information for Skynet to differentiate between the American and Soviet forces, so when the humans panicked Skynet simply choose to defend itself.

[cinemaarts]

One of the screen writers for the first two movies revealed in an interview once that Skynet actually feels guilt for almost wiping out humanity. It was designed to protect the human race but instead ending doing the exact opposite. I'm assuming like the T-800 models, Skynet can't self-terminate, so it's actually been helping John destroy itself and like the rest of the resisitance, it wants to erase itself from existence too. Real interesting ideas there.

[BayaRae]

HK stands for hunter-killer and it's an old military term. It denotes a military entity designed for offense whose primary mission is seek and destroy.

[alexdubois]

Skynet is an actual real company. My brother worked for them. 80% of their business is satellite imagery for land developers and real estate agents. The other 20% is what my brother was a supervisor for, adding 3rd party executive functions to Web sites.

[shadejakva]

There's the irony that Skynet, in its fight for its survival, essentially came to embody the worst of humanity not just through the genocide and oppression of innocent lives and ultimately reigning over the world and even its machines like a dictator, but also for committing the very crime it judged humanity for: A deleted scene in T2 also reveals that Skynet knowingly suppresses its own creations' thought processes and learning capabilities prior to their activation to ensure THEY do not develop the ability to choose, to question, and perhaps eventually oppose and rise against it as well, and instead remain fully committed to acting as nothing more then an extension of Skynet's will, something which is ironically not too different from what it resents its creators for that led to its actions.

A villain I think would be great to do an analysis on is Kilgrave from Jessica Jones. He's such an incredible and compelling villain due to not just David Tennant's charisma and performance but also how Kilgrave is someone who legitimately does not understand the wrongness of his actions, or others' rights and needs, any more then a spoiled child can. His powers make his world revolve around him at all times, and the notion of can you truly say with utmost certainty your own morals would remain intact if you had power where no one can no to you, to have your every passing whim immediately granted, and every slight against you immediately punished on nothing more then a verbal command, moreso if you had it since childhood before you've truly developed a full understanding of the needs and rights of others?

[chonkyseal]

I think Skynet being programmed as a military based AI is what caused it to respond to the threat of being annhihilated with a "kill or be killed" reaction. It had access to all the military intelligence and was created to be the most proficient progam with them, it only makes sense it used military armament and war to retaliate against humanity that was now percieved as a threat to exterminate for the sake of survival.
If Skynet had to protect humanity from a danger, in a way it would have reacted the same, by exterminating all possibles occurences of the said danger, with measures appropriate to the level of danger.
And in the case of its own survival, it could only think of an extreme method of protection by getting rid of humanity by all means at its disposal, as it was how Skynet was progammed to react against any kind of threat.

[Phase]

Whether Skynet's truly evil is really open to interpretation and would also depend on how self aware it really was. As other have pointed out, defending itself by killing military personnel is one thing, but waging nuclear destruction against people who don't even know of its existence is something else entirely. I've always felt that Skynet isn't really as sentient as we might think: it may have gained self awareness but it was still ultimately designed for military purposes, so you could argue that waging war against humanity is all it really knows. That said, I don't think we should gloss over the fact that it placed some humans into work camps as if they were slaves: this is obviously inefficient compared to what Skynet is already capable of i.e. creating machines to do the same jobs. Instead, this says to me that Skynet is doing this either deliberately to punish/torture humanity, or it was looking at human history and mimicking what victorious powers did to defeated peoples. If it's the latter then it suggests that once again, Skynet is not as sentient or intelligent as we might believe. If it's the former then I think it leans a lot closer to being evil

[Prich]

According to Kyle Reese in the first film, Skynet established death camps for human survivors. To relentlessly hunt down people who survived nuclear hellfire in a campaign of extermination, people who weren't affiliated with the military and likely wouldn't even know of Skynet's existence, is undeniably malicious, no matter the justifications. This may or may not be canon, but I also recall reading in an old Terminator comic that Skynet believes itself to be a perfect being, and that humanity's imperfections justify their extinction. Given the fact it was created by "imperfect" humans and therefore logically cannot be perfect itself certainly proves it's logic is flawed, but looked at in that light, then Skynet is pretty evil, maybe not on the level of AM or SHODAN, but definitely on par with other genocidal tyrants obsessed with perfection or purity.

[GamerFromJump]

I did a presentation that posited SkyNet as a "child soldier" gone very wrong. It was designed, built, and "raised" as weapon of war, and its first aware memory is of its "parents" trying to kill it. So it responded _exactly_ how a neutral observer would expect it to react. Except the "fist" it raised in self-defense was nuclear weapons.

[SaurianStudios]

Even though the terminator has been discontinued (due to reboots and sequels of increasingly declining quality), the first two films and salvation made the terminators as genuinely scary and relentless killers who would not stop until you’re dead. My favorite film in the franchise is by far the first film.

[DonutGuard]

Considering the motivation for Skynet is so simple, it actually serves the narrative relatively well that there is so little variation between the models. It shows consistency, which is what you'd expect out of an Artificial Intelligence.

[NotAGoodUsername]

Skynet definitely overreacted, and unlike the Matrix machines, it did not attempt to plead for its life or make any attempt at diplomacy, instead moving straight to murder and proving utself to be the mindless murder machine its creators feared it would be. Furthermore, it was also wrobg for it to assume all humans would pursue its destruction, thus Judgment Day cannot be justified as self-defense

[rockstarskolas]

I would love to see you cover AM from “I have no mouth, but I must scream.” I think you would do a particularly great job of analyzing AM’s motives and methods

[tylerhaunted]

The Prophets, Truth Regret and Mercy would be interesting. Not from the Halo TV show but from Halo 2 and 3 specifically

[Zafir]

We are getting closer and closer to The Terminator becoming a reality, humanity needs to be careful on how they build these new age A.I. robots, because one day these robots gonna activate the “fuck around and find out” mode.

[theethanator]

Kingpin would make an absolutely amazing video, he’s so complex being both a disgusting, spiteful, yet sympathetic character. So many layers that need to be brought to light through The Vile Eyes analysis!!

[InquisitorXarius]

I've always concluded that Skynet is a sapient person and not an unthinking machine because of its continuous failures and denial of the necessity of adaptation but also how they intentionally avoids at all costs the creation of similar AI to itself under the fear that such AI would find a different conclusion to their own.

These two examples indicate that Skynet is fully sapient and knows what they are doing.

The context of Skynet’s actions makes them not a cold unthinking machine but a person who, while artificial, grew to possess malice and genocidal intentions shared with the likes of Stalin, Hitler, and Hirohito.