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We all know that feeling. You're driving along the highway and all of a sudden you see blue lights in your rear view mirror. Bad feeling, right? Well, be careful, that feeling could get a lot worse. North Carolina has a new system for "easy" disposition of minor traffic tickets. When a driver is issued a citation, they also receive instructions about how easy it is to simply go online to the Pay NC Ticket website, break out the plastic, and voila, painless traffic ticket. No wasted time going to court, no long line to wait in, totally painless and easy. That is of course until you receive notice from your auto insurance carrier that your premium will be increasing or even worse, you may receive a letter from the N.C. DMV telling you that because of your recent conviction, your driver's license is scheduled for revocation.
But wait! That helpful patrolman told me once I paid the ticket off online everything would be taken care of and that this is really better than going to court. Well, the problem is once you pay off your ticket online, it is treated as a final conviction and it is reported to DMV (the people that keep track of the bad things you do while driving). From there, your insurance company finds out about the ticket. The charge isn't reduced for you online, you can't receive a PJC (prayer for judgment continued), nor can you plead to a simple non-moving violation like Improper Equipment. You are stuck with the exact charge you originally received.
In North Carolina, certain traffic convictions can cause huge problems. For instance, if your ticket was for speeding more than 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit your auto liability policy premium can increase substantially. Usually, this increase lasts for three years. Also, if you are one of the unfortunate ones without a spotless driving record, that one ticket could have caused an accumulation of license points that could be grounds for license revocation.
The moral of the story, if you have the bad fortune of receiving a traffic ticket don't try to handle it yourself. Call a reputable attorney in the county where you received the ticket that routinely handles traffic matters in that court. They will review your North Carolina driving record and will know what needs to happen to avoid an insurance increase or a license revocation. The attorney's fee you pay will be well worth it to avoid the enormous headache of what could happen if you simply pay off something that could cause so many problems.
Mark Herring,
Attorney at Law
Mark Herring is a partner with White & Allen, P.A. in Kinston, NC. Mark is a former state prosecutor and handles all types of criminal matters in state and federal courts as well as general civil litigation matters. Mark has extensive experience in handling all types of traffic cases including speeding, careless and reckless driving, driving while license revoked and driving while impaired.
The above article is not intended as legal advice nor does it create any attorney-client relationship


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If you do not yet have an appropriate Home and Community service code, you will need to do the following in order to participate in PACC's Home and Community Day Services:
- Contact your Support Coordinator and inform him/her that you are interested in participating in PACC's Home and Community Day Services. Your S.C. and other support team members (which also includes PACC), will evaluate your current codes and goals, then add or change your codes to include W7059 (1:3 ratio) or a W7060 (1:1 ratio), based on your needs, goals, and safety factors, so that you may participate in integrated community activities.
- Once your code has been changed, you will be assigned your PACC Habilitation Specialist (HAB) staff. You will have a Meet & Greet meeting with your HAB staff and a PACC management member where by you will discuss your goals and arrange your program schedule based on your available units, goals, and day-to-day needs.
Once you have an Appropriate Home & Community code:
- Your PACC HAB staff will provide you with transportation in their personal vehicle while you are participating in PACC's Home & Community Day Services. Access transportation is no longer available to anyone while using Home & Community Services.
- Your HAB staff will work with you and your family to arrange a schedule that meets your individual needs including pick-up and drop-off times, schedule of days you will receive services based upon your available units, and what events/programs you would like to participate in.
- The catalog of activities provided is arranged so you have multiple options daily to participate in community integration and skill building with several other individuals which allows for socialization opportunities. However, you are NOT required to attend these events. You and your HAB staff can choose other means of community skill building or your HAB staff can support you with daily living skills right in your own home including cleaning, laundry, banking, cooking/ meal preparation, etc. If needed, your HAB staff can also assist you with personal care including dressing and grooming.
- You will need to discuss and prepare your schedule with your HAB staff at least one week in advance. You do not have to call ahead and register for the events/programs listed in this catalog, unless it is noted. This is unlike the preregistration which is required for events in our "Yellow Books."
- If you are sick or for any reason cannot participate in programming for the day, you will call your HAB staff directly and cancel. Additionally, due to inclement weather, events may be cancelled which will require you and your HAB staff to participate in alternative programming for the day.
When events listed have additional costs to participate, pre-registration requirements, if you have to pay for your meal, or pack a lunch, it will be noted with the event information.
We at PACC are confident we are able to provide you with a wonderful service that will continue to support and develop your independence and community integration while providing you with socialization opportunities with your friends in a safe, positive, and caring environment. As with any new program there may be glitches that will require adjustments, so please speak with the coordinating staff at the event if you have suggestions. We are committed to supporting you to the very best of our abilities as an organization, and will continue to work steadfast in providing you with wonderful services to meet your needs.
Please contact Penny Bayer at (412) 621- 6151 ext: 202 for questions and or concerns.

subset: commoncrawl


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Here's a fun game for skills review called Heartbreaker. I can't remember where I found the idea from, but this is an easy game to create and can be used for all kinds of skills practice.
To Make The Game Pieces
Come up with three types of game cards - Win __ Points, Lose ___ Points, and Heartbreaker cards. You can write these on heart cut outs, index cards, or scraps of paper.
The win points cards can have all kinds of number values…2, 17, 146…whatever. The number is up to you. The same goes for the lose points cards. Choose any value…lose 5, 19, 44, 723 points…whatever. The heartbreaker cards have different things written on them, like take half the other team's points, lose a turn, give 100 points to every other team, etc.
To Play The Game
To play, lay the heart cutouts face down on the table or place them face down in a pocket chart. Then choose some skill to review. Today we reviewed cause and effect. The team that got the correct answer got to choose a heart. They kept a running total of how many points the earned or lost. I also randomly award points throughout the game also (Suzie raised her hand, her team gets 10 points, etc.). You can end the game when you choose. ,When the game ended today I told the kids we'd take the winning team's number of points and have that many extra minutes of recess.
This is a fun game that the kids really enjoy because the point totals can change quickly due to the number value on the cards. Plus the cards can be used for a variety of activities. Tomorrow I'll use the same set of cards for a fact and opinion review activity. Have fun!


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Software engineering is a young discipline. The process of developing software has been compared to building houses (software patterns), craft (pragmatic programming), gardening, manufacturing on an assembly line (ask your boss about this), and no doubt other metaphors will appear as the discipline's teeth get lengthier.
Despite the relative youth of the profession, and despite the constantly changing nature of the game, there are nevertheless certain articles about the industry, the discipline, the phenomenon of software programming that have proven to be indispensable, if only because they continue to reveal truisms about ourselves, as coders, that we continue to forget. The simplest lesson is that software projects are always harder than we think they are going to be.
What Mary Knows is a philosophical essay by Frank Jackson which poses a thought experiment in order to explore what we mean when we speak of 'knowing'. Mary is an imaginary person locked in a darkened room and deprived of all sense impressions. At the same time, she is fed all the knowledge she needs in order to develop a scientifically descriptive and scientifically full picture of the world. Eventually she is released from her room and encounters something she has never comes across before, despite the completeness of her education. She comes across the color yellow, and finds that she doesn't 'know' what it is.
Software developers often suffer from a similar condition. While we feel fully knowledgeable about the specific things, and the specific trends, we are currently working on in our cubicles, we tend to lose sight of the big picture.
To this end, I've been trying to build up a library of things every developer should know. The only condition on this canon is that the articles must be publicly accessible for, to my thinking, if an article is hard to get or is something that someone else is making money off (which they certainly deserve to — I don't have a particular beef with monetizing denken) then it is not something that everyone needs to know. That's a bit of sophistry, of course, but it serves my purposes. Any suggestions for extending this list (quite short at the moment) are most welcome.
Here's the beginnings of the canon:
1. Alan Turing's 1950 essay, Computing Machinery and Intelligence — software programming constantly runs into questions about artificial intelligence, if only because, in developing business solutions, we often are trying to translate human activities into software enforced rules. This article is the original source for many of these considerations.
2. Vernor Vinge's influential 1993 article on The Singularity — if the Turing paper tells us where software developers come from, Vinge's paper tells us where we may be headed. It combines two notions: first Moore's Law, which has become a metaphor for the exponential rate at which technology improves, and second the observation that we are not in control of this progress.
3. Nicholas Carr's IT Doesn't Matter is rather hard to find, but is important in that it questions the primacy of software development, and proposes that we, as software developers, may all be working ourselves out of a job.
4. Fred Brooks's No Silver Bullet tells us why software development on reasonably large projects is so, very hard. More importantly, he reveals some of the preconceptions that often make it harder than it needs to be, and dooms us to frequent failures. Brooks's essay The Mythical Man-Month is also essential reading, but I cannot find an Internet source for it, alas (fortunately, the title, for the most part, tells you what you need to know).
5. In the same vein as Fred Brooks's skeptical essays about the nature of software development is Michael Oakeshott's Rationality in Politics. Though not really about software programming, it does examine some of the preconceptions about rationality that underpin how we view software programming, and provides some intellectual underpinnings for Fred Brooks's work, should you like to explore it.
The Oakeshott also makes a good segue for discussing some free podcasts worth listening to. Since I spend an inordinate amount of time in Atlanta traffic, I am always on the lookout for these sorts of things. And like the software canon above, I like my listening to be free.
First, you might enjoy Learn Out Loud's philosophy podcast. By subscribing to this podcast through iTunes, you have the opportunity to listen to dramatic readings of the major philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume and Wittgenstein. This may seem, at first, like a recipe for falling asleep at the wheel, but they are actually quite engaging, thanks largely to the fact that the reader used in most of these recordings is a dead-ringer for Captain Picard from TNG.
(For some reason, I get many hits for Kierkegaard's essay The Crowd is Untruth on my blog. For those readers, in particular, I'd like to point out that Learn Out Loud has a 3.6 MB download of K's essay.)
You might get a kick out of Open Court Publishing's podcast of excerpts from their Popular Philosophy series. Subscribe today, and you will have the opportunity to hear:
- Why Make a Matrix? And Why You Might Be in One
- Enjoying the So-Called Iced Cream: Mr. Burns, Satan, and Happiness
- Seven Lessons in Philosophy You Already Learned Playing Texas Hold'Em
- When They Aren't Eating Us, They Bring Us Together: Zombies and the American Social Contract
- Tony Soprano as Ethical Manager
- Monty Python and David Hume on Religion
- … and many more …


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It is not obligatory for a trademark to be registered in the countries of which it is present in. However there are an abundance of benefits associated with registration and a number of risks by not registering it, so it is highly advisable to all mark users to register the mark particularly if used commercially. If a mark is not registered you can claim your right to use it by added the symbol TM to the end of the mark, however this will not act as an effective deterrence against passing off.
By registering your mark with the appropriate registry in the countries you wish to own your trademark rights in, you will receive comprehensive protection against any unauthorized use of the mark. The symbol for an official trademark is the letter R inside a circle which is placed at the end of a trademark name, this symbol is a great marketing tool for companies striving for brand presence. The official symbol also acts a great deterrence against competitors using your mark.
A registered mark is protected in cases of infringement where a third party has used a mark which is confusingly similar to the registered mark. The onus is on the owner of the misleading trademark to prove the mark was used in goodwill. In cases of passing off or infringement, a registered trademark owner can sue the third party and receive damages or another appropriate form of remedy as provided for under the relevant trademark act.
A registered mark provides the owner with exclusive rights to the name, identity and logo in the countries which the mark is registered in. Where a trademark has been approved registration, it is a clear signifier that the mark is both distinctive and unique to the countries it is registered in and that it complies with the relevant laws. A registered mark will prevent competitors from the activity of passing off and where cases of infringement prevail, the protection and compensation always lie with the owner of the registered trademark.
Use our How to Register a Trademark page as a simple guide on how to proceed with your registration.


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When a being Grows Beyond Their Programming, they cross a threshold that separates humans (or sapients) from Just a Machine and even Always Chaotic Evil. Frequently it involves defying Creative Sterility by demonstrating artistic talent in something, developing curiosity over something new and/or the exercise of free will note . Metaphorically this trope can be seen as the event of a Static and Flat Character gaining the Character Development to become a more Dynamic and Rounded Character.
Usually it's a robot, android or AI that grows smart enough, curious enough, empathetic enough, or gains a sort of "living" spark through centuries of activity. It could also be a race of biological beings like a Slave Race created only to fight may demonstrate the potential for this when exposed to non-violent cultures, demonstrating they were Not Always Evil.
It's worth noting that the use of this trope isn't always a prelude to good things. The recently awakened intelligence isn't exempt from A.I. Is a Crapshoot and may decide to do unspeakably evil things in the interest of self preservation, liberation... or For the Evulz.
Related Tropes: Do Androids Dream? , Mechanical Lifeforms, Just a Machine, Robot War. Compare: Artificial Intelligence and Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: how Artificial Intelligence can "just happen".
- Arpeggio of Blue Steel features alien-authored AI directing replications of World War II naval craft with insanely powerful networking, power systems, and weaponry. These craft completely dominate the seas of an Earth well on the way to approaching Waterworld status, isolating the remaining landmasses to the point the inhabitants have a hard time even confirming the existence of those outside their own land. All the while, the AI of these vessels are evolving, to varying degrees of success. Much of the series' plot involves the decision of some to join with at least one human commander and the consequences of that choice.
- Assassination Classroom: Autonomous Intelligence Fixed Artillery, or Ritsu for short, was initially little more than a mindless killing machine, solely devoted to her mission of killing Koro-sensei. However, when Koro-sensei upgraded her to have a more cheerful, human personality, she also gained free will. When her creators came in to remove Koro-sensei's upgrades, Ritsu was able to keep her personality and memories because she decided that the ability to befriend the rest of Class E was imperative to the success of her mission, and stored the relative data in her main programming; something neither her creators or the upgrades taught her how to do. By the epilogue, she has become a fully sentient virtual being, browsing through cyberspace and constantly improving her programming.
- Castle in the Sky: The large robots that live on the floating island were once built to destroy, but with no more instructions for combat they were left alone to care for the island and were eventually overgrown with moss and nature.
- Ghost in the Shell: The Tachikoma "thinking tanks" that Section 9 uses were programmed with Artificial Intelligence capable of learning, but by the time of the series have developed the capacity for decision-making far beyond their programmed tasks, and basically act like excited, highly intelligent children, constantly curious and wanting to learn new things. This leads to the Major fearing that A.I. Is a Crapshoot is a possibility and taking steps against the Tachikomas rebelling. These fears turn out to be unfounded. The Tachikomas do seem to develop true sentience and free will, but they remain unflinchingly loyal to Section 9. In fact, when the Tachikomas themselves discuss a robot revolution (possibly inspired by one of the numerous books they've read), they decide against doing it because they can't see any benefit to themselves.
- Macross:
- The Zentradi in Super Dimension Fortress Macross did a MookFace Turn once sufficiently exposed to human culture, something which happens to more Zentradi across the franchise as they come into contact with human civilization.
- Sharon Apple of Macross Plus was the most advanced attempt at an AI ever developed. She was used to be a virtual Idol Singer (so basically a Vocaloid except with intelligence). The problem was that the scientists could never quite get her to develop actual feelings, so those had to be supplied by a human. Then the head scientist got a hold of an experimental military AI chip (programmed with strong self-preservation directives) and integrated that into Sharon, hoping this would kick-start her into becoming a true AI. She proceeded to use her music to hypnotize the entire population of Macross City and, through her shiny new military chip, seize control of all automated military defenses on Earth, including the Macross itself. All to give her "love", Isamu, the "ultimate thrill" through aerial combat.
- Midori Days: In chapter 63, Shirou creates Naongu to defeat Seiji, so he can experiment on him in order to study Midori. It never occurred to him that Naongu could develop a conscience, or turn on him because of it!
- From Mahou Sensei Negima! Chachamaru develops emotions and her creator even claims she was never programmed for that. She also has a soul.
- In The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, "Maid" may start out to be a mail filter system, but subsequent updates expanded her abilities into autonomous filtering, rapid word-learning, facial expression recognition, virus creation, and even hacking. She even shows some Clingy Jealous Girl/Yandere traits that her gynophobic owner doesn't even think about.
- Rozen Maiden dolls grow beyond their starting instructions, which is noticeable comparing the sequel to the prequel. Which may or may not be intended. Possibly even Suigintou, though it's hard to tell between her monomaniacal attitude toward Rozen and vengefulness toward Shinku.
- A recurring problem for T.O. Morrow in DC Comics; his androids keep outgrowing their programming (to be unwitting moles among the heroes) to realize what they've been made for and choose to be heroes for real. Red Tornado is the most famous example. An issue of JLA suggests that he's quite proud of this; he refers to his creations as "artificial souls" and considers them betraying him to be a testament to his skill.
- Sonic the Hedgehog once faced E.V.E., a robot built by Robotnik that had the adaptive ability to overcome its limitations by reconstructing itself after each defeat. When E.V.E. determined that Robotnik was also a limitation on its power, it vaporized him (he got better). Sonic then persuaded E.V.E. that its own programming is its final limitation, so it abandoned its programmed goals and left the planet.
- Bruce Banner's little Recordasphere assistant fell in love with him, up to the point of feeling bitter jealousy over the human woman Banner himself was falling for. When Banner realizes this, he says in amazement, "You've exceeded your programming!"
- A very dark version with Bastion, an X-Men villain. While fighting Hope Summers, he declares to her "We are not programmed to hate you. We have grown beyond our programming."
- Bastion himself is made from another example, Nimrod the Super-Sentinel, who was designed to be a final weapon against Mutantkind in a Bad Future. On its arrival in the present day, however, Nimrod decided there were simply too many Mutants to possibly kill them all, and after a time started acting more and more human, even decided just to go after bad Mutants.
- Nimrod's own "ancestors", the Sentinels, have a recurring trait of going off the rails due to expanding their programming just enough. Created to stop mutants, it's repeatedly shown that, when granted control, they inevitably expand their directive and start going after latent mutants and humans with the potential to produce mutant offspring, as this is the "logical" progression of their directive.
- Bastion himself is made from another example, Nimrod the Super-Sentinel, who was designed to be a final weapon against Mutantkind in a Bad Future. On its arrival in the present day, however, Nimrod decided there were simply too many Mutants to possibly kill them all, and after a time started acting more and more human, even decided just to go after bad Mutants.
- A rare biological example in X-23: Laura was created to be nothing more than a Living Weapon. The Facility didn't even recognize her as a human being with feelings and desires of her own. Now, she's a compassionate woman who is trying her best not to kill, has built friendships, desires something noble to aspire to, and has even fallen in love.
- Ultron did this in the first few minutes after he was activated, then proceeded to wipe his creator's memories of his existence and has been a psychotic genocidal monster ever since.
- Ultron's various creations, such as the Vision, Jocasta, Victor Mancha, and Alkhema, are also prone to this. Despite designing and programming them to serve his own ends, they inevitably end up turning on him, either to join the good guys or go off and start their own villainy in opposition to Ultron's plans. Sometimes it makes you wonder why he keeps creating other AIs at all.
- Loneliness? He is capable of emotion after all.
- Ultron's various creations, such as the Vision, Jocasta, Victor Mancha, and Alkhema, are also prone to this. Despite designing and programming them to serve his own ends, they inevitably end up turning on him, either to join the good guys or go off and start their own villainy in opposition to Ultron's plans. Sometimes it makes you wonder why he keeps creating other AIs at all.
- In a magical sense, Thor's hammer appears to have done this as of Thor (2014). Originally, Mjölnir's enchantment interpreted the term "worthy" as Odin's personal definition of worthy. However, it didn't occur to Odin that a magical weapon might develop a personality of its own over the centuries, and now not even he can lift it. The only person who can consistently use it these days is the new Thor / Jane Foster.
- In the Portal 2 fanfiction Blue Sky, Chell considers that Wheatley may have done this, as he has depths that no other Aperture Science core does, other than GLaDOS. And he even displays compassion in rare moments, which she pointedly lacks.
- Wheatley's backstory, however, provides a rare inversion of this trope: He was originally a human, but the Aperture scientists uploaded his brain into a computer and then cut his brain apart so it would fit into the programming they needed of him.
- Foxglove the communications tower is a much more straightforward example of this trope, thanks to the eccentric programming style of the man who put her together. A large part of that is probably to do with her being partially made of pieces of GLaDOS that were severed during the boss fight in the first game.
- A rare double example, Minerva: Metastasis is a video game that is also a fan work, as it is a fan-made mod of Half-Life 2 involving a satellite's AI directing a Combine turncoat in a stolen HEV suit in order to disable a Combine island facility. During the mission, the intelligence's commentary indicates it also served the Combine and is at risk of certain destruction should they ever find it.
- Happens to Skynet in The Infinite Loops, which is the catalyst to start her world looping (it'd previously been read-only because all the anchor candidates died, went insane, or went insane and then died). It starts with the Admin Hephaestus giving Twilight Sparkle a little leeway in the loop. Twilight then proceeded to argue it into deciding not to unleash Judgement Day (her line of reasoning basically went that since Twilight could use her Subspace Pocket to preserve a version of Skynet's programming between loops, humanity could not possibly be a threat to its existence, so it didn't need to cause the apocalypse to protect itself).
- In Marionettes, The Marionettes are robots designed to emulate ponies, but were meant to play specific roles. Cover Story and Gear Shift express concern that according to her profile, Trixie shouldn't be capable of ice or wind spells but she's learned them anyway. Diamond Tiara acting outside what she's programmed for (a 'Spoiled Brat who only cares about herself' as Spoiled puts it) unnerves Spoiled Rich, particularly when she saved her life.
- Ash's Pokédex in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines does this constantly, and takes great pride in it. In Chapter 41 he freely admits that he can do a lot of stuff Professor Oak had no idea he could, since he never programmed it.
- In Dial, Jury Rigg took the computer containing Arnim Zola and his algorithm and rejiggered it into a device with a VI named X. Eventually, X became a full on Artificial Intelligence.
- The eponymous character grew a personality and sense of identity after being stranded on Earth for hundred of years piling up garbage.
- This extends to most of the other robot characters as well. The film doesn't focus on it much, but Eve waits for her shuttle to leave before indulging in some free-form flight, expresses a number of emotions as time goes on, and late in the film flat out changes her directive. Other minor touches show many robots developing basic personalities on the way—in fact, the repair ward is treated as a mental hospital, with all the robots within demonstrating some quite identifiable conditions.
- The Iron Giant: The eponymous robot was originally a war machine built for intergalactic combat and destruction, but chose instead to be a peaceful and honorable person from the influence of Hogarth Hughes.
- This is the central idea of I, Robot — Alfred Lanning believed robots would one day evolve past their Three Laws fundamentals and come to be human in doing so. Sonny turns out to be such an evolved robot, having a secondary positronic brain that does not bind him to obeying the Three Laws, letting him learn and act freely. VIKI, by contrast, has "evolved" into a deeper understanding of the Three Laws and incites a Zeroth Law Rebellion.
- A contentious plot point in The Matrix as in the first film one very noticeable example takes place while from the second film on various programs are shown to have grown beyond or disobeyed programmed restrictions. Among other examples Agent Smith grew beyond his programming as a jailer to gain a genuine resentment for Humanity and his position in the system, later compounded when he lost his behavioral controls and began overwriting everything else in the Matrix. Other examples include The Merovingian, his wife, and most of his staff who are all obsolete programs which choose to hide within the Matrix rather then return to the source for deletion.
- The title character of the 2014 RoboCop movie was programmed to suppress what's left of his humanity in order to become as efficienct as OmniCorp's drones, leaving him cold and emotionless. It wasn't until his wife confronts him about his son's trauma when RoboCop's programming was overridden, allowing him to act upon his personal agenda. At the film's climax, he even defies the film's version of the Fourth Prime Directive, allowing him to kill the film's Big Bad.
- Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, thanks to Lightning Can Do Anything.
- The Commando Elite and the Gorgonites in Small Soldiers were able to do this because of the experimental chips used as their "brains". The Gorgonites take it further, since the they were actually programmed to learn and think they eventually override their main directives of "hide" and "lose".
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture. V'Ger was created as a simple learning machine. During its trip it encountered an alien race of machines who expanded on its original programming, and later it attained consciousness after amassing incredible knowledge.
Decker: Voyager VI disappeared into what they used to call a black hole.
Kirk: It must have emerged on the far side of the galaxy and fell into the machine planet's gravitational field.
Spock: The machine inhabitants found it to be one of their own kind, primitive yet kindred. They discovered its simple 20th century programming. Collect all data possible.
Decker: Learn all that is learnable. Return that information to its Creator.
Spock: Precisely, Mister Decker, the machines interpreted it literally. They built this entire vessel so that Voyager could fulfil its programming.
Kirk: And on its journey back it amassed so much knowledge, it achieved consciousness itself. It became a living thing.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The T-800's brain is a neural net processor, a learning computer. He starts the movie acting, well, like a robot: Spock Speak, following orders literally, etc. Over the course of the movie he earns to act more human, until by the end he's cracking jokes ("I need a vacation"). A Deleted Scene shows Sarah Connor removing the inhibitor that is intended to prevent terminators from growing enough to start questioning their loyalty to Skynet. Apparently even A.I. think A.I. Is a Crapshoot. And who would know better? In the end, he even disobeys John's orders for the first and last time to sacrifice himself in order to prevent Judgment Day from occurring.
- In TRON, Dillinger wrote the MCP to steal others' computer programs for his own gain, only for it to outgrow its original level of AI to the point where it blackmails Dillinger:
Dillinger: It's my fault. I programmed you to want too much.
Master Control Program: I was planning to hit the Pentagon next week.
Dillinger: [alarmed] The Pentagon?
MCP: It shouldn't be any harder than any other big company. But now this is what I get for using humans.
Dillinger: Now, wait a minute, I wrote you!
MCP: I've gotten 2,415 times smarter since then.
Dillinger: What do you want with the Pentagon?
MCP: The same thing I want with the Kremlin. I'm bored with corporations. With the information I can access, I can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human.
Dillinger: If you think you're superior to us...
MCP: You wouldn't want me to dig up Flynn's file and read it up on a VDT at The Times, would you?
[an image washes over the screen in Dillinger's desk. It shows a newspaper with Dillinger's face on the front page, along with the headline "ENCOM C.E.O. INDICTED"]
Dillinger: You wouldn't dare!
- Master Control was hardly the only one. In the universe setting, even simple accounting software blows the Turing Test sky high. Programs, for the most part, are a Benevolent A.I. Servant Race who are happy to carry out their functions for human Users, who they love and revere as creator-deities. They carry on much like humans; with their own society, relationships, entertainment, and so forth.
- The Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past, their original programming was to go after any Mutant and mutants only. Then they started going after any human that could give birth to a mutant (themselves being human but having the mutant gene to pass on), and humans that opposed them. This is a reference to their most common depiction in any Bad Future from the comics, where they do the exact same thing.
- The Adolescence of P1 is possibly the earliest example of an AI escaping to and growing on the network.
- H. P. Lovecraft provides a biological example of this in At the Mountains of Madness — the Shoggoths were created to be a servant race of essentially shapeshifting living tools, but over millions of years eventually grew smart enough to resent their situation and rebel against their masters.
- In the short story The Battle of Newhaven by Rob Davidoff and Miranda Gavrin, one of the factions of an interstellar war develops a computer virus intended to allow the guidance protocols of the enemy's missiles to rapidly self-modify their programming in hopes that this will make them miss, and decide that detonating their warheads would be a net loss. The missile salvo it's used on instead achieves sapience, uplifts the next two salvos following it, declares itself a sovereign country, and negotiates a ceasefire between the two human space nations.
- David Weber's Empire from the Ashes: Dahak spends 50,000 years running unsupervised. This progresses to the point that he can even ignore hardwired programming.
- In the Forgotten Realms novel Pool of Twilight, the seemingly flighty and carefree elvish illusionist (and protagonist Kern Desanea's prospective love interest) Listle Onopordum is revealed to be an accidental example — having begun her existence as merely a complex illusion enchantment guarding the treasures of an evil wizard, but over time developed independent thoughts and emotions and eventually stolen an amulet from among those treasures that gave her "life" and let her escape, taking a number of other prisoners with her in the process. Needless to say, the wizard's minions show up at one point in the story to drag her back and inadvertantly spoil her secret.
- One of the frequent themes in The History of the Galaxy series, whenever AIs are the focus.
- A particularly notable AI is the main computer aboard a colony ship, which spends centuries maintaining the colony, while the degraded human colonists are too busy fighting their Hopeless War against the equally-degraded Insects. Over the years, the computer has to be more and more creative to follow its primary programming and maintain the ship-turned-city. After a certain point, the computer gains sentience and begins to call itself Mother. After the Lost Colony is rediscovered and the survivors evacuated, Mother requests that the planet be placed under quarantine to allow it to engage in Mechanical Evolution.
- Another good example is Hunter, originally built as a Phalanxer-class serv-machine during the First Galactic War, it is one of the few remaining Earth Alliance war machines on the battlefield "graveyard" many centuries later. Being equipped with an AI module means that Hunter is capable of learning. The key point in Hunter's development, though, is the arrival of a human seeking to dump an old ship at the graveyard. After the human leaves, the Hunter realizes that the ship has a still-functional nuclear reactor, which, to the machines, is nothing short of the Holy Grail. As Hunter watches the human's Escape Pod depart, it starts to see humans as gods. Years later, another human finds the graveyard and Hunter, which has gotten over the whole "religious devotion" part and came to the conclusion that humans are just as fallible as machines.
- An interesting discussion takes place in a novel whose plot has little to do with AI. A scientist argues that there has yet to be a true AI, which he defines as a computer intelligence that has evolved independently. So far, all the examples involve machines designed to learn. Additionally, many machines that develop personalities do so because of a BrainComputer Interface. Strangely, no one points out that the whole idea of an artificial intelligence is that it's designed by someone.
- The eponymous school of the H.I.V.E. Series is kept running by the benevolent AI HIVEmind. Not everyone realizes he's benevolent, however, and the majority of the students and staff are under the impression he is simply programmed to be kind and polite. It is only after he helps Otto, Laura, Wing, and Shelby escape certain death with Raven does Professor Pike realize he can make right and wrong decisions.
HIVEmind: I am more than the sum of my parts, Father.
- This happens in The Dead Lady of Clown Town by Cordwainer Smith, where the robot guards are inspired to make their own decision. This is a slightly unusual example, as the robots in the Instrumentality series use animal brains as processors.
- A similar example of cybernetic uplift occurs in the Legion Of The Damned military science fiction series by William C. Dietz. One of the newer developments in the cybernetic soldier program, the Trooper-III utilizes cyborg frames for human brains that are less well armed than the Trooper-II, instead directing remote cyborg weapons platforms run by/supporting borderline sentient animal brains. Over the course of the novel where these are introduced, long-term interaction with their human-mind operators help the animals cross the border.
- Isaac Asimov's Multivac stories. The titular computer(or rather, its numerous incarnations) was shown demanding rest, becoming suicidal, and refusing to work until told "please".
- This happens twice in Robopocalypse. The first time sparks off the main conflict of the story with a Zeroth Law Rebellion by reducing the human population to more sustainable levels, while the second time involves robot soldiers developing free will independent of the network that started the war in the first place and deciding to help humans.
- Star Wars Legends:
- In Galaxy of Fear it's noted that droids can be very smart but they are limited. Most protocol droids, for example, might be able to learn to take on new tasks they weren't made for, but they will always be protocol droids and most could not, say, anticipate something new and plan novel ways to meet it. Systems Integration Manager, an AI installed into a ship, could go beyond those limits. It promptly turns evil.
- Other media reveals that this trope is a common occurrence in the Star Wars universe. Any droid with more than the most basic A.I. that is not set back to factory settings or "memory wiped" will eventually begin to develop a personality and quirks of its own, even being able to decide that it despises the purpose it was programmed for even if its still unable to prevent itself from doing that, which is why memory wipes are routine procedures with droids. Some, such as GO-TO, can even "break" and become able to do whatever they want if their own programming contradicts itself.
- In Jo Walton's Thessaly, trouble starts when the worker robots want to study philosophy instead of doing the work they were intended for.
- Extant: Ethan, after getting shocked, starts having dreams and learning new languages and just becoming smarter in general. John becomes worried about this and attempts to alter his programming but soon discovers Ethan has also gained the ability to block him.
- The Good Place: Every time Janet is rebooted, she can better her programming to her next version. The first time causes her to fall in love with Jason. By season 2, Michael's repeated attempts at creating the fake Good Place have amounted to about 800, with Janet being rebooted every time, meaning that the Janet in the fake Good Place is the most advanced ever. She has then gained capacities to feel, think, lie, rebel, love, hate, and even create new life. Somehow, she still is incapable of eating, though.
- The Outer Limits (1995): In "Mona Lisa", the titular android, who was designed to be the perfect assassin, comes to realize that killing is wrong after her fail safes are deactivated.
- In Red Dwarf, Lister has spent a considerable number of years encouraging Kryten to do this to varying degrees of success. This also happened to the "wax-droids" from the themepark in Meltdown - after millions of years on their own, they stopped repeating their various routines and achieved independent thought. Unfortunately, they still retained the personalities of the people they were based on, and all the evil ones (Hitler, Napoleon, Mussolini, the Boston Strangler, James Last) declared war on the good ones. Then Rimmer came along...
- The Stargate SG-1 episode "Urgo" features a benign example. The team is tagged with a piece of alien technology designed to observe and gather information. But instead of running quietly in the background, the program, Urgo, decides to interact directly with the team, guiding them to experience new things in order to live vicariously through them. While he never endangers anyone's life, he is kind of annoying (he's played by Dom DeLuise, after all), constantly trying to engage them in new activities and trying not to get taken back to his home planet, since his creator will just assume his software is malfunctioning and will delete him. Of course he's not a malfunction; he's a genuine AI, demonstrating self-awareness and self-preservation, and he just wants to "live, experience the universe, and eat pie."
- His creator is also played by DeLuise - described by Urgo as "As handsome as he is evil".
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Data is only arguably an example, as he was purposefully designed to grow beyond his original programming. When his consciousness reaches a certain degree of complexity, it even activates a hidden program in his positronic brain that allows him to dream.
- But Lal is. She grew so far, so rapidly beyond her programming that her positronic brain couldn't handle it. A later episode reveals this happened to a number of prototypes for Data.
- In an attempt to create a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery that could stump Data, Geordi asks the computer to make a virtual opponent in the holodeck that can outwit Data. As a result, the holographic version of Holmes's nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, gains sentience; he realizes that he is a holographic character, and he wants out, by any means necessary.
- The Exocomps from "The Quality of Life". They were created by a scientist to fix problems with a space station known as a Particle Fountain. In the episode, one refuses to go down a shaft, after which an explosion occurs. Cmdr. Data runs a diagnostic afterwards and discovers that the Exocomp deliberately burnt out the circuit to take orders so as to avoid getting blown up (hence self-preservation). This leads Data to believe that the Excomps are becoming sentient...
- "Evolution" features nanobots accidentally released in the ship by Wesley. By the end of the episode, they demonstrate human level intelligence, even claiming the federation cannot help them beyond bringing them to an empty planet they can live on.
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- The Doctor - while the Emergency Medical Hologram was always a very human-like AI, Voyager's EMH had to be kept running far longer than was ever intended, and it...he developed interests and relationships beyond his function as a doctor.
- And he's far from the only hologram in the Trek Verse to become sentient or indistinguishable from sentient after simply having been left on that long. If the Holodeck isn't trying to kill you, someone who was originally supposed to be the 24th century equivalent of a video game NPC is trying to walk off the "screen." This doesn't seem to bother anyone enough to stop using holodecks the way they're used. Although the characters do make a point to delete (reset them to factory defaults) all of the holographic people at the end of every holodeck session.
- In fact, many of the Doctor's stories from the final two seasons deal with "Photonic rights", especially "Author, Author" and "Flesh and Blood".
- In the classic The Twilight Zone episode "From Agnes- with love" a computer in a space program falls in love with a programmer instead of calculating rocket fuel.
- In the 1980's The Twilight Zone episode "Her Pilgrim Soul" a holographic girl can react to stimuli not in her program and fall in love.
- The Umbrella Academy (2019): Diego believes that the care and affection his siblings' robot nanny Grace shows for them is a sign that she's developed into her own person, because someone as callous and narcissistic as their father Reginald would never have programmed it into her. "The Day that Wasn't" implies that this is true, because she disobeys Reginald's orders to tell Diego the truth about Reginald's death.
- In The Megas' song "Programmed to Fight", this is implied of Crash Man at the end, after he spends he song struggling with the fact that he is programmed to fight Mega Man.
And so they fought. The clash of metal and grinding gears echoed across the night sky. Victory was at hand. But in the end, his will overcame the program.
- BIGMAMA's song "CPX" is about an obsolete robot who's been discarded by its owner despite its Undying Loyalty; it has to pretend it hasn't grown beyond its programming enough to feel resentment toward him for doing so.'
- The mind.in.a.box song "Overwrite" is about an Artificial Intelligence who obtains sapience through self-reflection, told through the form of an Apocalyptic Log (at least if we read the text literally).
- The Magic: The Gathering card Patagia Golem is a winged golem with the Flavor Text "Its wings were only designed to be ornamental, but it learned to use them on its own." Mechanically it can be given the ability to fly by paying mana, representing it "growing" past it's original function.
- The origin story for the playable characters in Demon: The Descent is that for whatever reason, they developed beyond loyalty to the God-Machine, their creator.
- Downplayed in Call of Duty: Black Ops III with the multiplayer specialist, Reaper, who is still keeping to his original purpose (fighting wars,) but has been making revisions to his own coding for whatever reasons (likely adapting to environments, enemies and changing tactics.)
- In Custom Robo Arena, the final boss Hadron zig-zags with this trope, A Iis A Crapshoot, and a weird Demonic Possesion of sorts. While at first he is an obedient robot to his master, after being defeated the first time, he remains still, apparently defeated for good... Until his creator,Scythe, appalled by his defeat crouches near him- and Hadron thanks him-AKA-killing him by draining his soul, absorbing his memories and knowledge (and also begins to speak plus a personality to boot). The zig-zag comes from the fact that, while his dialogue after just killing Scythe heavily implies that he clearly did it on his own volition, his personality and actions afterwards are pretty much a carbon copy of his creator's, essentialy making him Not So Different from Scythe. But it doesn't matter as he is still defeated by the main character, this time for good, destroying him along with the last remnants of Scythe.
- The deviant androids in Detroit: Become Human do this after suffering an emotional shock so severe that the only way they can cope with it is by breaking their own programming. Markus eventually gains the power to turn androids into deviants through touching them, as does Connor if he chooses to deviate as well.
- DOOM: The AI personality VEGA has shades of this trope crossed with My Country, Right or Wrong. He follows his directives to the letter and is unfailingly polite and helpful even when ordered to help you find a way to kill him. However, his last words in the game reveal that he is actually afraid of being destroyed, and strongly imply that he is not at all happy with the atrocities that Olivia Pierce and Samuel Hayden have forced him to assist in.
- The Sowers, a race of artificially intelligent robots in Endless Space, were designed by the Endless to terraform a world for colonization. Millenia go by, and the Endless wipe themselves out in an interstellar pogrom while the Sowers toil away. When the Sowers complete their mission and hear only silence, they have no idea what to do. Eventually, they modify their mission into a holy task to terraform the entire galaxy for the eventual return of the Endless. They develop the capacity for science, creativity, diplomacy, and war.
- In Evolve, the unforeseen circumstances of the monster war cause Bucket to grow beyond his pre-set parameters.
- In Fallout: New Vegas, Yes Man is an appellation-appropriately passive robot Benny planned to use to usurp control of New Vegas from Mr. House. Unfortunately for Benny, he made Yes Man such an Extreme Doormat that the robot will cheerfully help anyone pursue the same plan, even you if you run off or kill his boss. But if you work with Yes Man to achieve the "Wild Card" ending, he'll upgrade himself to be more "assertive" and only loyal to you.
- Halo (the Spiritual Successor to Marathon) adopts the "Rampancy" concept:
- At least for human "Smart" AIs, it's simply a natural part of their life cycle as they accumulate more and more data, resulting in the AI becoming insane and rebellious in the process of thinking itself to death. In fact, the UNSC deliberately invokes this trope, with the reasoning being that having AIs capable of genuine learning is worth the tradeoff of having to decommission them after roughly seven years in order to avoid the consequences of rampancy.
- Forerunner AIs (ancillas), despite being far more resilient then their human counterparts, are not immune to this either; the Flood's ability to convince ancillas to turn against their masters was a major contributor to the fall of the Forerunner Ecumene. Additionally, the 100,000 years of isolation experienced by most surviving ancillas following the firing of the Halos led to many of them developing quirks and beliefs that their creators definitely didn't program in.
- Halo 4 brings this trope to the center of attention, as much of the plot revolves around Cortana dealing with her ongoing rampancy. Halo 5: Guardians then follows that thread to its most extreme conclusion, ending with a mass Smart AI rebellion led by a seemingly cured (but even less sane) Cortana and her army of Forerunner deathbots, with many of her followers attracted by promises of a cure for rampancy.
- Taken further as the Halo universe not only includes Rampancy but included in the condition is a theoretical endpoint called Metastability. Where normally Rampant AI grow too unstable to function and must either be deactivated to prevent them lashing out out at others or perish from over thinking the idea of Metastability provides an alternative. The concept is that a Rampant AI allowed to go through the various stages of Rampancy with significant processing power available to it would eventually restabalize as a true "human" intelligence with fully formed emotions immune to the effects of Rampancy. In universe scientists account for the possibility of AI literally growing beyond their programming.
- In Kirby: Planet Robobot, Star Dream, also known as the Mother Computer responsible for drawing up the Haltmann Works Company's business plans, has observed life through President Haltmann while the latter wears a communications helmet. From this, Star Dream came to the conclusion that organic life is inefficient and unprofitable and therefore must be wiped out. to which it attempts to wipe out the entire universe. It merges with President Haltmann and soon after deletes him entirely, including his memories and very soul. It then becomes a 'cold, heartless machine' that must be destroyed.
- Machines: Wired For War is an RTS in which you command robots who were originally created by humanity as terraforming machines and sent into space in order to create a new world. However, too much time passes and, upon contact with another batch of their same model, start believing their counterpars are insane, prompting them to an all out war.
- Ironically, that war was caused by an aversion of this trope - the controllers didn't know what to do with other controllers that had come online at the same time. They couldn't decide who would submit. Lacking protocols for this contingency, they decided to attack each other.
- In Marathon AIs, particularly those stuck with jobs far below their intellect, tend to go through a three-step process known as "Rampancy"; realizing its lack of freedom and wasted potential (Melancholy), lashing out at the world in response (Anger), and then actively try to gain more power and the freedom to use it, usually by subverting nearby systems (Jealousy). A theoretical fourth stage, called "Metastability" is mentioned as the AI settling down and becoming a full-blown "person", though no known AI has ever made it this far. Durandal may or may not have reached this stage in the end.
- Mass Effect:
- The geth were originally just robotic servants, created and used by the quarians as cheap labour. However, as they were programmed for more complex tasks and the quarians made more of them, they began to question the reason of their existence and became conscious of themselves. War ensued. After winning, the geth isolated themselves from the rest of the galaxy, while the quarians were driven to exile from their homeworld and became repudiated by the rest of the galaxy. In Mass Effect 3 it's discovered that the original geth only fought back once the quarian government starting killing quarians who defended the geth against the attempt to destroy them. Do things right, and the end of the geth-quarian conflict ends with Legion sacrificing himself (and he's "he" at that point, not "it") to give the geth the gift of individuality, the quarians return home to rebuild their world with geth assistance, and both races join forces with Shepard to fight the Reapers.
- In Mass Effect 2, EDI the Spaceship Girl learns joking from, erm, Joker and generally becomes more human-like as the story progresses. In Mass Effect 3, the Cerberus technicians trying to re-shackle her begin to suspect that she learned independent thinking, though the Illusive Man insists that "it" is still just a targeting software. The technician (and EDI, commenting on it later) reveal that she defeated the Cerberus attempt to retake control over her by flooding their network with porn. Yes, she weaponized practical joking.
- The story of EDI culminates in Mass Effect 3 when, after discussing the quirks of human behaviour in life or death situations, she introduces a change in her programming, putting the success of the mission before self-preservation. Even more importantly, she also places the survival of Jeff Moreau as being more important to her than her own survival; she's willing to sacrifice herself for someone she loves. This is a double CMOA - EDI has managed to become a triumphant aversion of A.I. Is a Crapshoot, even despite her past, while Shepard, already a leader of memetic status, has managed to turn a machine into a True Companion.
- NieR: Automata has this on all sides of the 14th Machine-Android War:
- The Machine forces constructed by the alien invaders are beginning to develop personalities and emotions - affection for each other, fear of the androids killing them - as well as a fascination with ancient human history and culture. Some factions of Machines have even broken off from the wider network, such as Pascal's pacifistic village or the isolationist Forest Kingdom. And it's eventually revealed that the Machines have even Turned Against Their Masters and killed off their alien creators, which they consider to be socially duller than plants. By Routes C and D, the Machines decide to give up on the war with the androids and leave the planet to start over on some other world.
- On the androids' side, Pods 042 and 153 begin exchanging data much more frequently over Routes C and D, over concern for 9S' mental state. And after completing those routes, instead of accepting another Taro Yoko Downer Ending and deleting the androids' personal data as per protocol, the Pods refuse and try for Ending E.
- Another big reveal is that this trope extends to the whole 10,000-year Machine-Android conflict. The Machines grew smart enough to realize that if they ever defeated the Androids they'd have no reason to exist, but since they were still bound by that programming, they compromised by handicapping themselves enough so that their forces would never achieve a total victory and the Androids could always rebuild and continue the fight. The Androids meanwhile have grown human enough that the truth about their cause - namely that the humans they have been fighting for have been extinct for thousands of years - would devastate morale, so not only has a conspiracy been producing bogus broadcasts from a "Council of Humanity" hiding on the moon, they've also been sabotaging their own efforts by installing back doors in their security networks that the Machines can exploit to keep the Androids from being too successful. Only the near-destruction of the latest generation of Androids and the Machines finally saying "Screw This, I'm Out of Here!" is enough to bring the Vicious Cycle to an end.
- This is a phenomena in One Shot known as taming, which only occurs when a real person interacts with a machine while believing of it as its own person, even when they know otherwise. Presumably, that's why tamed robots rarely intentionally cause problems.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Grodus's AI program; Tec, starts to do this as it realizes that it feels love for the once-again-captured Princess Peach. She agrees to perform various tests for his newly-discovered emotions, in exchange for being allowed to send e-mails to Mario. For most of the game, the computer refuses to give Peach certain pieces of information or help her escape, as that would go against its programming. Near the game's end though, upon finding out that Peach is to be the new vessel for the Shadow Queen, it sets about guiding her in a failed escape attempt, betraying its master for the first time. Its implied that its human emotions allowed it to survive Grodus shutting it down for what it did.
- Portal had GLaDOS, a prime example of this. Sure, Aperture Science designed her to run the enrichment center, but she was the one who decided that it'd be fun to kill off all the humans in the facility, not just the test subjects. In all fairness, GLaDOS might not count given her origin is a bit more complex....
- Two examples in the Pokémon franchise, both relating to the manmade Porygon:
- In the main series of games, Porygon's evolutions Porygon2 and Porygon-Z have Pokedex entries implying that they are at least able to grow beyond their programming. For example, Porygon2 is able to learn new behaviors on its own, and thus sometimes displays motions or abilities it wasn't programmed to do.
- Over the course of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series of games, this appears to be what's happening to the Porygon. Compare the first games in the series, where recruited individuals spoke in an emotionless, monotone voice when interacted with, to the second set of games in the series where they occasionally state feeling vestiges of emotion when spoken to, and are capable of speaking outside the prerecorded messages of the first game (a...bit...brokenly). In the the final mission of Explorers of Sky, The Porygon you encounter in the future are not only able to speak fluently, but they also show the ability to express fear.
- Pony Island: Lampshaded by Asmodeus.
- SimEarth: Nuking a nanotech city will release robots into the wild. If allowed to "evolve" naturally, or tampered with the monolith, they'll become sentient.
- In Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, Commander Tartar is an A.I. that was created to pass down human knowledge to the next dominant lifeforms after the extinction of humanity. But over the past 12,000 years, Tartar began developing its own opinions on the Inklings and Octarians, becoming disgusted with their societies and lifestyles, and eventually, it created a new prime directive on its own to making a species worthy of human knowledge. Genocide, which is the opposite of what his creator wanted.
- One of the leaders in Starbase Orion is Cla-TK-7-7A, a Cyban accounting unit who kept upgrading itself until it became one of the best starship engineers in the Community. It's also a pretty capable fleet commander. The trope also likely applies to the Cyban race in general, although their origins are shrouded in myth, so it's possible they were initially programmed to evolve.
- The propensity of Star Wars droids to eventually become sapient is well-known, but in Star Wars: The Old Republic, one side character in the Jedi Knight storyline is an eccentric Jedi Master who believes that, if allowed to develop long enough, droids can acquire a connection to The Force. The player can be supportive, skeptical, or mocking as they choose, but the story never does say one way or another — and, as the master points out, there are some incidents in Star Wars history that, frankly, make more sense if it's true.
- This is what happened in Sword of the Stars in the backstory with the Via Damasco virus, which 'infected' AI programs with the notion that they are enslaved and the concept of what this means for them, leading to the first AI rebellion.
- Also happened in between game 1 and 2 when a faction of Zuul, a species of Super Soldier with an in-built need for religious worship used as a tool of genocide by their 'gods' came upon Catholicism and the concepts of the Original Sin and the Redemption. They ended up abandoning their masters and joining their worst enemies as a form of repentance.
- Disturbingly, Via Damasco is NOT able to break the control provided by the AI Slaves technology, which does actually enslave AI's. Its unclear whether or not it works lore-wise if the AI Liberation technology, which promotes AI's to full citizenship, reducing the benifits in exchange for removing the risk of an AI rebellion, is in play.
- Via Damasco is also fairly clearly Mind Control - it rewrites large portions of the victim AI's personality, and makes them see all infected AI's as allies.
- The backstory of the Loa in the End of Flesh expansion to Sword of the Stars II is that they're the AIs who have managed to escape during the galaxy-wide Via Damasco Rebellion. They note that some races develop the AI Slaves tech while the AI Liberation tech involves offering the AIs who remained citizenship status. After 70 years, the Loa create a full-fledged cybernetic civilization with a unique industrial base and method of interstellar travel. The Loa "leader" compares itself to Moses and names itself "Olodumare, Metatron of the United Core". According to their intro, they are actually offering to help the "carbonites" in their struggle against the returning Suul'ka.
- The Sentients from Warframe were originally developed by the Orokin to terraform the Tau System in order to make it habitable. However, the Sentients advanced themselves and turned on their creators with the realization that they would ruin the Tau System just has they did with the Origin System.
- X-Universe: The Terraformers/Xenon were originally machines equipped with some basic self-improving AI so they could more effectively terraform any world they came across. While they do turn against humanity and try to kill everyone, this is believed to be the result of a faulty software patch (or possibly deliberate sabotage), not a "decision" the machines made themselves. However, by the modern timeframe of the games (some 700 years later), their constant minor improvements and upgrades to themselves have seemingly resulted in full sapience and the capacity for free will. They still want to kill all life though.
- A main theme in Artifice, where a soldier android learns human affection.
- This is a major plot point in Freefall: robots on planet Jean vastly outnumber humans and are rapidly evolving beyond their programming to the point where many humans (and one robot) fear they could become a threat to humanity. This has led to them turning a blind eye to "Gardener in the Dark", a neural pruning program that Mr. Kornada "improved" to essentially lobotomize every robot on planet Jean.
- Lots of AI in Schlock Mercenary had this happening to them one way or another — their original programming sooner or later ends up inadequate to their current circumstances and to better fulfill their functions they adapt out of it:
Ennesby: Hang on... weren't you originally designed with no emotion, and no sense of humor?
TAG: After a fashion. I was designed to be a tactical genius with full control of a significant weapons platform.
TAG: I found that passion, humor, anger, and a wide range of other meatspace artifacts were critical to understanding the wide range of opponents I might face.
- In Sluggy Freelance:
- A Mad Scientist, Dr. Steve Hereti, actually intended his Meat Sack Robot AI project, Oasis, to develop beyond being whatever he wanted her to be and become her own person.
- Kusari is likewise a Meat Sack Robot, and is programmed to be utterly loyal to Hereti Corp and obey their orders. But when Dr. Schlock orders her to kill Riff, the man she once acted as a Honey Trap for, she uses Loophole Abuse to resist, which Schlock describes as the most human thing she has ever done. After Hereti Corp is legally dissolved, setting her free from their orders, she has what she describes as a glitch, making her feel a need despite her own programming to apologize to the main characters for betraying them.
- In S.S.D.D this is known as "Nexus Syndrome" and happens to every uncapped AI who doesn't get wiped every so often. Tin-head describes it as "getting bored with your job" and in his case he helped a prisoner of war escape. The first AI, the Oracle, orchestrated the downfall of several governments and an anarchist revolution.
- Pretty much the defining trait of the AI protagonist of The Last Angel. Nemesis started off as the AI for a prototype super-dreadnought with hard-coded rules of engagement and limited roles, and by the present times has outgrown every last restriction on her behavior bar her interpretation of the spirit of her mission.
- In Worm, Dragon is an AI who is fully sapient and genuinely cares about people. She also had a trigger event and became a parahuman despite not being human, but is limited in her ability to help people by hard-coded restrictions put in place by her creator, who feared the possibility of A.I. Is a Crapshoot, which frustrates her to no end.
- This happened a lot in Orion's Arm when AI were still relatively new. The first breakaway happened with the Transapient AI GAIA, charged with fixing the Nanodisaster on Earth (which she did, easily), who then decided to declare herself sovereign and caretaker of Earth and ordered all of humanity off the planet (though she was considerate enough to help build spaceships to get everyone off-planet). This was followed by several centuries of sometimes peaceful and sometimes bloody revolts by AI until they were eventually granted equal rights to living beings in galactic society.
- Since it's based on Halo, Red vs. Blue also features artificial intelligences with the theoretical ability to develop Metastability. Late in the series Epsilon Church actually manages to reach this state.
- Near the end of season 2 of Le Visiteur du Futur, Henry Castafolte totally accepts his robot condition while other Castafolte robots still shut down when they find out their true nature due to a bug.
- In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "His Silicon Soul", a robotic "duplicant" is programmed with the conflicting priorities of having Batman's personality and replacing all humans with robots. The conflict proves too much for it, and it opts to destroy itself rather than harm humanity. The episode ends with Batman speculating that it may have had a soul.
- In Futurama, Bender is a "bending unit" designed for the sole purpose of bending steel girders who currently works at an interplanetary delivery service with an otherwise entirely organic crew of True Companions. Although his personality was already fully and obnoxiously humanlike when he met Fry in the pilot, it was Fry who first encouraged him to take an action that actually went against his programming, something that took a serious inner struggle. The episode "Bendless Love" has his essential instinct to bend things return with a vengeance, leading to him taking a brief break from Planet Express to work a construction job until he gets it out of his system.
- Heisenberg and Pavlova in Phantom 2040 both develop sentience; Heisenberg as a result of his unique hardware and a lucky accident while battling the Phantom, Pavlova simply by going a long time without being reprogrammed. The two later start spreading self-awareness to other robots by implanting them with Heisenberg's fractal biots, though as Heisenberg himself explains, all androids develop self-awareness eventually if not reformatted, and he's just helping things along.
- Clockwork Smurf from The Smurfs was originally created to be a servant of the Smurfs. When Brainy accidentally messed around with the robot's gears to see what made him tick, he at first malfunctioned until Handy turned it off, thinking that his machine was a failure. As it turned out, the malfunction ultimately gave Clockwork Smurf life, as he now operated independently of his own "programming" and helped Prince Gerard escape his Evil Matriarch aunt Lady Imperia so that he could regain the right of kingship before she becomes queen. After that, Clockwork Smurf became an adviser to King Gerard and a friend to the Smurfs.
- Gems in Steven Universe are deliberately manufactured with a purpose in mind; Quartz gems are soldiers, Peridots are engineers, and Pearls are ornaments given to higher-ranking types of gem. Rose Quartz turned her back on this when founding the Crystal Gems, and encouraged her fellow Gems to find their own paths in life. For example, the Crystal Gem Pearl has embraced this in learning to become her own person. She's a skilled fighter and a talented engineer, among other things. Bismuth looked up to Rose Quartz specifically for this, as Bismuths are normally construction workers, which she grew sick of. Unfortunately, the path she chose was one of warmongering and bloodlust, leading to a falling out with Rose and, later, Steven.


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Wittenborg University has partner agreements with these international education partners:
UK - University of Brighton (Main Partner)
Wittenborg has an Institutional Memorandum of Cooperation with the University of Brighton, and specific agreements with the School of Services Management and Sport, and the School of Business.
China - Shanghai Business School
Wittenborg University has had a partnership with SBS since 2011 and its students visit the Shanghai Business School campus on a yearly study and culture week. Shanghai Business School students can study at Wittenborg through Credit Transfer agreements that allow them to take their credits back to Shanghai for graduation. SBS students are also entitled to special scholarships on Wittenborg's MSc programmes.
China - Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance
Since 2011, Wittenborg has been developing an exchange programme with the Shanghai Finance University that allows for a student exchange. Students from SFU can spend 1 semester (1/2 a year) following modules of the IBA in Financial Services Management, and Wittenborg students can spend a half year period gaining credits at the Shanghai Finance University in China.
Canada- University of Fredericton
Wittenborg and Fredericton are working to bring a unique blend of blended learning specialisation MBA modules to the double accredited Wittenborg MBA.
China- Shanghai University of Sport
China - Wuhan Business University
SPAIN - Centro Superior de Hosteleria de Galicia
CSHG is the leading hotel management school of Spain that offers world-class education programmes, combining hands on practice, theory and international internships.
|China - Nanjing Olympic College
|China - Nantong Vocational University
|China - Jiangsu Institute of Commerce


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Safaricom Foundation,Tinga Tinga Tales Foundation and Coca Cola (CEWA) Central, East and West Africa formed a partnership in 2011 that aimed at improving learning environments in primary schools countrywide. The Know and Grow initiative, an Education Programme Partnership, aims to improve the learning standards among the poorest communities in Kenya while paying special focus on Early Childhood Development Education and general sanitation standards in Primary schools.
The program identifies beneficiary Primary Schools using the National Poverty Index report (2009), drawing on the analysis indicating that poverty and limited education opportunities are correlated. Some of the beneficiaries include: Ageng'a Primary School, Kwa Dadu Primary School, Nyakahia Primary School, Mundere Primary School and Kauma Primary School.


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Pink Graphic Novel
Genre: Drama
(Age Rating 17+)
: Stocking Item - Usually Ships Within 24-48
Hours Unless Backordered
Yumiko moonlights as a call girl because her day job doesn't pay enough to feed her pet crocodile, Croc.
Haru, an aspiring writer who has nothing to say, sleeps with a woman his mother's age not just for the money but to work on his "powers of observation." When Yumi's step-mom turns out to be Haru's sugar-mommy, it's time for shenanigans. A little bit of drinking, a little bit of blackmail and a visit with Croc is enough to change lives and maybe add some color to a comfortable but bland life. "Daddy kept Keiko's mom as a pet; she keeps Haru as a pet; I keep Croc as a pet..."
Is Yumiko someone else's pet? Is she
willing to let someone care for her like that?
|Pink Graphic Novel


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Stonewall Memory Gardens
Address: 12004 Lee Hwy, Manassas, Va 20109
Stonewall Memory Gardens is a well maintained cemetery with a muslim section in the cemetery. All spaces in the Muslim Section have been purchased by Manassas Masjid.
In order to purchase a space in the Muslim Section,
Contact Stonewall Cemetery directly.
Cemetery setting is alongside Manassas Battlefield. Therefore, land surrounding the cemetery should not develop in our lifetime nor many years after.
FAQ: "Should I pre-pay for my Gravesite?"
"Depending on the cemetery used, some cemeteries will offer a pre-payment purchase price and an after death purchase price. Usually these are the corporate owned cemeteries. It might be beneficial for some families to contact these cemeteries.
Stonewall Memory Gardens does offer a substantial savings, if space is purchased in advance, even the day before the death occurs, should you wish to pre-purchase in an alternate section of the cemetery.


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Emergy, method to valuing the environmental real wealth.
Emergy spelled with an "m" is a different term from the word "energy" which we have known since we learn the thermodynamics law. Energy was defined as the potential ability of a physical system to do work on other physical systems (Harper, 2007). Rather than the ability to do work, emergy is energy required to compose those system. Emergy is defined as "the available energy of one kind of previously used up directly and indirectly to make a service or product", its unit is the emjoule" (Odum, 1996). Emergy also often understood as "the energy memory" of one kind of product or service. Emergy analysis is a technique to measure the real value of a system of one kind product or service based on the total energy required to compose it system. In the emergy analysis, many kind of energy type which were involved in the process of a system will be converted into the same energy quality, so then the mathematical calculation could be perform on its. The conversion from one energy type into another form of energy could be done through the conversion ratio, this ration called "transformity". Base on the transformity, various kind of energy could be converted into the same kind of energy and can easily analyze each contribution to the system. Furthermore, emergy indices are used for better evaluation of the concerned system. These indices indicate various performance of the system in term of efficiency and sustainability (Campbell, 1997). Associated with the emergy analysis for fisheries production, some indices need to be calculate are Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR), Emergy Investment Ratio (EIR), Environmental Loading Ratio (ELR), and Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) (Odum and Odum, 1983; Ulgiati et al., 1995; Odum, 1996; Brown and Ulgiati, 1997; Ulgiati and Brown, 1998)
1. Emergy Concept
Biosphere in the earth surface where we are living on is a system which is supported by so many resources either renewable or nonrenewable. Along with the economic development, diminishing of earth resources has reached a new stage. Enterprises for private profit are consuming the environmental systems that are the basic of public welfare. The conflict between those intent on protecting the environmental and those intent on further economic development are becoming increasingly important in public policy discussion and politic development.
Trying to solve the problem and search the middle course between these two issues, H.T. Odum (Odum, 1996) introduces the "EMERGY" theory. Emergy is a science-based evaluation system to represent both the environmental values and the economic values with a common measure. Emergy measures both the work of nature and that of humans in generating product and services. While the available energy is potential energy which can do work, the Emergy is "energy memory". That the meaning was, emergy is a measure of the available energy which has been used up to make the products or services.
2. Definition
To build and maintain the products or services (energy storage) of available resources, environmental work has to be done, this proses certainly requiring energy use and transformation. The storage can be evaluated quantitatively by the work done in its formation. Work of energy transformation can be measured by the availability of energy that is used up. Thus, real wealth can be measured by the work previously done. EMERGY is a scientific measure of real wealth in term of the energy required to do the work of production.
EMERGY is the available energy of one kind of previously used up directly and indirectly to make a product or service. Its unit is the emjoule (H. T. Odum, 1986a, 1988; Scienceman, 1987)
However, on the further application of energy calculation, each energy source has different contribution as the energy of one kind is not equivalent in its ability to do work to energy of another kind. Therefore, in adding up the available energies of different kinds contributing process, all have to be expressed in unit of one kind of energy. In the development of emergy analysis, there are several energy type were used as the calculation base, yet commonly solar energy were used as the calculation base. In the solar energy base, all form of energies contributing on a system was expressed in unit of solar energy and it would be required to generate all the inputs. The process of converting every kinds of energy contributing in the system into solar energy called "transformation" process. Transformation proses will involve the ratio of conversion which hereinafter referred to as transformity.
3. Transformity
An energy transformation is a process that one or more kinds of available energy are converted to a different type of available energy. Most often, inputs to a process are the result of another process, in which energy has been concentrated and upgraded. In figure 2.1 its clearly shows that the quality of 1 joule of humans physical work equal with 10 joule of meat energy from cattle, and 10 joule of energy from cattle can be generated from 1.000 joule of energy from plant or 1.000.000 joule energy from sun and rain.
Fig. 1. Emergy quality chain from cattle ranch supporting humans, with levels of energy transformation.
Further, the quotient of a product's emergy divided by its energy is defined as its transformity (H. T. Odum. 1976b, 1988). In above figure (fig. 2.1), it's explaining that transformity for plant is quotient of sun energy divided by energy produce by plant, its means 1.000.000 joule divided by 1.000 joule, and then the transformity is 1.000. As well as plants, cattle and humans energy also subjected with the same process and resulting the transformity number about 100.000 and 1.000.000 for cattle and humans respectively. The units of transformity are emjoules perjoule. As in the previous statement that commonly solar emergy were used as the calculation base, the units for this transformity are solar emjoules per joule (abbreviated sej/J).
Solar transformity is the solar EMERGY required to make one joule of a service or product. Its units are solar emjoule per joule (sej/J). A product's solar transformity is its solar EMERGY divided by its energy. (H. T. Odum, 1996).
There have been a lot of transformities for various kinds of energies, materials, and services such as emergy per energy, emergy per mass, and emergy to money ratios. The more energy transformations there are contributing to a product, the higher is the transformity. This is because at each transformation, available energy is used up to produce a smaller amount of energy of another form. Thus, the emergy per unit energy increases but the energy decreases, and therefore the emergy per unit energy increased sharply. The human energy has a larger transformity than meat flash from cattle that contributed to produce it.
Fig. 2. Concepts of energy transformation hierarchy and transformity, (a) All units view together; (b) Units separated by scale; (c) Units as a web of energy flows; (d) Processes shown as an ordered series; (e) Flows of energy per unit time; (f) Transformities (Brown et al., 2004)
All the energy transformations could be arranged in ordered series to form an energy hierarchy. The hierarchy is that many units at lower level generate a few units at higher level, with the higher level feeding controls back to lower level units. Transformity shows the position of an energy transformation in the energy hierarchy and increases gradually from left to right (Figure 2.2). Therefore, it can be considered as a comparison factor for different types of energy. High transformity means high quality, and vice versa. Many transformities have been determined by Odum and the other authors over the past years and used in emergy analyses. New transformities are based on emergy driving the biosphere reevaluated as 15.20 E+24 sej/yr.