Why Are There No Good Alien Intelligences?

[Hotrod]

See, that's the thing though. I think it's entirely appropriate, and dramatically very interesting, to have good vs good in an RPG. It certainly happens in real life. All it takes is a conflict of duty, loyalty, ethics, or priorities, and two principled characters can start blazing away at each other. Shoot, a simple miscommunication could do it (and often does in real life).

A good AI isn't necessarily benevolent. Far from it! They may choose to protect something at the expense of many others. The best villains aren't demonic monsters that do it all for the evulz. They're sympathetic characters whose different priorities drive them to become the antagonist. On the way, they may become evil, or they may stay true to their moral values.

The Vorlons from B5, Inspector Javert from Les Miserables, and the Eldar from 40k are all examples of good alignments in the role of the villain. A good AI could, and in my opinion, should, be a great fightable antagonist.

[taalismn]

A good AI isn't necessarily benevolent. Far from it! They may choose to protect something at the expense of many others. The best villains aren't demonic monsters that do it all for the evulz. They're sympathetic characters whose different priorities drive them to become the antagonist. On the way, they may become evil, or they may stay true to their moral values.

The Vorlons from B5, Inspector Javert from Les Miserables, and the Eldar from 40k are all examples of good alignments in the role of the villain. A good AI could, and in my opinion, should, be a great fightable antagonist.

There's a line from Keith Laumer's A Plague of Demons, where two eldritch galactic powers have been fighting each other for (it's implied) millennia, using the younger races as proxies(and components in their weapons systems), and one human(brain transplanted into a giant tank) gets to experience both sides' core philosophies and concludes 'Hell comes in two different colors, black and white'.

[Zer0 Kay]

See, that's the thing though. I think it's entirely appropriate, and dramatically very interesting, to have good vs good in an RPG. It certainly happens in real life. All it takes is a conflict of duty, loyalty, ethics, or priorities, and two principled characters can start blazing away at each other. Shoot, a simple miscommunication could do it (and often does in real life).

A good AI isn't necessarily benevolent. Far from it! They may choose to protect something at the expense of many others. The best villains aren't demonic monsters that do it all for the evulz. They're sympathetic characters whose different priorities drive them to become the antagonist. On the way, they may become evil, or they may stay true to their moral values.

The Vorlons from B5, Inspector Javert from Les Miserables, and the Eldar from 40k are all examples of good alignments in the role of the villain. A good AI could, and in my opinion, should, be a great fightable antagonist.

Oh please, everyone in the 40k universe, except maybe the tao, the sensei and star child, are villainous.

Meh, it's always if in order for me to survive i do something heinous, it's evil. If in order for my species to survive i do something heinous to another species it is altruistic except to the other species which find it evil. I in order for all life to survive i do somethimg heinous do all consider me good? What if by doing so it ensures the destruction of creation and the regeneration of life!