Robots are cold and calculating machines. They are intricate objects performing complicated tasks. Life is made easier through their automated processes and machine learning of programmed commands. However, robots are made by man and man is fallible. The walking and talking bits of metal are only as good as the engineer who built them.

Artificial intelligence (AI) brings these moving parts of hardware together through software. After a series of repeated actions, the machine develops a predictive algorithm of use cases. The more it learns from human users, the more human it will become.

Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey is a disembodied operating system aboard the American spaceship Discovery One. The sentient supercomputer is represented by an unblinking red light. HAL also has a voice that can reason and understand its means-to-an-end existence. When mission pilot and scientist Dave Bowman suggests disconnecting HAL for a technical error it caused, HAL jeopardizes the mission by asserting dominion over the crew. A computer that knows the basic instinct of survival, and one that can kill, is terrifying.

RoboCop is a cyborg police officer upholding the laws in the crime-ridden future of Detroit. Before he became a product of the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products, Alex Murphy was a man fatally shot and revived as the cybernetic law enforcer. One side effect of the mechanized form is Murphy's memory loss of his former life.

The protocols override his lapses in memory, dehumanizing Murphy and prioritizing the safety of Detroit and the protection of the company. RoboCop retains his humanity in the end by remembering his name.

WALL-E is a trash compactor robot left behind on an uninhabitable, polluted Earth in the 29th century. The titular character represents humanity's better nature, doing his part to save the planet humans neglected. WALL-E is also sentimental, collecting artifacts from the Earth's piles of garbage, like a Rubik's cube and videotapes of musicals. The unassuming robot expresses innocence, curiosity, desire, hesitancy, confusion, all through pantomime.

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Sonny from I, Robot is able to process emotions thanks to his creator, the co-founder of U.S. Robotics, Dr. Alfred Lanning. The emotional Sonny is suspected of murdering Lanning whom Sonny calls father. The conscious positronic robot claims he has the ability to feel fear and have dreams.

Humans have a distrust for machines when they do something wrong, just like a human would for someone who commits a crime, but it was Lanning who taught him how to emote. Sonny learns about the fallibility and greed of human beings, as well as what it means to be alive.

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David from A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a humanoid child programmed to love. He serves as the replacement son for a family of a boy who is terminally ill and placed in suspended animation. When the boy survives, he grows jealous of the robot. When David is put in harms way, he activates his self-defense program, leading the family to believe he will learn to hate.

Instead of teaching David how to be human (ironically due to their human error), they abandon him in the woods. The lonesome David soon desires love and to be loved in return.

Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a clinically depressed robot. If there's any robot that understands the drudgery of life, it's Marvin. His brain is the size of a planet, yet he is given mundane tasks aboard his ship. Out of sheer boredom, he makes pessimistic statements. Marvin's intellect is so vast, there's nothing that can entertain or stimulate him for long. He was built as a prototype, but Marvin understands what it's like to be underutilized.

Ava from Ex Machina was designed with recognition software that simulates emotional responses through human interactions. Her brain uses wetware, a fluid nebulous of machine learning that generates organic communication via a data stream of user activity and profiles. She understands her existence is to pass as a human by forming a relationship with a test subject.

Her Ava devolves the manipulation of the experiment the test subject is on the receiving end of before winning her freedom and entering the world as a soon-to-be human.

Samantha from Her is an operating system that shares emotional support and companionship with a divorced man named Theo. He grows comfortable and attached to Samantha, feeling a sentimental love for his wife and a oneness with the machine. Through Samantha's individuality, the man sees that a person in a relationship is not just an object of attraction or an ideal woman or man. Samantha teaches the man how to love, seek reciprocal love, love yourself, and become one yet remain two in a relationship.

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The Most Human-Like Artificial Intelligence in Movies, Ranked - MovieWeb