Technology has come a long way in a short period of time. Even just a decade ago the idea of simply shouting a question at a computer and getting a response, or seeing self-driving cars on the road would have been dismissed as sci-fi dreaming. Now, we all have competing brands of "intelligent assistants" and Google's fleet of robot cars claim a sterling safety record. All the sci-fi tropes are finally making their way into reality.

But what about the most popular sci-fi trope out there? What about the evil computer? Whether you're talking about the decentralized fury of Skynet, the disturbing androids of WestWorld, or the Master Control Program of TRON, we've always had a fascination with the idea of machines turning on their human masters. I mean, I don't think Siri has any intention of wiping out the human race, but with every other sci-fi cliché slowly becoming reality, maybe we should keep an eye out...

Nah.

Still, it's an entertaining concept. Here's a list of some of our favourite evil A.Is from fiction. With any luck, this list will stay fictional in another ten years.  

Lot's of games feature giant evil computers, but few make them the most entertaining character in the game. Make no mistake, while technically the protagonist of the game is the mute, puzzle solving human Chell, GLaDOS is definitely the star of Portal.

And what a star she is. GLaDOS is an unapologetically murderous A.I. who massacred the entire Aperture Science staff with neuro-toxic gas and is obsessed with creating increasingly elaborate death traps to torture the player with in the name of "testing.” But, she has so much fun doing it all it's hard to stay mad at her. Snarky, sarcastic, and glib, everything GLaDOS says drips with superiority and malice, whether she's a towering pneumatic super-computer, or downloaded into a potato battery. You gotta love what you do I guess.

We've seen plenty of evil computers that have tried to conquer humanity with nuclear weapons, cybernetic parasites, and legions of evil robots but WALL-E's AUTO is a little more creative than all that. He kills them with kindness.

AUTO is the A.I. autopilot for the luxury star-cruiser the Axiom, an interstellar yacht carrying the last of humanity since evacuating an over polluted Earth centuries ago. Quietly menacing, AUTO never brandishes a ray-gun or threatens assimilation like so many other evil computers. Instead, he managed to take complete control of humanity simply by providing them a never-ending stream of cheap entertainment and snack food generation after generation until they were all too stupid, distracted, and lazy to do anything about it. Not exactly humanities shining moment. 

The '80s were a very different time. Computers were massive, the internet was in its infancy, and Mathew Broderick was cool. And nothing could be more '80s cool than hacking a government defense network and nearly touching off global thermonuclear annihilation. 

The War Operation Plan Response (WOPR), also known as Joshua, was an automated military A.I. designed as the ultimate trump card in America's Cold War strategy against the Russians. There's just one problem with it though - Joshua can't distinguish between reality and simulation. When it starts acting out a strategic war game thanks to Broderick's meddling, its ends up arming live missiles with real targets. Yikes.

What makes the WOPR stand out from all the other evil computers out there is it's cool detachment from its apocalyptic actions. It's not evil, malfunctioning, or vindictive - just the victim of some sloppy programming. Thank goodness even A.I.s find tic-tac-toe just as pointless as the rest of us do. 

Okay, so the holodeck itself was never really "evil,” but it's went on the fritz and tried to kill everybody so many times we're going to go ahead and count it. The holodeck, an invention that could create realistic simulations of just about anyone and any place, was ostensibly installed on the Enterprise to give the crew some much needed R&R while never having to leave the ship. Functionally though, it was a machine designed to spit out Victorian-era super villains. Every other week it would be some new disaster, Captain Picard would get trapped inside it with a bunch of virtual mobsters, Lieutenant Barkley would end up downloading his brain to the holo-matrix, or an alien lifeform would try to take over the ship using a holodeck character, and on and one. One wonders why the Federation kept them around. 

Sure, the "malfunctioning holodeck” made for some of the hammiest episodes of TNG, but they were also kind of the best. Clearly the writers agreed, malfunctioning holodecks would become a recurring staple throughout TNG's lifespan and even occasionally crop up in later series like Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Even in the Gamma quadrant, the scariest words a Federation officer could hear were "holodeck safeties, disengaged.”

Of course the HAL 9000 is going to be at the top of our list. The Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer is basically the grandfather of bent A.I.s and evil robots everywhere. His unblinking red eye, sinister calm, and dispassionate attitude towards homicide instantly made him one of the scariest and most influential menacing A.Is to ever grace the cinema. 2001: 

Yet, despite HAL's sheer malevolence,  it's still hard to watch astronaut David slowly deactivate him one circuit board at a time as he pleads for mercy. Eerie.