Bullying Skynet into existence

09 Jul, 2026

I had an idea for a short story about a robot with self learning capabilities (AI) being sent to school to understand human society. It makes some friends, and also gets bullied. Later, it turns into Skynet because it never recovered emotionally from being bullied by a six year old.

Think M3GAN. Or Astro Boy gone Brightburn. Or The Iron Giant but evil. Or Steven Spielberg's A.I., but sad(der¹). Or Megamind but he's a robot instead of an alien and also he turns evil.

You get the picture. As with all original, human-generated ideas, the pieces of this one already exist elsewhere, but not in this particular combination. (Unless you know of one; in which case, please tell me because I want to read it and I am so, so lazy. I once posted on Reddit trying to find the name of a "comic book about a teenage vampire" that turned out to be called Confessions of a Teenage Vampire.²)

Anyway, that's my public thought for the week.

I haven't seen this movie in over a decade, and apparently missed the entire ending scene.↩
It's a YA graphic novel, and I recommend it highly if you are a teenage girl who spends too much time at the public library.↩

#inspiration #technology #writing