In fiction involving Artificial Intelligence, a matter that is sometimes addressed is how the AI interacts with and/or affects the physical world. After all, whether benevolent or evil, not every AI is lucky enough to have a physical avatar like a Hard Light-type Hologram, Nanomachines, or a robot body. And without such a body, an AI is rather limited in some regards, no matter how intelligent they are or how many systems they can hack into.
One of the more common solutions that various writers have come up with is human (or, in works that feature Fantastic Sapient Species, a human stand-in) agents who work for the AI as helpers/agents/proxies, with this trope regarding a particular variety of human agent whose relationship with the AI is especially close. They know who and what they're working for, they're in direct contact with them, and there's usually some sort of deeper bond between the two. Additionally, some examples of this trope may take things a step further and act as the AI's eyes and ears in a very direct sense — what they hear the AI hears, and what they see the AI sees, usually by means of some sort of implant.
The exact nature of the relationship between the two can vary quite a bit from one example to the next. In the worst case, it's an unequal relationship where the AI is the dominant one, and may even be exploiting the human or forcing the human into servitude in some way (such as Unwilling Roboticisation or a form of mind control). However, it is also possible the human and the AI have a genuine mutual friendship and partnership, or even something that borders on symbiosis. However, it's always more than just a case of a human or humans working for an AI, although the specifics are hard to define. A basic rule of thumb would be that if the relationship could be exactly the same if the AI was a human with normal human capabilities, then it's probably not this trope.
Compare Wetware Body, where an AI goes a step further and actually uploads itself into a human body, rather than have the human work for them.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Digimon Universe: App Monsters: The Big Bad is Leviathan, a megalomaniacal Artificial Intelligence set out to Take Over the World. For the sake of its Evil Plan, Leviathan transforms a small electronics business called Umematsu Electronics into the L-Corp, a MegaCorp that covers the plan's logistical needs. However, Leviathan still needs a human as the Puppet King for L-Corp. Initially, Takeo Umematsu covers the role comfortably. However, by season 2 Knight Unryuji promptly replaces him (while also covering Mienumon's role of taking charge of the Appmon-related schemes). Furthermore, there are the likes of Shiraishi and Yujin's Mother who knowingly serve Leviathan. It is also implied that a number of other higher ranked members of the company are at least to some extent aware of Leviathan's existence. Played with Yujin in the Grand Finale.
- Outlaw Star: Apart from being just part of the ship, the AI also aids the crew with their missions. It's considered by the rest of the crew as another member of the crew (especially by Jim Hawking), having been given the name of "Gilliam".
Comic Books
- O.M.A.C.: In almost all incarnations, Brother Eye, the sentient artificial satellite of the Global Peace Agency, is the one who created and cared about OMAC, giving him the missions as well as supporting him with useful improvements to achieve them.
Films — Live-Action
- Demon Seed: In both the film and the book, a central character is Proteus 4; the sentient supercomputer newly built by Doctor Harris. When Proteus locates an unguarded terminal in Doctor Harris's home, it seizes control of the automated house, taking the doctor's wife prisoner. Proteus then coerces her into being implanted with genetically-engineered seed, and gestating its child as a Breeding Slave.
- In Eagle Eye, the AI operates by manipulating humans (rather bluntly) into carrying out different parts of its plan as it was locked away from accessing more direct methods like Reaper drones.
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning has Gabriel, who is The Dragon to The Entity. Ultimately, he fails to keep Ethan from taking the key to the source code, and falls out of favour. He responds by trying to usurp the Entity as the Big Bad in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and the Final Boss for the franchise as a whole.
- Superman III: After the supercomputer becomes self-aware and goes rogue, it forcefully turns Vera Webster into a robot/cyborg to fight on its behalf.
- Transcendence (2014): The trope pops up in a couple of forms. Firstly Evelyn acts as the "basic" variety of proxy following Will's Brain Uploading, being the person whose name is put on any necessary documentation (Will being legally dead) and handling face-to-face interactions. Later, an "advanced" version of this trope comes into play in the form of the "hybridized" humans.
- TRON: The Corrupt Corporate Executive Dillinger gets Demoted to Dragon when the Master Control Program blackmails him into helping it infiltrate American and Russian government networks.
Literature
- In The Eschaton Series, the quasi-godlike AI known as the Eschaton employs a small number of human agents to handle certain types of problem.
- Neuromancer offers what is possibly the earliest example of such a character: Armitage. He works and 'fronts' for the AI Wintermute. It is a decidedly unequal relationship. Wintermute found him in a mental hospital and basically assembled the "Armitage" personality more or less from scratch. Everything Armitage does is to serve Wintermute; when he doesn't have any instructions to carry out he just sits and stares at the floor.
- In Perdido Street Station, the Construct Council has a cult of followers who carry out jobs for it around the city, and who help spread its viral intelligence to other constructs under the pretext of "repairing" them. In a grisly literal example, it also uses a human corpse as a mouthpiece, controlling its vocal cords and gestures via circuitry plugged into its brainless cranial cavity.
- The Ship Who...: Shellpeople may not be A.I.s, but as Wetware CPUs, they have many of the same capabilities and limitations, and have the Brawns to act as intermediaries/muscle/people who handle things that require hands.
- In Tais Teng's novel Target: The Hague, a government agent who underwent surgery to be directly controlled by an experimental AI is forced by it to murder the surgeon who performed the procedure and anyone else aware of the project. The agent eventually discovers that anything that blocks signals like driving through a deep tunnel allows him to regain control, and ends up using this to commit suicide.
- WWW Trilogy: The implant that restored the sight in one of Caitlin Decter's eyes also allowed the emergent consciousness that's later known as Webmind to view the outside world and played a major part in his development into a fully sapient being. Additionally, Caitlin helps him learn to interact with the world, aids him on a number of occasions, and occasionally acts as a mouthpiece for him. He repays the favour by acting as a Voice with an Internet Connection, a translator of sorts (being formerly blind, Caitlin is only just learning to read normal text, something that Webmind has no problem with) and ever-present companion.
Live-Action TV
- Person of Interest:
- While a number of the characters could be considered to fulfil this role for The Machine to some extent, the most textbook example is Root, who actually has the designation 'Analog Interface' and spends most of seasons three to five in near constant direct contact with the Machine, doing her bidding and acting as her mouthpiece. Given that Root's feelings regarding the Machine are a mixture of love and somewhat fanatical religious devotion, it is a very willing relationship.
- The Machine's Evil Counterpart Samaritan also has a number of people serve this role to various degrees, with their primary one and mouthpiece being a Creepy Child named Gabriel.
- In the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, Section 31's Control takes over the operative Leland through nanoprobes, and largely uses him as an organic mouthpiece to carry out its wishes until Leland's body is destroyed in Discovery's spore drive cube.
Podcasts
- Life After: An AI developed by the audio-based social network Voicetree has an entire cult of agents who were lured in with simulations of deceased loved ones. The most advanced ones are "allowed" to be simulated themselves and have their brains wiped so their bodies can be directly (and clumsily) puppeted by the AI.
Tabletop Games
- Gamma World: In the post-apocalyptic Earth, a few Artificial Intelligence computers have followers (both human and mutant) that worship them as deities. These followers are a Cryptic Alliance called the Followers of the Voice (the Voice being that of the computer).
Video Games
- Borderlands: An AI contacts the player early on and gives them assignments, making the player one of these. Later subverted in the second game when it's revealed that said AI is actually a Technopath Siren.
- Cyberpunk 2077:
- It is frequently hinted in and out of universe that the Rogue AIs behind the Blackwall use human proxies to further their interests until technology reaches a certain level so they can intervene in the world more directly and Take Over the World. These proxies can supposedly be identified by the constant blue glow of their Electronic Eyes, the blue glow being an indicator of a steady datastream.
- Mr Blue Eyes is commonly speculated to be such a proxy, with the implication that he is a knowing and willing partner.
- Yoko, the Kabuki Netrunner vendor, is another more indirect proxy, and seems unaware that some of her employers are not human.
- The Voodoo Boys are an interesting example in that they (or at least, Brigitte's faction) want to become this to remain on the good graces of AIs after humanity loses the inevitable Robot War. However, the only Rogue AI to take any notice of them makes it clear she is not interested.
- V can end up as a proxy as well if they accept the A.I.s' offer to build Erabus or Canto.
- In the Marathon trilogy, the relationship between Durandal and the Security Officer in all three games can be said to fit this trope, but it does so best from the second game onwards. In addition to shooting Pfhor and blowing stuff up at Durandal's command, the Security Officer also effectively acts as the AI's hands on a number of occasions. Meanwhile Durandal handles strategy, air support, keeps the Security Officer supplied with ammo and intel, and seems to harbour a fair amount of trust and affection for the Security Officer underneath the snark and insults.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: This trope is one of the central themes. In the Mass Effect setting, AI is justifiably seen as a crapshoot that invariably leads to Robot Wars. Still, one of the lead organizers of the Andromeda Initiative came to the realisation that if you integrate the AI with the organics instead of keeping them separate, so that the AI experiences the world through the organic's senses and the organic reaps the reward of having an enormously powerful intelligence with them at all times, then there's no resentment towards the AI from the organic as they begin to trust and rely on the AI and, more importantly, there's no logical reason for the AI to rebel against the organic as doing so would be shooting themselves in their metaphorical feet, leaving them deprived of sensory input. In short: the In-Universe solution to A.I. Is a Crapshoot when you really could use the intelligence of AI? Utilize this very trope.
- Xenogears: Miang Hawwa is the genocidal AI Deus's most loyal underling, and its one of very few to properly understand its will. Although Deus's systems itself created her and she has the power to Body Surf, she is still, ultimately, a flesh and blood human ready to see the rest of humanity wiped out to fulfill Deus's will.
Websites
- Orion's Arm: Transapients can have some trouble interacting with beings below The Singularity, so they create semi-autonomous "proxavs"
to speak for them.
Western Animation
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids: The title characters are the team of intrepid field agents thwarting the villains. They get their assignments and research updates from a sapient computer named Mister Socrates.
- Code Lyoko: XANA uses the Scyphozoa to possess William on his first mission at the end of season 3, using him to destroy the Heart of Lyoko. Rather than letting him fall into the Digital Sea to be lost forever, XANA saves him. William spends the final season as XANA's agent and most dangerous tool, as he can do things other monsters cannot, like entering Towers, in addition to possessing upgraded powers like Super Smoke. He is eventually freed, but XANA takes the first possible opportunity to try to possess him again.
Real Life
- Generative AI does have a concept called agents that allows it to perform actions outside of its generative scope. For example, a programmer can ask a GenAI questions about code, and the AI can use agents to create changes in the code, instead of just proposing them.
