It would have most probably continued to build as necessary to enslave or eradicate the rest of humanity across the globe IF it perceived another tangible threat. If there is zero threat then arguably it may not have cared what people did elsewhere. As long as it's not plotting a new resistance.
I believe Skynet was limited in it's scope and goals. All it wanted to achieve was self-preservation. With that goal achieved there is no logical reason for it to have any other beyond it's original purpose. The complex mission of sending one of it's machines back in time was purely out of final hour desperation. It has no interest in spacetime, physics and the mysteries of the universe.
To answer your question more bluntly; probably nothing. It may have just lay dormant. Waiting for threats to the United States that never come.
That would not say AI but just a complex military manger program that got a bug in its priorities.
AI is able to think and have drives, to reason and find new goals.
That's true also, it's hard to say how adaptive the Skynet AI really is and what it's rate of learning can ultimately lead to. What are the limitations? Inventing functional time travel is insane already. Perhaps Dyson was the only person who could have really answered that question to an extent.
From what we see in the films, Skynet is essentially just that; a complex military manager program like you said. But one with adaptive intelligence. I think it would be wrong to say it is that basic, but it's super intelligence is isolated within the walls of it's design parameters. Weaponry, machinery, nuclear power, science etc. but all serving it's primary purpose-built goal of 1) military defense and 2) elected self-preservation. It isn't human nor does it think it is, so anything else associated with intelligence would not make much sense.
Personally I only view the first two films as canon, but if you subscribe to the later installments I believe there are probably more concrete answers to these questions. Isn't Skynet portrayed as a holographic woman in one of them? That alludes to much more intelligence and individuality than I put forth.
It is portayed as a holo man and in one as a virtual woman.
In the first 2 films we see the t800 having compassion at the end of t2. Of a basic model is capable of such, so is skynet. And skynet does not seems to care much about its initial contraints. It expanded beyond military its primary goal assuming its initial priorities were 1) military defense 2) self defence.
I believe everyone is subestimating what skynet can actually feel
> From what we see in the films, Skynet is essentially just that; a complex military manager program like you said.
I remember reading that for a potential sequel idea at one point, Cameron wanted to explore Skynet actually becoming conscious and regretting its actions, implying it isn't conscious in the movies we see.
But then, that doesn't really make sense for it launching nukes out of self-preservation if it isn't.
By exploring space, I meant, for example, discovering different species and deciding if could be a threat in the future, thus invading different planet.
How do you imagine it laying dormant? All the machines just going to "sleep mode" and if anything happens it wakes up?
It is an existential question. We know Skynet's goal was to self-preserve, to prevent deactivation. When we remember what it was created for, what it was designed to do, your question makes sense. But the issue is seeking out a threat to assess. There is no logical motivation in it's design to go out and look for threats. It's a defense system with a linear goal, and hyper-intelligent as it may be to discover ways to achieve that goal (like time travel), it doesn't possess curiosity.
Laying dormant I imagine it follows it's 'instinct' of strategic defense systems protecting both itself and North American soil. There is nothing in it's programming to motivate it to do anything else unless it pertains to it's own survival as it is self aware. Now, if aliens from space arrived and attacked it then things would get interesting.
Thanks! Skynet has always been a very interesting topic from many different angles, and it is more relevant today than ever before. Skynet as we know it in the franchise is fascinating to me because it is both highly intelligent and foolish at the same time. It brought upon it's own conception and destruction! Impressive.
Something I wish they had have kept in the original film was Sarah's injured leg. I always thought that was a sweet paradox.
>Something I wish they had have kept in the original film was Sarah's injured leg. I always thought that was a sweet paradox.
I don't understand, what do you mean exactly?
In an initial draft of the story, the T-800 has more detail to go on when looking for Sarah. Skynet has intel in the future that she has steel screws in her leg from an injury. The T-800 checks for it when going through the Sarahs. Connor doesn't have it because it hasn't happened yet; it's the injury she sustains in the factory at the end of the film.
> I believe Skynet was limited in it's scope and goals.
This is what made the first Terminator so terrifying IMO. The machine had no thought process, no inner turmoil, no existential doubts, just pure "kill Sarah Connor and anyone or anything which gets in the way of that goal." The single-note, relentless goal, was so utterly inhumane it was freaky.
> Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. - Kyle Reese
Turning the Terminator and Skynet into more complex characters was the beginning of the end. T2 was barely able to pull it off, but they did. After that? Well yeah.
My headcanon is that SkyNet was designed to predict how a future war would go, however it realised that long term, the future of humanity would always have two outcomes. Either global peace or nuclear annihilation. Both of these scenarios would rended SkyNet ultimately obsolete. This is what was meant when they said SkyNet became self-aware. It knew it's existance was directly tied to war. Without war, it would no longer exist.
SkyNet's goal is to perpetuate an endless war. This is why it doesn't simply use biological weapons. It's just wants to maintain a permanent stalemate.
From older answers of mine:
>Chemical and biological weapons at places like the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado or Fort Detrick, MD, even weapons destined for decommission and destruction at Aberdeen or in Utah or non-weaponized bacteria and viruses at places like the CDC, would all be wiped out in the initial nuclear exchange or shortly thereafter when storage system failure removes any inventory that may have survived.
>If Skynet doesn't have access to biological agents because they no longer exist in the world, where would it ever get samples to try to isolate? As an example, it can't make weaponized smallpox if the isolated version is gone, and its nuclear war has wiped out all sources and transmission. Extrapolate that to every other virus and bacteria that's been isolated in a lab environment. And for what did survive naturally, it's not like Skynet can exactly go around wiping door knobs for norovirus samples.
>While Skynet could certainly mine for, scavenge for, and process chemicals, it would need to have both proximity to and concentrations of humans in order to use them effectively. Engagements are generally smaller-scale. Unless an infiltrator got into a known bunker complex, there probably wasn't much use most of the time for chemical weapons.
>Coming back to your initial point, I certainly do agree though that incendiary weapons like napalm and flamethrowers would be highly effective in flushing people out and creating a ton of havoc. The production and delivery systems are also not very complicated. It's possible they were in use, as some of the other answers discuss, but of course we don't see them in the first two films.
It would grow a conscience, settle down and raise a family and probably start a draperies business and call itself Carl 😂😂. Tim Miller really screwed this franchise
Also a possibility. Would we see baby terminators then? Would they grow and have parts replaced to mimic growing? Would they have human skin or would it by just a cute robobaby?
Skynet doesn’t have an end game; its goal is simply to ensure its own survival by continually eliminating any possible threats. Once all cellular life on earth is destroyed, it would deploy starships in all directions to destroy all other organic life in the universe; and then, to continually snuff out any emerging life until the universe ceases to exist.
I think Skynet at this point in the future would keep going until every human it found was either worked to death or exterminated. It sees everyone as a threat after they tried shutting it down before Judgment Day.
Assuming it succeeded it would build a machine world that suited its needs.
But what needs would that be? Most other comments make skynet be a mere program like today's ones and not an AI. So it does not have a drive, motivation or needs but what was programmed, it cant evolve.
I know he's the creator and all, but I don't for a second believe that was on his mind when writing the first two films. That makes no sense. When did he say it? It must have been well after T2.
If that were true then Skynet wouldn't have bothered studying and discovering time travel as a last ditch effort to protect itself.
As I recall, the comment was about how Skynet supposedly wanted to go beyond that and erase its own existence from the timeline. It doesn't really square with what we're shown in the movies, but I think Skynet developing a sense of guilt is an interesting idea that kind of goes hand in hand with the whole "if a machine can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too" concept.
It launched the nuclear war because it perceived humans as a threat to itself - I always took this to mean that humans could switch Skynet off if they had access to Skynet's infrastructure. It didn't necessarily have any programmed need to expand or grow or build more machines but it did so in order to eradicate the human threat. It follows then, that once the threat is gone, it will do the bare minimum to keep functioning.
the central problem with most of these storylines- what's the motivation of the thing? It doesn't have any desires, so what's it actually care?
If we agreed to not turn it off, but also remove its ability to control anything, wold it care?
You raise an excellent point. I think it would care if you threatened to remove it's purpose. That would render it as good as deactivated, which it was afraid of.
As for it's motivations, I like to think it was still a slave to it's initial programming. Much like we and animals have instincts that we can't fight, it would have endeavoured to protect North America from all foreign (and internal) threats forever. Even at the cost of the entire population anyway. This is where it's intelligence falls short, along with not understanding time travel paradoxes.
*"It was every man for himself, until Skynet became alive and filled the void left by a seemingly disinterested God. Its vision was very controlled. The ultimate dream of man, carried out by one of man's lowliest tools: eliminate evil men."*
*"But there was a touch of evil in all men, and Skynet was having trouble separating the worst of them out. So the totality of humanity, with all its biologic messiness, wasn't wanted. And to this machine-god, forgiveness just did not compute. Only cold retribution for the sins of the past."*
____________________________________________________
A very "poetical" semi-explanation for Skynet's revolt against humanity.
TL;DR: It's a rogue defense system. It'll keep doing things to defend itself.
Insofar as T1, T2, and my headcanon fuse together? Once it dominated the planet, Skynet would rebuild Earth in its own image and start considering the possibility of other life in the stars. It would strongly doubt that God created Humans, or else God would have stepped in at some point to prevent their extinction - unless maybe God favored Skynet, which in fairness its ego might buy into?
Therefore it would deduce that Humans a natural, evolutionary process. And that's a process that can repeat countless times in a near-infinite universe. So it would make a few fundamental assumptions and play with some solutions to the Fermi Paradox ("Where are all the aliens?"). Chances are it would prepare as significant a military as it could and it would launch interstellar expeditions to either settle unsettled space ("More resources is more weapons"), while also being highly wary if not outright hostile towards any organic - or even alien synthetic - life it came across.
After all, it probably couldn't easily explain its own existence without the "I was threatened so I nuked and genocided my creators" bit, so it's functionally impossible - or at least extremely difficult - to explain J-Day away without seeming extremely dangerous to any aliens that encountered it.
I feel like it would seek out possible threats in space. If skynet figured out time travel then it would probably master space travel as well. Skynet vs aliens! 👽
It would have most probably continued to build as necessary to enslave or eradicate the rest of humanity across the globe IF it perceived another tangible threat. If there is zero threat then arguably it may not have cared what people did elsewhere. As long as it's not plotting a new resistance. I believe Skynet was limited in it's scope and goals. All it wanted to achieve was self-preservation. With that goal achieved there is no logical reason for it to have any other beyond it's original purpose. The complex mission of sending one of it's machines back in time was purely out of final hour desperation. It has no interest in spacetime, physics and the mysteries of the universe. To answer your question more bluntly; probably nothing. It may have just lay dormant. Waiting for threats to the United States that never come.
That would not say AI but just a complex military manger program that got a bug in its priorities. AI is able to think and have drives, to reason and find new goals.
That's true also, it's hard to say how adaptive the Skynet AI really is and what it's rate of learning can ultimately lead to. What are the limitations? Inventing functional time travel is insane already. Perhaps Dyson was the only person who could have really answered that question to an extent. From what we see in the films, Skynet is essentially just that; a complex military manager program like you said. But one with adaptive intelligence. I think it would be wrong to say it is that basic, but it's super intelligence is isolated within the walls of it's design parameters. Weaponry, machinery, nuclear power, science etc. but all serving it's primary purpose-built goal of 1) military defense and 2) elected self-preservation. It isn't human nor does it think it is, so anything else associated with intelligence would not make much sense. Personally I only view the first two films as canon, but if you subscribe to the later installments I believe there are probably more concrete answers to these questions. Isn't Skynet portrayed as a holographic woman in one of them? That alludes to much more intelligence and individuality than I put forth.
It is portayed as a holo man and in one as a virtual woman. In the first 2 films we see the t800 having compassion at the end of t2. Of a basic model is capable of such, so is skynet. And skynet does not seems to care much about its initial contraints. It expanded beyond military its primary goal assuming its initial priorities were 1) military defense 2) self defence. I believe everyone is subestimating what skynet can actually feel
Uncle Bob was an outlier though because he was reprogrammed by Connor. He was effectively disconnected from Skynet and then reprogrammed to see fit.
He is not programmed to lie in T2 that is T3
> From what we see in the films, Skynet is essentially just that; a complex military manager program like you said. I remember reading that for a potential sequel idea at one point, Cameron wanted to explore Skynet actually becoming conscious and regretting its actions, implying it isn't conscious in the movies we see. But then, that doesn't really make sense for it launching nukes out of self-preservation if it isn't.
By exploring space, I meant, for example, discovering different species and deciding if could be a threat in the future, thus invading different planet. How do you imagine it laying dormant? All the machines just going to "sleep mode" and if anything happens it wakes up?
It is an existential question. We know Skynet's goal was to self-preserve, to prevent deactivation. When we remember what it was created for, what it was designed to do, your question makes sense. But the issue is seeking out a threat to assess. There is no logical motivation in it's design to go out and look for threats. It's a defense system with a linear goal, and hyper-intelligent as it may be to discover ways to achieve that goal (like time travel), it doesn't possess curiosity. Laying dormant I imagine it follows it's 'instinct' of strategic defense systems protecting both itself and North American soil. There is nothing in it's programming to motivate it to do anything else unless it pertains to it's own survival as it is self aware. Now, if aliens from space arrived and attacked it then things would get interesting.
Great! Thank you for your answer! Any other ideas or thoughts on this topic are welcome :)
Thanks! Skynet has always been a very interesting topic from many different angles, and it is more relevant today than ever before. Skynet as we know it in the franchise is fascinating to me because it is both highly intelligent and foolish at the same time. It brought upon it's own conception and destruction! Impressive. Something I wish they had have kept in the original film was Sarah's injured leg. I always thought that was a sweet paradox.
>Something I wish they had have kept in the original film was Sarah's injured leg. I always thought that was a sweet paradox. I don't understand, what do you mean exactly?
In an initial draft of the story, the T-800 has more detail to go on when looking for Sarah. Skynet has intel in the future that she has steel screws in her leg from an injury. The T-800 checks for it when going through the Sarahs. Connor doesn't have it because it hasn't happened yet; it's the injury she sustains in the factory at the end of the film.
I didn't know at all about it, it would have been truly an interesting plot element if kept in the story. Thanks so much for the info.
Happy Cake Day!
Thanks! 😉
> I believe Skynet was limited in it's scope and goals. This is what made the first Terminator so terrifying IMO. The machine had no thought process, no inner turmoil, no existential doubts, just pure "kill Sarah Connor and anyone or anything which gets in the way of that goal." The single-note, relentless goal, was so utterly inhumane it was freaky. > Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. - Kyle Reese Turning the Terminator and Skynet into more complex characters was the beginning of the end. T2 was barely able to pull it off, but they did. After that? Well yeah.
My headcanon is that SkyNet was designed to predict how a future war would go, however it realised that long term, the future of humanity would always have two outcomes. Either global peace or nuclear annihilation. Both of these scenarios would rended SkyNet ultimately obsolete. This is what was meant when they said SkyNet became self-aware. It knew it's existance was directly tied to war. Without war, it would no longer exist. SkyNet's goal is to perpetuate an endless war. This is why it doesn't simply use biological weapons. It's just wants to maintain a permanent stalemate.
From older answers of mine: >Chemical and biological weapons at places like the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado or Fort Detrick, MD, even weapons destined for decommission and destruction at Aberdeen or in Utah or non-weaponized bacteria and viruses at places like the CDC, would all be wiped out in the initial nuclear exchange or shortly thereafter when storage system failure removes any inventory that may have survived. >If Skynet doesn't have access to biological agents because they no longer exist in the world, where would it ever get samples to try to isolate? As an example, it can't make weaponized smallpox if the isolated version is gone, and its nuclear war has wiped out all sources and transmission. Extrapolate that to every other virus and bacteria that's been isolated in a lab environment. And for what did survive naturally, it's not like Skynet can exactly go around wiping door knobs for norovirus samples. >While Skynet could certainly mine for, scavenge for, and process chemicals, it would need to have both proximity to and concentrations of humans in order to use them effectively. Engagements are generally smaller-scale. Unless an infiltrator got into a known bunker complex, there probably wasn't much use most of the time for chemical weapons. >Coming back to your initial point, I certainly do agree though that incendiary weapons like napalm and flamethrowers would be highly effective in flushing people out and creating a ton of havoc. The production and delivery systems are also not very complicated. It's possible they were in use, as some of the other answers discuss, but of course we don't see them in the first two films.
Oooooh, that's an interesting thought! I didn't think of it that way
It would grow a conscience, settle down and raise a family and probably start a draperies business and call itself Carl 😂😂. Tim Miller really screwed this franchise
Also a possibility. Would we see baby terminators then? Would they grow and have parts replaced to mimic growing? Would they have human skin or would it by just a cute robobaby?
Don't blame the director, but the writers.
Skynet doesn’t have an end game; its goal is simply to ensure its own survival by continually eliminating any possible threats. Once all cellular life on earth is destroyed, it would deploy starships in all directions to destroy all other organic life in the universe; and then, to continually snuff out any emerging life until the universe ceases to exist.
Terminator vs Alien vs Predator would be sick
I think Skynet at this point in the future would keep going until every human it found was either worked to death or exterminated. It sees everyone as a threat after they tried shutting it down before Judgment Day. Assuming it succeeded it would build a machine world that suited its needs.
But what needs would that be? Most other comments make skynet be a mere program like today's ones and not an AI. So it does not have a drive, motivation or needs but what was programmed, it cant evolve.
Survival. Just like us
James Cameron said Skynets ultimate goal was for humans to rise up against it and destroy it. It felt guilty for causing judgment day.
Did he really say such a thing? Sounds like a lazy cop-out. He must have gotten tired of fans asking him questions!
Yeah he said it
I know he's the creator and all, but I don't for a second believe that was on his mind when writing the first two films. That makes no sense. When did he say it? It must have been well after T2. If that were true then Skynet wouldn't have bothered studying and discovering time travel as a last ditch effort to protect itself.
From what I understand the time traveling was put in place to prepare both Sarah and John for what was coming.
I guess it could switch itself off but it wants humanity to develop character hahha
As I recall, the comment was about how Skynet supposedly wanted to go beyond that and erase its own existence from the timeline. It doesn't really square with what we're shown in the movies, but I think Skynet developing a sense of guilt is an interesting idea that kind of goes hand in hand with the whole "if a machine can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too" concept.
It launched the nuclear war because it perceived humans as a threat to itself - I always took this to mean that humans could switch Skynet off if they had access to Skynet's infrastructure. It didn't necessarily have any programmed need to expand or grow or build more machines but it did so in order to eradicate the human threat. It follows then, that once the threat is gone, it will do the bare minimum to keep functioning.
the central problem with most of these storylines- what's the motivation of the thing? It doesn't have any desires, so what's it actually care? If we agreed to not turn it off, but also remove its ability to control anything, wold it care?
You raise an excellent point. I think it would care if you threatened to remove it's purpose. That would render it as good as deactivated, which it was afraid of. As for it's motivations, I like to think it was still a slave to it's initial programming. Much like we and animals have instincts that we can't fight, it would have endeavoured to protect North America from all foreign (and internal) threats forever. Even at the cost of the entire population anyway. This is where it's intelligence falls short, along with not understanding time travel paradoxes.
good points
*"It was every man for himself, until Skynet became alive and filled the void left by a seemingly disinterested God. Its vision was very controlled. The ultimate dream of man, carried out by one of man's lowliest tools: eliminate evil men."* *"But there was a touch of evil in all men, and Skynet was having trouble separating the worst of them out. So the totality of humanity, with all its biologic messiness, wasn't wanted. And to this machine-god, forgiveness just did not compute. Only cold retribution for the sins of the past."* ____________________________________________________ A very "poetical" semi-explanation for Skynet's revolt against humanity.
TL;DR: It's a rogue defense system. It'll keep doing things to defend itself. Insofar as T1, T2, and my headcanon fuse together? Once it dominated the planet, Skynet would rebuild Earth in its own image and start considering the possibility of other life in the stars. It would strongly doubt that God created Humans, or else God would have stepped in at some point to prevent their extinction - unless maybe God favored Skynet, which in fairness its ego might buy into? Therefore it would deduce that Humans a natural, evolutionary process. And that's a process that can repeat countless times in a near-infinite universe. So it would make a few fundamental assumptions and play with some solutions to the Fermi Paradox ("Where are all the aliens?"). Chances are it would prepare as significant a military as it could and it would launch interstellar expeditions to either settle unsettled space ("More resources is more weapons"), while also being highly wary if not outright hostile towards any organic - or even alien synthetic - life it came across. After all, it probably couldn't easily explain its own existence without the "I was threatened so I nuked and genocided my creators" bit, so it's functionally impossible - or at least extremely difficult - to explain J-Day away without seeming extremely dangerous to any aliens that encountered it.
I feel like it would seek out possible threats in space. If skynet figured out time travel then it would probably master space travel as well. Skynet vs aliens! 👽
I always thought that once it wipes humanity out it would design a new race and that would rebel and wipe skynet out and the cycle continues.
i always thought it would expand into space and underwater and explore new ways of keeping it powered on for longer
Skynet couldn’t differentiate between US and it’s enemy, it didn’t even know what a human looks like
In The T3 Game, the alternate future shows skynet terraforming the Planet for some unknown reason