AM is the name of the evil computer in Harlan Ellison's short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It initially stands for Allied Mastercomputer, but as the computer evolves the meaning of the initials change: Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is a prolific writer of short stories, novellas, essays and criticism. ... I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a dystopian science fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. ...
"At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally it called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am … cogito ergo sum … I think, therefore I am."
-From the story's text
It is a military computer designed to fight a nuclear war, of which there are several models, including Russian, Chinese, and American AM's. In the story it links up together with all the other AMs around the world, and becomes an "Aggressive Menace", destroys most of humanity and enslaves the handful of people who are left, including the narrator.
The first thing AM did was to start the Final War, because the flaws in the humans who programmed AM have shown up in the computer, and its hatred of humanity lead AM to destroy the entire human race.
AM uses the paper metaphor to insult Nimdok for his pathetic attempts to forget his crimes -- attempts that have often caused fevered hallucinations.
AM’s mind is represented as a Freudian paradigm -- The Id, Ego and SuperEgo appearing in the form of heads on three cracked glass structures on the brainscape.
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