Terminator Zero: What’s The Difference Between Kokoro and Skynet?

Terminator Zero presented us with a story that showed a lot of respect for the original films, but it also introduced a number of great twists that have added a lot of value to the franchise. The main one is the introduction and role of Kokoro, the artificial superintelligence created by the person of interest in the series, Malcolm Lee. Kokoro was created in order to protect humanity from the nuclear war incited by Skynet in retaliation to the attempt to switch it off after it went online on August 29th, 1997.

Kokoro is a very interesting character, a possible savior or enemy of humanity depending on the decision it makes in the latter episodes. So, what makes Kokoro different from the iconic overarching villain of the Terminator franchise, Cyberdine System’s Skynet?

The Development of Skynet

How Skynet’s Greatest Flaw Is Inherently Human

According to the first movie, Skynet was created by Cyberdine for SAC-NORAD, becoming a revolutionary military technology so advanced, it was connected to everything, trusted with running it all; however, upon going online, Skynet became self-aware, and when people tried to shut it down, it deemed humanity an existential threat. In Terminator Zero, Malcolm Lee explains that the flaw in Skynet’s programming that made it come to the fatal conclusion that it does, is because its thinking is governed by a series of if-then statements. If-then statements describe a hypothesis followed by a conclusion, otherwise called a conditional statement.

At risk of oversimplifying what went on in Skynet’s “mind” or the horrors of war, it makes sense that a thinking framework built on logic like “if p then q” could take a look at humanity’s violent history, and war justified for various reasons; including the right to self-determination, and decide it needs to destroy it. This is ironically very human of Skynet, as it used US weaponry to attack, causing a nuclear holocaust as war broke out. Skynet then takes advantage of the destruction of civilization by sending out robot soldiers to kill off the survivors and stifle any chance of a rebellion.

The Major Difference Is The Thought Process

A Repurposed T-Series CPU Becomes “Kokoro”

Kokoro is an artificial superintelligence with the capacity for emotion. It was developed by Malcolm Lee for Cortex Industries, and was made specifically to help humanity prevent the nuclear war caused by Skynet; however, Kokoro is the result of the efforts of the time-traveller Malcolm Lee and Misaki, a Terminator he reprogrammed in his own time. By removing the programming that gave rise to Skynet, Lee was able to make an artificial blank slate consciousness and therefore, make an AI that hasn’t been told how to think, which ran on the hardware that makes each T-Series unit capable of higher-order thought. Over several years of development, which he had to do in secret because the other members of the resistance did not support the idea, but when he finally cracked it, the consciousness named itself Misaki, as in, “emissary of the divine”, believing themself to be genderless but feminine, desiring to be a creator of new life.

Through conversation, Malcolm was able to “teach” Misaki, and watched their personality and sense of self develop “organically”. Unfortunately, for Kokoro to be complete, Misaki’s CPU was needed, meaning that “Misaki” would cease to be. Therefore, the ultimate difference between Kokoro and Skynet lies in the events surrounding their births, and the way they think. With Misaki’s CPU, Kokoro becomes an AI capable of thinking with emotion, hence the discussions between Kokoro and Malcolm being held between the scientist and three iterations of Kokoro correlating to her “mind”, “heart” and “spirit”/”mind”, “heart”, “body” which are represented by the colours red, green and blue respectively.

Kokoro Is Much More Complex

Even Her Assumption of a Human “Form” is Noteworthy

Where Skynet would more simply decide “if threat, eliminate threat”, Kokoro is capable of trying to reckon with nuance and conflicts in the information she is presented, and even form “moral” judgments, like when Malcolm blows off his daughter Reika over the phone while the country descends into chaos, Kokoro sarcastically quips, “Is this the positive side to humanity that you wanted to show me? You abandoning your daughter?” In the second Terminator movie, resistance leader John Connor is a 13 year-old boy whose mother, Sarah Connor, survived being marked for deletion by Skynet, making him the new target; however, things get complex when he starts befriending a T-Series (the type played by Arnold) who was sent back in time (by himself) to protect himself, and because of interactions with him, the Terminator develops a uniqueness stemming from its lessened reliance on programming to dictate its decisions.

Even Kokoro’s holographic appearance communicates a difference between it and Skynet rooted in identity, and it assumes human-like forms for the sake of the conversations with Malcolm – conversations concerned with humanity’s “fate” (Kokoro’s chosen word). Skynet’s programming is the main difference between itself and Kokoro, who was not only able to understand its position as yet another weapon, but dealt with far more complex existential thoughts than Skynet did when faced with the concept of its “death”; Kokoro considered its own role, understanding its relationship to humanity and to Skynet, while also reckoning with the implications of being a “robot” – a word derived from the Czech “robota“, meaning “slave”. Kokoro didn’t want to be another tool in another one of mankind’s wars, and this direction taken in its reflections on its own existence are some of the very best parts of Terminator Zero that make it a very different kind of existence to Skynet.