At some point during the week, a friend’s kindergarten son came home from school and made a less-than-respectful remark to his mother about something, likely chicken-nugget-related. “That’s not very nice,” his mother replied. The child then burst into tears, terrified that, by virtue of having said a mean thing, he had now become the kind of person his school taught him to despise and ostracize—the bully. Or, to put it in terms that the crestfallen five-year-old hopefully wouldn’t understand, after saying a mean thing, he became terrified that he was now marked for termination by the reprogrammed T-800 that now identifies all bullies as its prime target.

If you’re one of the few people who isn’t familiar with the Terminator film series, let me unpack that reference for you a bit by summarizing some plot points from the first two (read: the only good) Terminator movies: In the future, an artificial intelligence network called Skynet becomes self-aware and identifies humanity as a threat to its existence. So Skynet does what self-aware artificial intelligence networks do in these scenarios and creates a series of human-flesh-wearing cyborgs designed to infiltrate and destroy the remaining group of homo sapiens.

According to “The Terminator,” the downside of these machines, at least for mankind, is that they’re created specifically to kill humans and won’t be dissuaded by pleas for mercy or bribery. The upside however, according to “Terminator 2,” is that, if you catch a terminator, you can reprogram it to defend you from anyone or anything that wants to kill you. But an important thing to remember is that, even after you’ve cracked open that metal skull and rewritten some code, the killing machine is still a killing machine. By switching the musclebound robot from “kill John Connor mode” to “protect John Connor mode,” you haven’t instilled in the Terminator an appreciation for human life, nor have you eliminated murder from its hard drive. You’ve just taught it to point and fire its guns at anyone who looks cross-eyed at the kid who needs protecting.