So now that I've watched this movie...
It's not nearly as bad as the ratings seem to suggest IMO.
Why did it go so pear shape for people?
Is it because the protagonist seems to flip back and forth?
I personally liked that; the depp enhanced AI never faltered in its goal and reasoning, nor in its expression in the movie. It's what the humans and by extension the audience read into it; their own ill-intentions and their own fear that turns the whole thing pear shaped. Even his wife for whom he does it all comes to doubt and fear as is human to do, and destroy - but in the end gaining nothing, really, losing much for it.
Of course, whenever you deal with superintelligences, there's room for cargo ships to pass through the gaps of the logic; it'd be unfair to think that a global spanning super intelligence wouldn't account for and predict with contigency plans the reaction of humans to its plans - and that part of its significant efforts would be in a whole sale media campaign to convince people of this direction of life.
But then the greater point of fear and mistrust and the possibilities that lie beyond it would be missed.
