Too smart for our own good
“Open the pod bay doors, Hal.” “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.” In the Kubrick masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey , based on a short story, The Sentinel , by Arthur C. Clarke, the supercomputer, Hal, is programmed to take a spaceship with five astronauts on board to Jupiter. When things start to go wrong, two of the astronauts decide that if necessary, they will disconnect Hal and fly the ship manually. Hal, however, learns of this plan and cannot let human interference stop it from completing its mission as programmed. The computer thus begins to systematically kill the humans by turning off their life support systems in order to prevent them from jeopardising the computer’s mission. Four of the five astronauts are killed before Dave manages to dismantle the rogue computer. The movie was made in 1968*. The story on which it was based was first published in 1951. The concept of superhuman artificial intelligence was still very much in the realm of scienc...