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But is HAL even remotely possible? In
the book
2001
, Clarke has Dave reflect
on the fact that HAL, whom he is
disconnecting, “is the only conscious
creature in my universe.” From the
omniscient-author perspective, Clarke
writes about what it is like to be HAL.
He was only aware of the conflict that
was slowly destroying his integrity—
the conflict between truth, and
concealment of truth. He had begun
to make mistakes, although, like a
neurotic who could not observe his own
symptoms, he would have denied it.
Is Clarke helping himself here to more
than we should allow him? Could
something like HAL—a conscious,
computer-bodied intelligent agent—
be brought into existence by any history
of design, construction, training,
learning, and activity? The different
possibilities have been explored in
familiar fiction and can be nested
neatly in order of their descending
“humanness.”
1.
The Wizard of Oz
. HAL isn’t a computer
at all. He is actually an ordinary flesh-
and-bloodmanhidingbehinda techno-
facade--the ultimate homunculus,
pushing
buttons
with
ordinary
fingers, pulling levers with ordinary
hands, looking at internal screens and
listening to internal alarm buzzers. (A
variation on this theme is John Searle’s
busy-fingered hand-simulation of the
Chinese Room by following billions of
instructions written on slips of paper.)
2.
William
(from “William and Mary,”
in
Kiss, Kiss
by Roald Dahl). HAI, is a
human brain kept alive in a “vat” by a
life-support system and detached from
its former body, in which it acquired a
lifetimeofhumanmemory,hankerings,
attitudes, and so forth. It is now
harnessed to huge banks of prosthetic
sense organs and effectors. (A variation
Why did Hal commit murder? (Part two).
By Daniel C. Dennett
Doctors Frank Poole and Dave Bowman thought they were in a private conversation, but HAL 9000 has been reading their lips.