Wednesday, January 7, 2009
2001
Making connections between humans and machines in terms of behavior was interesting when discussing the film 2001- A Space Odyssey. In the beginning of the movie, the character Dave was blank and nearly devoid of emotions. One could say this makes him machinelike in nature. The computer HAL was similar in a sense, because it focused on the mission at hand above all else. However, there were changes throughout the plot. HAL started to develop humanlike qualities, such as emotions. HAL demonstrated its frustration with human error, then continued to develop. This leads me to wonder whether or not HAL was more human than humans. I feel that HAL was not entirely human. HAL came close, but still showed computerlike qualities. When Dave was attempting to disable HAL, Dave refused to talk to HAL. This made it difficult for HAL to respond. HAL adapts to situations and judging by its inability to form a thought, we can say that it still had computerlike qualities and was not truly sentient.
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While HAL appeared human, I don't think it had emotions. I just think that he was just following protocol and what seemed like HAL trying to kill Bowman was just HAL following his code by not allowing Bowman to shut him off and ruin the mission.
ReplyDeleteI support Mike's opinion on this that Hal did have human emotions to a point. This can be seen as Hal has basic emotions for example he had mania when he realized that Dave was conspiring against him. And he felt panic when Dave was disconnecting him. I believe that Hal has some emotional conception then having none at all.
ReplyDeleteI think HAL sort of had emotions. Mostly fear and guilt. The book discusses at length the reasons behind HAL's malfunction; it has to do with his orders and the "real" objective of the mission. You can still kind of figure that out from the movie, but the book makes it a lot clearer. HAL is conflicted about deceiving the other crewmen and as a response, kills them.
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