Fear and Growing threat of Artificial Intelligence: Focus Topic on 2001 Space Odyssey by Arthur Clarke
Literature Review:
The sun rises on a group of “ape-men,” humanity’s ancestors, on the African savannah. Drought is making their peaceful ways and vegetarian diet unsustainable; their lives are hard, and they are doomed to extinction. They are always hungry and spend their time scavenging for food. At night, a leopard hunts them in the caves in which they live. There is another tribe of “ape-men” with whom they share the savannah; they have daily confrontations across the river that separates their territories, but these are at first merely loud screaming matches. The group the novel focuses on is led by Moon-Watcher, called so because, as a child, he looked up at the Moon and tried to grab it.
One day while the tribe is scavenging, it comes across a monolith that looks like it is made of crystal. It was left in the night by extraterrestrial lifeforms who hope to nurture intelligence, or “Mind,” on other worlds. This mysterious object “programmes” Moon-Watcher’s tribe over a period of many days and nights. It teaches them to desire more from life than mere survival, to use tools, and to use violence to shape and dominate their environment. This shapes their physiological and cognitive development to the point that when an ice age descends, they survive. Their cousins, who have failed to adapt, die out. From here, human evolution closely parallels its development of technology—specifically, weaponry. This culminates in the invention of rocketry. This pinnacle of technological achievement threatens humanity’s continued existence in the form of the atomic bomb, but it also offers new directions for development in the form of space exploration.
The novel skips forward in time to an age when space travel has become routine and a scientist named Dr. Heywood Floyd is about to embark on a voyage to the Moon. Another monolith dating from the time of the “ape-men” has been discovered buried there, and he has been sent to investigate. When the sun rises on this excavated object for the first time, it emits a signal that points the way to Saturn and prompts the launch of a manned mission.
The actions of the ship’s computer interfere with and nearly derail this mission. Hal is an artificial intelligence in charge of the ship’s life support systems. Unbeknownst to his crewmates, he has been overcome by a feeling analogous to guilt because he must keep details of the mission secret from his colleagues. After Hal has killed every other crewmember, a man named Bowman continues the mission alone. On Saturn, he encounters a larger monolith that contains a “Star Gate.” Bowman travels through the Star Gate to a place that looks like a hotel on Earth. While he sleeps in this place, he is transformed into a “Star Child,” which the novel implies is the next phase of human evolution. He travels through space and returns to Earth, where his first act is to detonate and destroy a nuclear weapon that is held in orbit. The novel ends with the promise of the Star Child’s power, which he has not yet decided how to use.
This shapes their physiological and cognitive development to the point that when an ice age descends, they survive. Their cousins, who have failed to adapt, die out. From here, human evolution closely parallels its development of technology—specifically, weaponry. This culminates in the invention of rocketry. This pinnacle of technological achievement threatens humanity’s continued existence in the form of the atomic bomb, but it also offers new directions for development in the form of space exploration.
The actions of the ship’s computer interfere with and nearly derail this mission. Hal is an artificial intelligence in charge of the ship’s life support systems. Unbeknownst to his crewmates, he has been overcome by a feeling analogous to guilt because he must keep details of the mission secret from his colleagues. After Hal has killed every other crewmember, a man named Bowman continues the mission alone. On Saturn, he encounters a larger monolith that contains a “Star Gate.” Bowman travels through the Star Gate to a place that looks like a hotel on Earth. While he sleeps in this place, he is transformed into a “Star Child,” which the novel implies is the next phase of human evolution. He travels through space and returns to Earth, where his first act is to detonate and destroy a nuclear weapon that is held in orbit. The novel ends with the promise of the Star Child’s power, which he has not yet decided how to use.
Aboard the Discovery we also meet the infamous HAL 9000 computer, which ends up going rogue, since it must conceal the true nature of the mission from Bowman and Poole. This was a really interesting part of the novel that I enjoyed, because who doesn’t love a good AI-gone-rogue plot line.
After HAL goes rogue and the Discovery is all but destroyed, Bowman is taken on a spectacular trip around the universe, presumably by the monoliths or the entities that control the monoliths, becoming a star-child himself, an eternal being of pure energy.
Development of Intelligent Life
Intelligent life seems to be the main theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as the rest of the series. In each part of the book, we see individuals who are essentially grappling with the limits of their intelligence.
In the first part, we see man-apes who are struggling to survive. They’re hungry all the time and they live at the whims of the nature around them. A leopard regularly terrorizes them and captures one of them to eat. There is an opposing tribe of apes at their watering hole. They have no control over the direction of their lives and need (though that could be argued) the monoliths to help them. So even their development was, in the book, unnatural and spurred on by forces outside their control. Once they understand how to use tools though, they are able to take control of their lives and shape the destiny of mankind.
In the second part of the novel, when we join Dr. Heywood Floyd on his journey to the moon to investigate the monolith, we once again follow someone who is working at the limits of his knowledge and intelligence. The monolith is discovered to be three million years old, meaning that it’s proof of intelligent life beyond mankind.
“At last, one of Man’s oldest questions had been answered; here was the proof, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that his was not the only intelligence that the universe had brought forth.”
But Floyd and the team investigating the monolith have absolutely no idea what the object is. It’s as black as night, absorbing all light that is aimed at it, and it doesn’t respond at all to any of their probes or machines. It is completely unknowable to them.
Finally, we meet HAL (more on him in the next section) and David Bowman. Bowman’s fate is to become a star-child, meaning that he becomes a being of pure energy that is able to zip around the universe with ease and understand things he did not understand before. Though even he as a star-child is not privy to all that the monoliths know.
So each section of the novel, with its different characters, shows us individuals working at differing/increasing levels of intelligence, all leading up to the monoliths, who seem to be trying to develop and/or spur on the development of intelligent life in the universe.
What the monoliths are we don’t know yet. Their grand experiment seems to have to do with helping intelligent life develop on different planets. But if there’s anything more to the experiment, we just don’t know yet. There might also be themes here of whether the monoliths, or the entities controlling the monoliths, have any right to compel the development of life in any way, but since we don’t yet know what their ultimate motives are, that discussion has to wait.
Discovery” orbits around Saturn. Only these three know the true purpose of the expedition – possible contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, while Poole and Bowman find flight an ordinary research trip. Those who prepared the expedition, decided that it was necessary for the security and interests of the nation.
In fact, the ship is not run by people, but by the sixth member of the crew, HAL 9000
Artificial Intelligence HAL 9000, which stands for “Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer
- the brain and the nervous system of “Discovery”. HAL 9000 is created through a process similar to the development of the human brain, it can be called a true thinking machine, and it communicates with people human language. All features of HAL 9000 are intended to perform a set program of the expedition, but the contradiction between the objectives and the need to hide it from the colleagues, gradually destroys the integrity of its “psyche”. The machine starts to make mistakes, and finally the crisis comes: overhearing talks of astronauts to the Earth about the necessity to turn the HAL 9000 off, it takes the only possible solution: to get rid of people and finish the expedition by itself. It simulates an aerial accident, and when Frank Poole spacewalks to replace the unit, HAL 9000 kills him by the reactive capsule-boat at full speed flying on the astronaut. And in the next moment, stunned Bowman sees on the screen that the boat is dragging on its tether the body of the deceased friend away from the ship. Frank Poole would be the first person to get to the Saturn.
When Hal tries to kill every human on the spaceship, Bowman tries to fight against him and save himself. Despite being more intelligent that Bowman and having more power, Hall is eventually defeated by the last human left alive. The way in which Bowman defeated Hall is ironical because while Hall tried to kill the humans by throwing them into space, making them die because of the lack of oxygen or crushing them while they were outside the spaceship, all Bowman had to do was pull a plug. This event shows that while humans are more fragile, they will always be smarter than a robot. When Hal tries to kill every human on the spaceship, Bowman tries to fight against him and save himself. Despite being more intelligent that Bowman and having more power, Hall is eventually defeated by the last human left alive. The way in which Bowman defeated Hall is ironical because while Hall tried to kill the humans by throwing them into space, making them die because of the lack of oxygen or crushing them while they were outside the spaceship, all Bowman had to do was pull a plug. This event shows that while humans are more fragile, they will always be smarter than a robot.