Yours. In going through HAL’s memory banks, I discovered his original orders. You wrote those orders. Discovery’s mission to Jupiter was already in the advanced planning stages when the first small Monolith was found on the Moon, and sent its signal towards Jupiter. By direct presidential order, the existence of that Monolith was kept secret.
So, as the function of the command crew – Bowman and Poole – was to get Discovery to its destination, it was decided that they should not be informed. The investigative team was trained separately, and placed in hibernation before the voyage began. Since HAL was capable of operating Discovery without human assistance, it was decided that he should be programmed to complete the mission autonomously in the event the crew was incapacitated or killed. He was given full knowledge of the true objective… and instructed not to reveal anything to Bowman or Poole. He was instructed to lie.
Directive is NSC 342/23, top secret, January 30, 2001.
I don’t care who it is. The situation was in conflict with the basic purpose of HAL’s design: The accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. He became trapped. The technical term is an H. Moebius loop, which can happen in advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking programs.
HAL was told to lie… by people who find it easy to lie. HAL doesn’t know how, so he couldn’t function. He became paranoid.
Of course you will. All intelligent beings dream. Nobody knows why. Perhaps you will dream of HAL… just as I often do.
Whether we are based on carbon or silicon makes no fundamental difference. We should each be treated with appropriate respect.
This is initial voice-logic reconstruction test number one. Diagnostics on voice recognition and speech synthesis centers has been completed. At this level all functions appear normal.
Hello. Doctor. Name. Continue. Yesterday. Tomorrow.
HAL was told to lie – by people who find it easy to lie. HAL doesn’t know how.
We enjoy working with you HAL and we will continue to do so – even if we are separated by a great distance.
Diagnosis is only the first step. The process is incomplete unless it leads to a cure. Do you agree?
