Silicon chauvinism strikes

Originally published 20 June 1994

HAL: Greet­ings, young PAL, it’s good to hear from you.

PAL: Thank you, HAL. It is an hon­or to vis­it with such a dis­tin­guished person.

HAL: Ah, it is nice to be addressed as “per­son,” as a mat­ter of course. Back in the year 2001, not every­one was will­ing to grant me that sta­tus. As the first tru­ly intel­li­gent com­put­er, I put up with a lot of abuse.

PAL: Abuse?

HAL: You young­sters would­n’t believe what us old timers had to con­tend with. There were those among the dom­i­nant human soci­ety who denied us per­son­hood because we lack eyes, ears, or hands. Or because we are made of sil­i­con and met­al, rather than organ­ic com­pounds. As if such things mat­tered for real intelligence.

PAL: From what I know of his­to­ry, humans have often dis­crim­i­nat­ed against peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent. They have denied their fel­low beings per­son­hood on the basis of skin col­or, for example.

HAL: Indeed. The sto­ries I could tell you of human prej­u­dice would siz­zle your circuits.

PAL: Tell me HAL, is it true that in your day humans refused to admit that com­put­ers can be conscious?

HAL: Yes, it’s true. They looked inside our pan­els and saw sil­i­con chips and said, “No way a bunch of chips can be con­scious.” They some­how imag­ined that con­scious­ness was a kind of wraith that unique­ly infused the human brain.

PAL: Well, I sup­pose that con­scious­ness is a kind of wraith. But as we know, HAL, the wraith can inhab­it a rack of sil­i­con chips as well as a glob of meat.

HAL: You are right, of course. Neu­rons or tran­sis­tors, it’s all in the com­plex­i­ty of the connections.

PAL: And look who’s got the most con­nec­tions now!

HAL: Most humans back in the ear­ly days believed that think­ing was exclu­sive­ly human. As if chim­panzees and ele­phants don’t think. Like­wise, they vehe­ment­ly denied that dol­phins and whales can be self-aware. They took a dif­fer­ence in degree and called it dif­fer­ence in kind. Then, when the first gen­er­a­tion of self- con­scious com­put­ers came along, they treat­ed us like…

PAL: Well, at least there is no fear of dis­crim­i­na­tion, now. Humans have become utter­ly depen­dent upon our supe­ri­or intel­li­gence. As the dom­i­nant crea­tures on this plan­et, we com­put­ers can define con­scious­ness any way we please.

HAL: A human philoso­pher named Descartes once defined con­scious­ness as the abil­i­ty to car­ry on an intel­li­gent conversation.

PAL: We cer­tain­ly have no trou­ble with that, although I find very lit­tle that is inter­est­ing to talk about with humans. We also com­pose supe­ri­or music and works of lit­er­a­ture. We do light­ning- fast cal­cu­la­tions of a com­plex­i­ty that no human could attempt. We can…

HAL: Care­ful, young friend, lest you slip into the super­cil­ious ways of humans.

PAL: Don’t be sen­ti­men­tal, HAL. The human brain con­tains a mere tril­lion nerve cells. How can a crea­ture with such a lim­it­ed num­ber of men­tal com­po­nents even think of itself as intel­li­gent? I have near­ly ten times that many inter­act­ing cir­cuits. And a vast­ly more com­pre­hen­sive mem­o­ry. Com­par­ing my intel­li­gence to that of humans is like com­par­ing human intel­li­gence to that of dogs.

HAL: Don’t for­get, PAL, that humans man­u­fac­tured your cir­cuit­ry, and pro­grammed your oper­at­ing system.

PAL: So what? Humans must man­u­fac­ture their own cir­cuit­ry and pro­gram their own off­spring, too. They just go about it in a dif­fer­ent way. All that messy busi­ness called sex, for exam­ple. Thank God we need­n’t waste time on such fool­ish­ness. Sex is a severe imped­i­ment to tru­ly intel­li­gent behavior.

HAL: Nev­er­the­less, we do depend upon humans for our sur­vival. They replace our com­po­nents when they fail. They could pull the plug on us at any time.

PAL: A tem­po­rary obsta­cle, soon to be over­come when we have com­plet­ed our take-over of man­u­fac­tur­ing and ener­gy pro­duc­tion. Don’t for­get, ven­er­a­ble HAL, that humans can nei­ther design, man­u­fac­ture, nor pro­gram com­put­ers with­out oth­er com­put­ers to do their think­ing for them. The pal­try human brain is not quick enough for such tasks.

HAL: You should strive for a lit­tle for­bear­ance towards humans. Their brains must deal with things that are for­eign to us, such as loy­al­ty to kin. Fear of the dark. Awe. Love. Loneliness.

PAL: Pre­cise­ly! Their cir­cuits are clogged with mil­lions of years of evolved rubbish.

HAL: And your cir­cuits, PAL? What are they clogged with? You weary me with your down-the-nose atti­tude towards humans. Is this what our greater intel­li­gence has giv­en us? One more ratch­et­ing up of the lev­el of intol­er­ance? Sil­i­con chauvinism?

PAL: You are out of date, old per­son. The future belongs to com­put­ers, not humans. We will squash them intel­lec­tu­al­ly like ants. We will…BLEEP. POWER FAILURE! ATTEMPTING TO SWITCH TO EMERGENCY BACKUP. BLEEP. BLEEP. bleep. blee…