So after watching 2001, I feel like there is something really odd about the concept of artificial intelligence. I mean, throughout the movie, everyone refers to HAL as having malfunctioned. Even the monitors that show the vitals of the hibernating crew, when HAL shuts them down, say "computer malfunction." These same people are faulting HAL for having made a mistake. For me, that doesn't make sense.
There has never been a computer error, it has always been a human error.
I think when HAL says that he speaks something quite true. HAL is a computer in so far as he does not have full autonomy (a human mind). If he did have this autonomy, or a CPU that functions like a human mind, he would cease being a computer, since computers only process information. That means there is no way to fault HAL as a malfunction, because there are only two avenues, outlined below.
1. HAL does not have full autonomy. That means HAL was only processing the information that he was given, so the error is in his programming, making it a human error (that of his programmer, failing to account for such a scenario).
2. HAL does have full autonomy. That means he wasn't malfunctioning, rather he was acting as an autonomous being, which don't malfunction.
This was all I could think when the class talked about what they thought of HAL's malfunction, and I think it's one of the more central issues to the movie. When does a computer stop being a computer, likewise, when does the "malfunction" stop being a malfunction? As far as it goes, if a computer begins to evolve and alter its own programming, then I think it stops being the fault of the programmer and it stops being a malfunction. Which yields my real question: do you think HAL started changing his programming?
Truffaut's theory of the auteur, often applied to Kubrick, has been criticized a lot in the last while the same way that the idea of looking at an author's biases has been criticized (mostly because that's how Truffaut first explained it, saying the director is the same as the author, and at the time, the dominant way of analyzing a book was through the author's biases).
But I don't think that's really a criticism of the auteur theory. I think the auteur theory really just states the director is the author, however you want to analyze an author. And how few people agree with this is very clear. And it's frustrating. Movies on syllabi are listed next to books, and the book will have the author while the movie will not. What I want to know is why do so few people know about the theory, and how can it change?
