English 167.7
FT98
Essay #2 (and assignments leading thereupto)
For Tuesday, September 15: Write a five-page essay on one of the topics below, which are based on Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and some online and coursepacked reading related to it.
Viewing:
2001 as screened after class Tuesday the 8th or viewed in Uris Media Center (call # is Videodisc 6). It is essential that you make notes while you view this film. If, after you’ve seen it, you aren’t sure about details of action, dialogue, or imagery, go back to the tape and check.
Reading:
Roger Schank, "‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that’: How Could HAL Use Language?"
Daniel Dennett, "When HAL Kills, Who’s to Blame?"
(both in Course Supplement; from David Stork, ed. HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and as Reality. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997)
Recommended (for now or later):
Simpson Garfinkel, "Happy Birthday, Hal." Wired 5.01 (January, 1997): online at .
Articles by Olive (speech synthesis), Kurzweil (speech recognition), Lenat (common sense); interview with Minsky (AI) at HAL’s Legacy Online, http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal.
Topics:
1. Is it desirable to create an "intelligent" machine like HAL, and why/not?
- There are several questions embedded or implied here. Be sure you take them up in your essay. § Is HAL intelligent, and in what sense of "intelligent"? § If HAL doesn’t exemplify true intelligence, what does true intelligence consist of? § For what purposes, in what contexts might it be desirable to create "true" machine intelligence, whether or not you think HAL exemplifies it?
- You’ll find that Schank associates "intelligence" very closely with natural-language-using abilities like HAL’s and takes positions on several of the questions above – additionally, offering his opinion on what kinds of machine intelligence it is desirable to try to create. Use what you find useful in Schank’s article (or any others at the HAL’s Legacy site), but make sure your conclusion is your own; you are of course free to disagree with lots that Schank has to say.
2. Has HAL deceived and "murdered" Frank Bowman and the three other astronauts, and, if he is "put to death" (or assaulted, injured, impaired) in turn, has he been rightly punished?
- This is of course a question about (a) what really happens on the Discovery and why, and (b) the degree of moral responsibility and personhood HAL possesses. On both subjects, Dennett has good ideas and useful definitions, although he offers them on the way to answering a distinct question: is it possible to build HAL? Don’t hesitate to disagree with him, being sure that you’re clear about what he says.
Bring your essay to class Tuesday, Sept. 15 in BOTH electronic and hardcopy form. The electronic copy of your essay should be formatted in RTF (rich text format) or text-only format.
back