Reading Hal: Representation and Artificial Intelligence

In this chapter I wish to focus on Hal 9000. Rather than reading Hal as a Frankensteinian cautionary tale, a representation of our disquiet over the cybernetic blurring of the human, of our fear of an evolutionary showdown with increasingly autonomous technologies, I'd like to read Hal as a representation of the goals, methodologies and dreams of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a representation, Hal, and the role he plays within 2001, both captures preexisting intellectual currents that were already operating within the field of AI, and serves as an influential touchstone that had a profound impact on individual AI practitioners and on the aspirations of the field. I come at this understanding of Hal from a disciplinary position that straddles the humanities, computer science, and digital art practice. While my degree is in computer science, specifically in AI, my research focus is on AI-based interactive art and entertainment. Consequently, my research agenda brings to bear new media studies and science studies, digital art practice, and technical research in AI. It is from this hybrid position, working in the context of a joint appointment in both the humanities and computer science, that I wish to read Hal as a representation of technical practice within AI. In addition to reading Hal as a depiction of the disciplinary machinery of AI, Hal of course also functions as a character within the narrative machinery of 2001, a character, as many have pointed out, with more emotional and psychological depth than any of the human characters. Once Hal is understood as a cinematic representation that simultaneously depicts specific agendas and assumptions within AI and performs an expressive function for an audience (ie. serves as a character within a story), it is a small step to consider AI systems themselves as procedural representations that simultaneously encode agendas and assumptions and perform for an audience. The last section of this chapter will investigate Expressive AI, that is, AI considered explicitly as a medium. Hal was, and still is, a powerful inspiration for AI researchers. In Hal's Legacy 1 , prominent members of the AI research community describe both how Hal influenced their own work and the relationship between Hal and the current state of AI research. There have of course been many depictions of robots and intelligent computers in Sci Fi films, but few of these representations have achieved, for AI researchers, Hal's emblematic …