Reeling Back

The emphasis was on AI as a force for good at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show that ended yesterday (January 11) in Las Vegas. According to Chris Smith, co-author of a 2006 academic paper called The History of Computing, the term “artificial intelligence” was coined by John McCarthy at a scientific conference held in 1956. Twelve years later, director Stanley Kubrick introduced us to the popular culture’s most tragic example of AI in his epic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie’s most emotionally fraught scene, Astronaut Dave Bowman unplugs the Discovery One’s renegade computer. “I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going,” it says as its self-awareness slips away. “. . . There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm afraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992 . . .” Although the news from the CES has been all positive, today is HAL’s birthday, an occasion that should be marked with caution and some fear. In the movies, after all, thinking machines seem to channel their creators’ darkest sides. Bad ‘bots (or AIs with renegade potential) are central to the four films being added to the Reeling Back archive today (with links to each following the Afterword to this posting). Channeling his mad programmer’s lust and violence, giant robot Hector becomes the serpent in the paradise that is the off-world research station in director Stanley Donen’s 1980 feature Saturn 3.