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HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality

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There are few films that have had the influence of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is difficult to say how many A.I. researchers were inspired to go into the field by the viewing of the film, but this book is good evidence that research in A.I. has undergone a sort of "public benchmarking" via a comparison with HAL, the arch computer-villan in the movie, and whose name is now ubiquitous in debates on robotics and artificial intelligence. This excellent book is a summary of just how far A.I. has come, as compared to the abilities of HAL. All of the authors acknowledge that the present level of A.I. is not what it is in HAL, but that progress is being made, in spite of, as one author remarked, the fact that A.I. is one of the most profoundly difficult problems in science.

Marvin Minsky is interviewed in the book, and he believes it is the problem of knowledge representation that has slowed down the progress in A.I. Too much time has been spent on chess programs and character recognition, and not on fundamentals, Minsky argues. Minsky also believes that emotions are absolutely essential in intelligent problem solving, and this is interesting in light of recent work on computational models of emotion.

The large physical size of HAL is compared with present sizes of computers in the article of David Kuck. But, the author argues, the human brain is also much smaller than HAL, but such a marvelous computing machine has yet to be emulated by even the best of present-day supercomputers. Size does not matter in matters of intelligence.

The article on error correction by R. Iyer is particularly insightful, for he argues, quite correctly, that making mistakes is a characteristic of true intelligence. HAL's brag that it is "incapable of error" is a sign of stupidity, rather than intelligence. False leads, uncompleted strategies and goals, and inconsistent reasoning are all part of genuine problem-solving.

M.S. Campbell discusses the efforts in machine chess, with Deep Blue of course being the focal point. Comparisons of how HAL plays chess compared to Deep Blue illustrate Campbell's belief that a mere combinatorial approach to playing chess should not be considered an intelligent one. HAL is intelligent because it plays intelligence like a human does, but Deep Blue does not. Campbell also gives an interesting historical summary of computer chess. He cites that example of a "fortress" position as one that chess computers have severe difficulty with.

The ability of computers to speak, and not sound "machine-like" is the subject of the article by J.P. Olive. His discussion gives the reader both an historical and technical overview of the difficulties involved in computer speech. And yes, the song "Daisy, Daisy" is real, and was the first song ever sung by a computer.

R. Kurzweil gives an optimistic overview of computer speech recognition. He details the "lessons" one needs to perform speech recognition and repeats his well-known desire to "reverse-engineer" the human brain, once the computational ability becomes available.

R.C. Schank discusses why he thinks A.I. must be able to understand more than just words, if natural language processing is to become a reality. And, interestingly, he believes that intelligence and problem solving are not necessarily the same thing and gives the reader insight into the difficulties involved in language acquisition by a computer.

This book was first printed in 1997, but given the recent news of a common sense reasoning computer developed by the company that D.B. Lenat heads, his article is particularly interesting. The ability of computers to exercise common sense is considered a fundamental requirement for machine intelligence, and Lenat outlines "3 easy steps" for the building of a HAL-like computer. It remains to be seen whether Lenat has indeed achieved this.

The ability of HAL to recognize images is discussed in the article by A. Rosenfeld. In light of the recent need for face recognition software for security enhancement, this discussion is particularly interesting. Rosenfeld details just what is difficult and what is easy to do in this area.

The capability of a computer to perform speechreading is the topic of D.Stork's article. Noting that speech has both auditory and visual aspects, Stork argues that HAL's ability to perform speechreading is far advanced in comparison to the real computers of today. He discusses interestingly, some of the tools used in current research on speechreading, such as hidden Markov models and neural networks.

The article of D. Norman addresses the human factors involved in living with intelligent machines. Norman contends that 2001 is too optimistic a projection of the future, and, in addition, that its technology is too large and bulky to be of much use to humans.

Computational models of emotion have been a subject of intense interest of late, and R. Picard addresses the issue of emotion and computers in his article. The discussion is fascinating, and Picard clearly believes that emotional states can be recoginized and mimicked by a computer. "Emotional" intelligence is something that must be part of any notion of artificial intelligence.

The ability of HAL to manipulate circumstances and trick the crew members is addressed in D.Wilkin's article. The ability to plan is based on common sense issues, and this is no where near being realized, he argues.

D.Stork interviews Stephen Wolfram in another article, and the reader learns of Wolfram's opinions on A.I. and related issues. Wolfram believes that its the nature of intelligence that must be understood to develop thinking machines, and not just processing power.

When thinking machines are built, legal issues of responsibility will naturally arise. D. Dennett addresses this in the last article of the book. Dennet puts HALs behavior in the context of what a human might do when faced with the mission priorities given to him. Turning off HAL was justified, but so was HALs response to it.

I have only one word for this book: COOL! For science-fiction aficionados everywhere, HAL's Legacy is a review, in 1997 when HAL was supposed to be created, the state of the technology (artificial intelligence, natural language processing, speech processing, etc.) from premier Sci-Fi writer Arthur C. Clarke and leading computer scientists in the area of AI (and other areas) like Marvin Minsky. Are we there yet? Is HAL really possible? It includes deep analysis of specific scenes in the movie and tying it in with the different premises presented in the articles/chapters in the book.

This is one book absolute die-hard sci-fi fans should have, especially if you are working in the high tech sector.

This book is an ART and amazing. You can learn and know what
really Artificial Intelligence means and you feel happy, relaxed
and enjoyable in reading each chapter.
If you don't want to waste time to read lots of technical
words to understand AI, this book is the only and best choice.
Every chapter will give you concise and clear information, and
also is interesting.
An excellent book for anyone who
is interested in mind, thought, robot, cognition, AI or
just like the Sci-Fi wrote by Clarke.
This is a book for professional AI programmer and
for anyone who just want to know what is Artificial Intelligence.

Most of us know of HAL, the famous (some would insist, infamous) supercomputer of Kubrick's sci-fi opus "2001: A Space Odyssey." In this book, editor David Stork uses HAL as a hypothetical reference point to present differing views on how the science of artificial intelligence might some day approximate the higher-order thinking of HAL.

The writers represent diverse fields -- from philosophy to engineering to communications. That is a plus, for many similar efforts are too heavily biased in the highly technical "hard" science perspectives. Another admirable feature of this book is that the authors all write in a fairly straightforward, easy to understand style. One gets the impression that they were all forewarned not to "get too technical" with the readers. The result is an enjoyable overview of where artificial intelligence research has brought us, and where it might go. Interestingly, not all chapters are optimistic. Indeed, several conclude that we may be a very long way off from a computer like HAL, and one asserts that such replication of human thought (and emotion) would be an impossible task. This is a welcome chage of pace from the often "gushy" optimistic meanderings presented in books about pioneering technology. And finally, even if you didn't like (or didn't see) "2001," the book still informs and entertains.

This book was featured as a IEEE Book Pick in IEEE Spectrum Magazine. After ordering it, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It combines the latest breakthroughs in electrical engineering and computer science with the fascinating work of Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey". The 2001 movie is now one of my favorite movies because of the fantastic writing in this book. You can read each chapter almost as a small book as the book is well-organized into separate chapters for each topic. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a medium to high level of interest in technology. The cover art, color pictures, and glossy pages make this book a keeper, and a pleasure to thumb through.

I was very distracted by the poor editing of this book. Not only was it riddled with spelling errors but I also found misplaced words which changed the meaning of an entire sentence. On top of that, the book started falling apart before I was even done reading it.

However, getting by these symptoms of a quickly thrown together book, the content was very enjoyable. Specifically reading from some of the top minds in the industry. Although a few of the authors obviously clipped out previously written material and slapped the word 'HAL' in a few places to keep with the theme.

I always enjoyed HAL's obnoxious
selfconfidence. His insistence that
- No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information.
That they are foolproof and incapable
of error -
is funny, absurd, very human, proud and down right crazy.
But at the same time intriguing.
The book look at the issues and technologies
that would be critical if we were to build HAL.
And the book let us in on some of HAL's secrets.
In the process it just all becomes even more intriguing.
An excellent book for anyone
interested in artificial intelligence, cognition
and Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction.
A must have book!

-Simon

I found "Hal's Legacy" to be an insightful and compelling look at the future of supercomputing, as well as the increasing role of computers in our lives today. It asks top scientists and social visionaries the question: How close or far are we to creating the HAL envisioned by Kubrick and Clarke in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey?" I highly recommend it.

Prior to attending a lecture by Dr. David Stork at a celebration of HAL 9000's birthday in Urbana, Illinois, I had only a passing interest in the field of Artificial Intelligence. After the lecture, I was motivated to learn more and bought a copy of his book, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer As Dream and Reality. It turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking as well as entertaining books I have read. Through a series of expert essays, Stork explores the current state and direction of Artificial Intelligence using HAL as both backdrop and benchmark. Non-technical readers will enjoy the way that the scientists that Stork has chosen present their theories of what it would take for us to realize Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's vision of HAL. HAL's Legacy analyzes the prospects and possibilities of computers being able to converse, understand natural language, visualize, feel emotion, and even make value judgements. It also give the reader a new appreciation of the science that went into the science fiction of the movie 2001.

I guess every geek would have watched the movie "2001: The Space Odyssey" when the year 2001 arrived and asked a question what's missing? Why we still don't have anything even close to HAL? This book tries to answer the question by giving you essays written by experts in specific areas of computing. I found some of the chapters getting really boring, especially those tiring to speculate how HAL would have worked instead of reporting current state of affair. The book is not the kind which will make you sit and keep reading it. The noise to signal ratio after about 100 pages was high enough for me to get distracted and pick something else.