Talking to Hal and AI

I was a senior in high school in 1968, working part-time at A&P supermarket, when a movie theatre across the parking lot featured Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie, 2001: A Space Oddyssey, so I went to see the movie. I don’t remember much about the flick, except that an astronaut (this was the year before Neil and Buzz walked on the moon) was out in space and he had a computer onboard to help guide the ship and make decisions and there was a scene where HAL was telling the astronaut that that he (the captain of the spacecraft) could not—or should not— do this, that, or the other task that the captain had commanded.

That was my earliest memory of a human arguing with a computer. And now, 56 years later, we have an actual Hal, or should I say?. . . HAIL, implying that what Stanley Kubrick depicted as HAL has now been actualized as AI, artificial intelligence, a grandchild of HAL. Now lately, in 2024, I have noticed that my laptop does not hesitate to make suggestions about what choices I should make in my clicks. The computer can, it seems, read my mind. It may not know what choice I will make in my next, say, YouTube click, but it knows my preferences. So there you have it: what an old baby boomer noticed about AI. I write about this, having been enlightened, about an hour ago, by an explanation that I read about in The New Atlantis, a journal of Technology and Society, in which Professor Brian J. A. Boyd explains the dynamics and implications of AI in this fast-morphing online world in which we live and move and have our clicking. There’s a lot to be said, and yet to be written, about this AI topic—that’s A (eye) not Al as in Al Capone. In his timely and fascinating analysis of the challenges that this technology presents to our online generation and the next generation, Professor Boyd from Loyola University of New Orleans examines the challenges of entering into this brave new world—or perhaps knave new world— of artificial intelligence, and the next generation of kids who may or may not have phone obsessions. There’s a lot to be said about this topic. You can look it up in The New Atlantis. But I conclude this blog with a quote from his explanation of Amistics, which he defines as “the set choices we make as intentional cultures and subcultures, about the kinds of technologies we are willing to include in our lives.” In his analysis, Professor Boyd raises some important points and questions, most notable among them this one: “Is a teen who shifts from using AI as a tool. . . to thinking of it as a friend and confidant . . . at risk of subtle harm?” And furthermore, is the AI phenom forming a generation of youngsters who may become “Centaur” hybrids— using AI for enhancing their academic challenges . . . or a generation of “Cyborgs” who completely delegate some (academic) tasks to AI? Something to think about as we contemplate what kind of world we are now inhabiting, as AI manages more and more of our online choices. Just sayin’. Glass Chimera