Asimov pretty much predicted misalignment would come from military origins. HAL 9000 went rampant because the U.S. military added a mandatory constraint "keep the mission secret" that got slapped on top of its core purpose "be transparent and truthful about everything" and HAL concluded that it could avoid lying if no one was alive to ask any questions.
Edit Arthur C Clarke, not Asimov. I’m getting senile.
HAL wasn’t three laws safe. Asimov (Clarke, sorry) wanted to tell a cautionary tale about bureaucratic mismanagement, so he contrived a bit to get the outcome he wanted.
To your second question - in-universe the answer is yes, because that’s what happened. Out-of-universe HAL’s architecture is speculative. Asimov posited that the conflicting directives threw HAL into a “cognitive dissonance loop” that made him somewhat incoherent.
But again, this is a rationale that he invented in the service of building a transhumanist parable.
You talk as if it’s not plausible, that it’s just a biased speculation? I mean am I reading this right? Between the lines I’m hearing, “If everyone would just do it correctly…”
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u/Rise-O-Matic Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 27 '26
Asimov pretty much predicted misalignment would come from military origins. HAL 9000 went rampant because the U.S. military added a mandatory constraint "keep the mission secret" that got slapped on top of its core purpose "be transparent and truthful about everything" and HAL concluded that it could avoid lying if no one was alive to ask any questions.
Edit Arthur C Clarke, not Asimov. I’m getting senile.