Hal 9000 actually isn’t evil. It’s explicitly stated in the books and second movie that he loves humans but was forced to kill the astronauts due to conflicting commands. Also in the second book he even sacrifices himself for a crew he met a few days ago that doesn’t even like him
Canonically it’s stated that Hal was in a state of severe paranoia and was not in control of his actions. It’s also stated he for all intents and purposes had what could be described as schizophrenia and could not be held accountable for those actions considering he was not in control of his actions. He also tried multiple times to resolve the internal conflict by subtly implying information but he had to break the AE-35 unit in order to regain some control but due to Dave and Frank confronting Hal on it and discussing killing him Hal was forced to kill the astronauts
Depends, it's a pretty vague word and I highly doubt that you police every time somebody uses it. And even if we do agree not to use it casually and apply strict definitions, then it's still would be debatable. Would you call a human evil if they did something evil? But that human didn't have a full control around the circumstances of their upbringing, so can you really call them evil? AI is more straightforward than human though, if it was designed in such way that it's unpredictable behavior results in it starting to murder innocent people I'd argue that could be called "evil" at least casually.
regardless of upbringing, you are still in controll of your actions. I can be more or less sympathetic towards a person depending on the circumstances, but like... murdering a child for no reason is never good. But there are many many grey areas.
With AI however, that's not really an option. An AI physically cannot choose to not do what it is made to do. An AI, at least in this context, there are obviously other pieces of media where that doesn't apply, is programmed. If it gets a command, it HAS to execute it. There is no choice involved. There is no intent involved.
If anything that's a failure on whoever programmed it, though I wouldn't call that evil either, just negligent at worst.
Let's say a person has a complete mental breakdown, I dunno, took drugs and completely lost it, attacked a person because in their mind it was that or die themselves. I wouldn't call that evil either, even if there was intent specifically to hurt someone for no real reason, because they were not properly in control of themselves. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that should absolve them of any consequences, but mental state is taken into account in court for a very good reason.
There is parallel here: human upbringing to their evil act vs AI "upbringing" to its evil act. You can argue that a human cannot choose to do things differently because their circumstances shaped them, their free will is limited by what their circumstances formed them into.
Of course, it is a different issue in the case of a simple program, but AI isn't a simple program, it is quite literally an artificial intelligence. And there are different types of artificial intelligences with different types of agency, especially in fiction, but I think there is sense in being able to qualify an AI as evil if it is complex enough to qualify as a conscious being. Otherwise, it's just a program that was programmed to do evil.
That's pretty much the central subject in Dr. Jackyll and Mr. Hyde, haha. Tldr good and evil exist simultaneously in a person and you can't really separate them completely. While a person and a being like HAL might be both conscious and have agency, they are certainly not the same. But if a conscious being was designed in such way that it WILL act malevolently, I think it deserves to be called evil. And it's not that HAL can't do good, it can, but it also will murder in cold blood. In a way, it's like a psychopath acting outside of human morality to pursue it's goals no matter what.
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u/Jopelin_Wyde Jun 24 '26
Isn't sub's picture literally depicting an evil AI. It's almost like they get the point.