I agreed. But confusingly, HAL wouldn’t necessarily be a pure-bred silicon creation; I could see him as a hybrid of silicon chips and biochips, or maybe just the latter.
Created by an organic process, the biochips might have complexity and power far beyond those of old-fashioned machines with silicon.[[91]]
What’s more, instead of a machine acting like a man, scientists might help join men with machines, with everyone receiving brain implants at birth. Men might turn into Hal before Hal became a man. For years science-fiction writers had been predicting cyborgs, man-machine unions.
In some ways, humans might forever defy emulation. “Even with computers’ vast memories, I’m skeptical as to whether a machine could give judgments based on ethics,” said another of the questioners, Jerry terHorst. “How can executives live with this limitation? Might computers have a way of taking the sharp edge off ethical questions? Quite often you can put things in a machine or say things to a machine, but maybe—because of the way it operates—you must conform to its system. You can’t very well couch an ethical question for the machine, because I don’t think a computer can weigh it ethically. It can certainly weigh it procedurally, but whether it can weigh it ethically is another question. I’m wondering whether computers might get in the way of having to make some of the ethical decisions that businesses are always required to make.”
Clarke replied, “It will certainly be some time before computers understand ethics (not too many humans do, for that matter), but in the long run it is impossible to rule out any aspect of human activity which cannot be reproduced or at least imitated by computer to any desired degree of precision. Of course, some things will be too complicated to be worth doing.” Elsewhere in the response Clarke did say: “I know nothing about corporate or any other form of management, but obviously in principle computers can assist decision making greatly. However—GIGO!” Garbage in, garbage out!
Already electronic decision programs were available for businessmen, helping them consider financial factors—but in most cases, not very much more. Besides, the people who most needed guidance from “ethical” software would be the least likely to use it. Imagine Richard Nixon booting up a disk to ponder if he should cover up Watergate.
All this wasn’t an abstraction for terHorst. He himself had resigned as press secretary in a disagreement with Gerald Ford over the Nixon pardon. Now he worked as Washington public-affairs director for another Ford, the car company. It undoubtedly had banks of computers, and like any other automakers’, they must be toting up the costs of adding various safety precautions to cars. Critics of the auto industry charged that manufacturers considered only their ledgers—the cost of the precautions versus that of lawsuits. Would software someday weigh the ethical issues along with the numbers, and should it? That was hardly a question just for the auto industry. What about a construction company evaluating building materials of different strengths? Or a book publisher weighing its profitability against the menace to public health that would result from publication of a fad diet book. I was reactionary enough to consider those final decisions forever beyond the realm of even computers as sophisticated as HAL. In the future, though, how many executives would feel that way? Jerry terHorst’s ethics question was easily my favorite.
He also asked, “What about the general issue of trust among people communicating by computer? Can people make policy, sign contracts, settle multimillion questions without shaking hands? You can have two people with computers in different locations calling up the same statistics from the same memory bank. Yet isn’t it possible that the necessary trust may not occur until the two get together in person?”
“Your point that people must meet to establish trust is one theme of my novel Imperial Earth,” Clarke replied. “After that, they can work together through telecommunications.
“I had unexpected confirmation of this idea from a visiting reader who happened to be the Russian ambassador-at-large in charge of the Indian Ocean. He said, ‘You’re quite right. You have to look into the other fellow’s eyes before you can negotiate.’”