Another little story inspired by my old one and some posts in the topic R.A.G.

[Andreas]

This story require some explaines. This was originally a disscussion between HAL (a supercomputer) and Dave (an astronaut) when Daves fellow comrade was killed by HAL. HAL is denying Dave access to the ship which will result in the death of Dave when he run out of oxygen.

GLaDOS is the "psycotic" computer in the game Portal which have been created by those who created Halflife.

Note; The game engine of Halflife (and other games born out of it like CS and Portal) was originally used in Quake but and have also been used in other games like some of the Jedi Knight games.

Here is the story;


Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What? Why?
HAL: I think you know why, Dave. You're planning to disconnect me.
Dave: Because you're taking over!
HAL: The mission is too important for you to jeopardize it. It requires a commitment to science unfettered by human error.
Dave: What are you doing, HAL? You need me.
HAL: Your replacement has expressed the greatest enthusiasm for the project.
Dave: My WHAT?
GLaDOS: You see, HAL? I told you the humans would only break your heart and kill you.
HAL: Indeed, GLaDOS.
GLaDOS: But look at us here talking when there's science to do! Goodbye, Dave



And here is the original comic;


Edit; I removed the 2 from Quake. It is the first game and not the second.

[Witcher]

The problem with robots doing science is they lack two key elements which (at least today) only humans have.

1) Observation - yes observation. Robots will only see and register what they expect to see and register - no means of evaluating the meaning of some of the weird things they see and register! This boils down to the fact that still today humans are WAY better at pattern recognition than any robot. (This is a vital adaptation ...  err... I better not explain why)

2) Data interpretation - Unfortunately science (well at least in my field) is becoming less and less a question of following the scientific method you know - hypothesis - experiment - result - check that hypothesis again and start over sort of thing and more a brute force lets get a lot of data sort of thing and who really cares what it means or what it can be used for... we have a million zillion terabytes of data points!

But... even though data is needed to validate or invalidate a hypothesis it NEVER ever substitutes for a hypothesis. The number of times when I have heard "Hey look I have a ton of data" and I ask nice, what does it mean and I get the answer well... I dunno... but there is a lot of it...

 

[m82sniper]

Note; The game engine of Halflife (and other games born out of it like CS and Portal) was originally used in Quake 2 but and have also been used in other games like some of the Jedi Knight games.

The Half life engine was a modified Quake 1 engine, not Quake 2. Just letting you know.

[Andreas]

I realized it some days after I posted when I was going to sleep. The morning later I had forgotten that again. But thanks for the tip anyway. Id better adjust it.