[j. d. worthington]

I'm not quite sure I agree with you on this, mosaix. Mind you, it's been a very long time, but my impressions and memories were more along the following lines (bear with me on this):

We weren't really given much of the theory or working behind HAL, for one thing, and I'd always got the impression these were the result of a divergence in early cybernetic theory, resulting in something that was what one might call a "threshold"... somewhere between machines as we understand them and a genuine artificial intelligence; in part because of extremely complicated interconnecting (and proliferating in interconnections) linkages in a cybernetic "neural web" (for lack of a better term). After all HAL was capable of not only learning from experience, but also of making a certain level of judgment calls, which would imply not only the weighing of facts, but the assigning of values, especially where its human counterparts were concerned.

Also, the confusion HAL suffered from the conflict of its basic programming versus the overlain programming which caused it to lie and hide facts from its human "colleagues" ... which it was nonetheless to treat with perfect candor in every other way ... caused something which was handled very like a genuine nervous or mental breakdown. It simply couldn't make these contradictory things match. It always struck me much like the intelligence and knowledge of a supergenius combined with the emotional experience and sophistication of a very young and idealistic child....