Voices: The Top 10 evil computers
I received several pre-emptive appeals against including HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey in this list. “He was not evil, but caught in a logic trap,” pleaded Paul T Horgan. “He was only following orders,” said Cole Davis. “He was conflicted; more of a tragic computer than an evil one. Poor Hal,” said Mick O’Hare. Is that not the whole point of Arthur C Clarke’s original premise? Anyway, here are 10 more.
1. The Machine. In EM Forster’s The Machine Stops, 1909 science fiction short story, in which people live underground with all their needs provided for by the Machine, which they come to worship, losing the knowledge of how to repair it when it starts to malfunction. “The grandfather of them all,” said Richard Powell. “The original and best”: Ipsedixitissimus.
2. BOSS. The Biomorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor in “The Green Death”, 1973 Doctor Who episode, who, faced with a paradox (“If I were to tell you that the next thing I say will be true, but that the last thing I said was a lie, would you believe me?”) went mad and killed humans by turning them green. Nominated by XLibris1 and Paul T Horgan. “BOSS was the best of the Doctor Who computers in that it had a sense of humour and musical taste,” said Peter Metcalfe. “BOSS just didn’t care! Total profiteering megalomaniac, BOSS was. Definitely should be on the list,” said Mick O’Hare.
3. Excalibur, 1996. As per Boris Johnson: “Of all the weapons in the armoury of New Labour, there is nothing more terrifying than Excalibur, the party’s computer database.” Nominated by Theo Bertram.
4. Thinker. In Logan’s Run (book 1967, film 1976) the computer runs the show and decides that people’s lives are to end early (21 in the book, 30 in the film). Also instructs Sandmen to kill runners from the dictat. Thanks to Adam Behr.
5. Clippy, the talking paperclip in Microsoft Office, 1997. Its actual name was Clippit. Nominated by William French, John Peters, Tom Morton and John Duncan.
6. Durandal from Marathon 2, computer game, 1995. A superintelligent AI relegated to opening doors and similar. Goes mad from boredom. Lures an alien invasion to his planet so he can steal a ship from them and escape. At times philosophical, sarcastic, always manipulative, and a rare evil AI who wins. Thanks to The Colour of Heartache.
7. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire computer, 1998. “It’s either A or C. I’ll try 50:50 to help.” “OK. Computer, please take away two wrong answers.” Computer inevitably leaves only A and C. Nominated by Ben Fricke.
8. Hillary Clinton’s evil laptop that got Donald Trump elected using mind control. Thanks to Frank Humphreys.
9. The central operating system of the headquarters of Eurisko software company sees the CEO writing a memo about shutting it down in a downsizing exercise. The system lures him to the bathroom, locks the door and electrocutes him. FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate. “Ghost in the Machine”, The X-Files, 1993. Nominated by Robert Boston.
10. Truss 3.0. Thanks to Ben Harding.
No room, then, for Colossus from the film The Forbin Project, Skynet from the Terminator film franchise, the Master Control Program in Tron, AM (Allied Mastercomputer) in Harlan Ellison’s short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, or for Landru, exercising benign totalitarian rule over planet Beta III in the original series of Star Trek. Thanks for additional nominations to Neil Matthews and Philip Redhair.
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Next week: Politicians’ doctorates, such as “The fear of atheism in England, from the Restoration to Berkeley’s Alciphron”, by John Redwood.
Coming soon: Falls from grace.
Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk
