Ay ay ayyyyy….
I just had another thought about the Encom system and how program consciousness works there
Wowww
So. First watch through of Tron 1982, I missed any attempt at explanation for just HOW these floppydisk sized programs ended up being capable of thought and emotion. Surely they couldn’t actually be complex enough to be true artificial intelligence. I mean one of them’s a compound interest calculator.
BUT I just sorta rolled with it and still enjoyed the movie.
Then, second watch through, I caught the Walter Gibbs line about “spirit,” and Dillinger dismissing it as “religious” discussion… suggesting that there’s a supernatural explanation for what happens with the energies of programmers and programs in the Encom system. (And suggesting that Gibbs has talked about it before, in detail… enough that Dillinger is sick of it and calls it out as soon as it comes up, dismissing it as weird spiritual woo-woo stuff.)
And I actually loved that interpretation, because it forms another parallel between Users and Programs. Gibbs has faith and reverence for some supernatural phenomenon within the computer system… just as his program, Dumont, enshrines his own User-belief in profound ritual. And arguably, at this point, it’s much bolder of Gibbs to believe in the Programs (or at least, in some force capable of forming them) than it is for the Programs to believe in the Users.
I’ve been writing all my fanfic in basically this headcanon. With the added detail that it’s specifically the ENCOM system that’s “haunted” by this spiritual energy– and programs elsewhere aren’t brought to life by it unless they’re uploaded into the Encom system….
After some further discussion and thought, I’m concluding that, in this headcanon, Alan did, in fact, take steps to ensure that the true artificial intelligence wasn’t destroyed.
And NOT because he somehow knew that all the Programs were conscious, and that they were relying on that AI to remain conscious…
But because he’d become aware of the one obvious program that was.
It’d be hard for him NOT to know about the MCP being a true artificial intelligence.
And… imagine you’re a programmer and you’re facing the task of stopping an evil AI… but it’s also the first truly conscious AI that’s ever been created
Will you just destroy it, scorched earth, as your first line of defense?
Or will you try and do SOMETHING to just remove the evil parts of it– keep it functioning, but with a command to do no harm, instead?
(Further context: you’ve got “Gort Klaatu Barada Nikto” up on the wall of your cubicle.)