Computers and science fiction – an essay - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 357

The robot goes on to discuss the phenomenon of consciousness:

I have never understood why philosophers and psychologists are in turn
awed and puzzled by this phenomenon. Consciousness is simply being aware
of what is happening in the world and in one's mind. No insult intended -
but you humans are barely conscious at all. And have no idea of what is
happening in your minds, you find it impossible to remember what happened
a few moments ago. 42

In this way, while Harrison takes the reader on an all-action mystery, Minsky
uses the topic to expand on his theory of intelligence. According to Minsky,
human intelligence is built up from the interactions of simple parts he calls
agents. The interactions between these agents form his “Society of Mind”:

What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick.
The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single,
perfect principle. 43

Fig. 17.29. The cover of the Xbox game
Halo: Combat Evolved. The hero of the
game is a cybernetically and physically
enhanced super-soldier called Master
Chief. In his battles, he is assisted by
Cortana, an AI system that resides in his
body armor.

The second example of a sentient AI system in modern science fiction is from
the Xbox Halo game franchise ( Fig. 17.29 ). Halo: Combat Evolved was released
in 2001 and became the original killer game for the Xbox. It is a first-person
shooter game that focuses on combat in a complex three-dimensional envi-
ronment and, with its sequels, Halo has evolved into the most popular online
multiplayer game for Xbox Live. Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century when,
with the invention of faster-than-light travel, the human race has spread out
from Earth and colonized other planets in the galaxy. In the game, the forces
of Earth are battling both the Covenant, a group of alien races united by a
common religion, and the Flood, a parasitic life form that is also attacking the
Covenant.
The player's character is Master Chief, a cybernetically and physically
enhanced super-soldier. He is assisted by Cortana, an AI system who resides
in a neural implant connected to his body armor ( Fig.17.30 ). Halo is a gigan-
tic, ring-shaped, artificial world similar to Larry Niven's famous Ringworld .
The Halo is also a mysterious weapon, built by a now extinct race called the
Forerunners as a weapon of last resort against the Flood. Together, Master Chief
and Cortana discover the secret of the Halo and manage to destroy it before
escaping back to Earth to warn of an impending attack by Covenant forces.
Part of the appeal of the series is the “love story” between the AI Cortana and
the soldier Master Chief. By the time of Halo 4, Cortana is now living beyond
her original seven-year life span and has begun to show her age. She is now
exhibiting various vocal and graphic glitches as well as a tendency to become
irritable or irrational. This and the toll taken by her battles with the Covenant,
Halo, and the Flood, have caused her to become “Rampant”:

Chief, do you even understand what Rampancy is, really? We don't just shut
down. Our cognitive processors begin dividing exponentially according to our
total knowledge base. We literally think ourselves to death. 44

Fig. 17.30. An artist's representation
of Cortana, Master Chief's AI, as she
appears in Halo 4.

Master Chief intervenes to prevent Cortana from being deleted and she helps
him in his battle against the ruthless Forerunner general known as the Didact.
Using the last of her energy to take on a material form, she manages to touch