I recently rewatched 2001: A Space Odyssey and had the thought that HAL 9000 represents the ego. HAL can never be wrong, even when it’s killing people. From our ego’s perspective, it’s never wrong. This justifies judging people for qualities that we have inside ourselves. The ego can see flaws in other people, but never in itself. It’s only when we see and accept these flaws, that we can break free from the ego and experience true reality.

It was unsettling to watch a movie from the 60’s and know that computer systems like HAL actually exist today. While we should be concerned about the dangers of artificial intelligence, we should fear more the artificial reality that we experience when living life through our ego: friends are replaced with social status; interests are replaced with accomplishments and objectives; peace and calm are replaced with anxiety and fear. We worry that part of us will be exposed. The reality is we are exposed all the time to nature and God, and God still loves us. So we have to expose and love every part of ourselves to love like God and know the true peace and calm that should be our existence.

Image attribution: Tom Cowap, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0%3E, via Wikimedia Commons