12 Fictional Supercomputers I Hope Never Materialize
, July 31, 2013 If Google's server farm ever does assert its independence and decide the human race needs to do something other than look up cat videos, most science fiction fans would shrug and say: "Told you so." Artificial intelligence has the baddest of raps in science fiction, in big part because so many of these supercomputers tend to be so malicious. But look closer and you'll find in a lot of cases they're simply doing too good a job of being true to their programming, whether for good or ill. Here's a rundown of 12 supercomputers that we wouldn't want to run into in a darkened data center.
GlaDOS from "Portal"
The snide, sarcastic supercomputer from the hit video game franchise sounds like an auto-tuned Speak & Spell with a head cold. And at first you'd hardly suspect anything was wrong with her except for maybe her attitude. But over time, she reveals herself to be downright misleading and capricious, and the final conflict between the player and GlaDOS's personality core harkens back to the unplugging of HAL. Seems all those behavioral fail-safe systems installed into her to keep her from killing anyone only made her find cleverer ways to circumvent them.
