SAL 9000 Artificial-Intelligence
SAL 9000 was the female-voiced AI that was the Earth-based counterpart of the much better known HAL 9000 which went insane during “2001, ” killing his whole crew, except David Bowman. Designed by computer scientist Dr. Chandra, SAL-9000 is considered the virtual “twin” of HAL-9000, and both computers are evidently from the same 9000 Series. SAL was used as the earth-bound mission simulator for the spaceship Discovery on its journey to Jupiter. In the film adaptation of 2010, SAL makes her screen debut, though she appears in only one scene with Dr. Chandra, who had spent a great deal of time wondering why HAL had malfunctioned.
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Chandra activates SAL, HAL’s successor, and requests her cooperation in disconnecting and reconnecting some of her higher circuits, as he will have to do with HAL. He opens the “Phoenix” file, and SAL asks, “Will I dream?”
In 2010, in preparation for a mission to Jupiter to reactivate both Discovery and HAL, Dr. Chandra temporarily disconnected, and then reconnected, some of SAL’s circuits involving her higher functions (much as HAL’s were disconnected by Discovery Mission Commander David Bowman). SAL apparently suffered no serious ill effects from this procedure, as Dr. Chandra was later able to successfully reactivate HAL using similar techniques.
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