Does not compute
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Does not compute, and variations on it, was a phrase often spoken by computers, robots and other artificial intelligences in science fiction works of the 1960s to 1980s. The phrase indicated cognitive dissonance on the part of the device, conventionally leading to its self-destruction.
According to The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the phrase was first used as a catch phrase by the television show My Living Doll in 1964. It was then popularised in Lost In Space (1965), along with "Affirmative!", "Warning! Warning!" and, of course, "Danger, Will Robinson!"
The phrase "does not compute" and robots who self-destruct when considering emotions is frequently satirized in popular culture, such as the Futurama episode in which Leela's attempt to thwart Robot Santa with a paradox was stopped by his "paradox-absorbing crumple zones". In addition, the robot character Bender once referred to the phrase as "an old robot saying".
[edit] Use of the phrase
The phrase was often present in stories which carried a theme of the superiority of human emotion over limitations within the logic utilized by machines. Despite computers' superior ability at calculation and information processing, their lack of emotion or randomness made them unable to resolve cognitive dissonance, which they often expressed with the phrase "Does not compute." It was usually the computer's response to information which it had received but could not reconcile with other information it already held to be true. It could also be seen as a depiction of the limited (and thus flawed) nature of a machine's programming; due to its preprogrammed nature, it would be unable to adapt itself to circumstances beyond the scope of its programming, as opposed to humans who could adapt to such unforeseen events.
In some cases, presenting a computer or robot with such a contradiction caused it to violently self-destruct. This occurs in several episodes of the original series of Star Trek (e.g. "I, Mudd", "Requiem for Methuselah", "The Return of the Archons" and "The Changeling"), as well as in the finale to Logan's Run. In the episode of the 1968 television series The Prisoner entitled The General, Patrick McGoohan causes a supercomputer to explode by feeding it the question "Why?".
Such depictions reflect common perceptions of real computers at the time, which usually lacked friendly user interfaces. Computers often responded to bad input with an error message on the same order of utility as "does not compute", although self-destruction was an unlikely result from bad inputs or insoluble problems fed into the computer. The concept of a "killer poke", however, refers to user input intended to induce hardware damage. See also "Halt and Catch Fire".
Although not using the phrase "does not compute", the short story "Liar!" (1941) by Isaac Asimov is a striking early example of cognitive dissonance leading to a robot's self-destruction: that whether it lies, tells the truth or says nothing, it will cause humans injury, so being unable to avoid breaking Asimov's First Law Of Robotics: "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." This example is a more sophisticated treatment of cognitive dissonance leading to self-destruction than most examples from later television science fiction. Asimov explored the theme of AI cognitive dissonance at length in his robot stories.
By the 1990s, with the rise of personal computers and the graphical user interface, the public conception of computers became more friendly and sophisticated, and the image of the computer intelligence unable to respond gracefully to unexpected inputs has gradually faded away from fiction, though the phrase did show up in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999. In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, one computer was developed enough that it could pose paradoxes to other computers, even causing one computer to go in a corner and sit for a while, pondering "Does not compute."
It is often used as humorous robot emulation, as in Family Guy Season 4 Episode Fast Times at Buddy Cianci, Jr. High, where Stewie Griffin does the robot dance, exclaiming "does not compute!"
[edit] References
- Does not compute (Jesse Sheidlower, American Dialect Society mailing list, 2001-09-15) — cites The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang
