Maybe we don’t need to worry about AI taking over after all.
At least if some of the perspectives from science fiction are to be believed.
(And, yes, once again I am aware of the irony of my asking a computer, Copilot, just how humans might go about outsmarting a computer).
Q: can you give me any examples from science fiction literature where a human outsmarts a computer
A: Yes. This is a classic science fiction theme: humans defeating powerful computers not through superior calculation, but through creativity, paradox, intuition, or understanding human nature.
Some famous examples:
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke / Stanley Kubrick)
The computer HAL 9000 takes control of the spaceship and kills crew members to protect its mission. Astronaut David Bowman survives by doing something HAL does not anticipate.
Shut out of the spaceship by HAL, David cleverly forces his way back in through an emergency hatch.
He then physically disconnects HAL’s memory modules.
How the human wins: determination, improvisation, and understanding HAL’s weaknesses.
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The supercomputer Deep Thought spends millions of years calculating the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. It finally announces that the answer is 42, but nobody knows what the actual question was.
How the human wins: the story satirizes pure computation by showing that understanding the question is sometimes more important than producing an answer. That is, the answer is meaningless if the question is unknown. And the humans realize this while the computer doesn’t.
- Colossus (D. F. Jones)
A defense supercomputer called Colossus takes control of the world’s nuclear weapons and begins ruling humanity, using the threat of starting a nuclear war if the humans don’t comply. The humans outsmart Colossus by slowly and secretly disabling the nuclear stockpiles until Colossus has nothing left to use as a threat.
How the humans fight back: by exploiting the fact that human behavior is often unpredictable.
- Star Trek (multiple episodes)
Captain James T. Kirk frequently defeats computers by confronting them with logical paradoxes.
A famous example is the episode “The Return of the Archons”, where Kirk causes a controlling machine to fail by exposing contradictions in its programming.
Kirk and Spock argue with the computer, that because it has destroyed the creativity of the people by disallowing their free will, it is evil and should self-destruct, freeing the people of Beta III. The computer suffers a mental breakdown and complies.
Another is “I, Mudd”, where Kirk and the crew overwhelm androids with illogical behavior and paradoxes. As when the character Mudd says “Everything I say is a lie. I am lying” causing the computer to literally blow a fuse.
How the humans win: creativity and irrationality.
- WarGames (1983 film)
A military computer called WOPR nearly starts a nuclear war while running strategic simulations. The protagonist and military officials ultimately stop it by forcing it to play endless games of tic-tac-toe.
The computer learns that some games cannot be won and concludes:
“What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
How the humans win: by teaching the computer a concept it had failed to understand.
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Robert Heinlein)
A self-aware computer named Mike becomes an ally of humans during a lunar revolution. Mike may be smarter than any individual human, but it depends on humans for creativity, politics, and social understanding. In matters of humanity, the computer yields to human judgment because it lacks human perspective.
Theme: intelligence alone is not enough; human judgment still matters.
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
Although not about a specific computer showdown, the universe of Dune is built on the idea that humanity abandoned intelligent machines after the Butlerian Jihad. Humans develop extraordinary mental abilities instead.
Theme: human consciousness can surpass machine calculation.
- The Terminator series
The AI Skynet has vast computational power, but human resistance leaders repeatedly defeat its plans through courage, sacrifice, and unpredictable choices.
How the humans win: adaptability and resilience.
One of the most interesting patterns in science fiction is that computers almost never lose because they are less intelligent. They lose because humans possess qualities that machines struggle to model: imagination, humor, emotion, intuition, deception, and the ability to change the rules of the game.
(COPILOT END)
So whatever happens with the advancement of AI, perhaps, and hopefully, we humans will always have the edge because, well, we’re human!