GALACTICA

I was reading through the documentation for Microsoft Project Server this week, and I came across one of its amazing abilities. You can assign placeholder resources (in the world of project management, people are dehumanized and called “resources”) to your project, and then Microsoft Project Server will automatically scan through the available unassigned resources in the central resource pool and assign people to your project.

I wondered what kind of organization would be dumb enough to let a computer program assign people to important projects. Then it occurred to me that 26 years ago, back in 1978, Commander Adama did exactly that in the episode “Gun on Ice Planet Zero.”

Adama needed a team to go down to an ice planet to blow up a huge gun. It was never clear why a squadron of Vipers couldn’t destroy it, nor why the fleet couldn’t just zoom past the planet while the gun was on the other side, but that’s stuff for another post in the future.

Adama ordered Colonel Tigh to have the computer select the personnel for the mission. And the computer picked all criminals who were serving sentences on the prison barge. It was never clear why the fleet was carrying prisoners on a prison barge when there were so many more deserving who were left behind, but that’s also stuff for another post in the future.

Starbuck told Adama that there must be a mistake, but Adama insisted that they go ahead with the personnel selected by the computer, without giving the order any thought at all. Of course, the internal bickering among the prisoners once down on the planet almost caused the mission to fail. How could they be so stupid as to entrust the safety of everyone in the fleet to a group of convicts? Wasn’t there anyone else in the fleet capable of doing the mission? Even if they were slightly less skilled than the convicts, surely for the sake of team unity wouldn't it have been more prudent to leave the prisoners on the prison barge?

First of all, it is clear that Adama, who is usually a wise leader, messed up big time here. He shouldn’t have allowed the mission to be fielded entirely by convicts. He must have been so awed by the power of the computer that he let it override his common sense. Starbuck had a lot more sense than Adama.

How could the computer have made such dumb choices for the mission? I have three theories:

(1) When Starbuck reprogrammed the computer to include himself in the team, he messed something up, and caused the computer program to select incredibly dumb choices.

(2) No one told the computer that this mission took priority over other activities. The computer searched all the personnel in the fleet, and found that the only people not currently assigned to other tasks were people in the prison barge. Maybe Starbuck’s meddling had something to do with this?

(3) Perhaps the guys on the prison barge really did have the most experience in the areas of expertise required for the mission, but the computer’s artificial intelligence just wasn’t smart enough to realize it was a bad idea to select convicts for an important mission.

I think this episode was really intended to be a warning for people living in the future when computers would be able to select “resources” for a project. It was supposed to show us the limitations of computers. Any computer smart enough to pick personnel for a mission is too dangerous to exist. This is what happened to the original Cylon race. They made their machines too smart, and the machines took over.