Colossus was also a good example of the "be careful what you wish for" lesson when dealing with powerful creations. They built Colossus and gave it directives that would point it toward the goal that they were aiming at: Peace and safety and stability. Colossus had a set of parameters that would direct it toward that goal.

The beauty (and horror) of the situation is that people didn''t just want what they thought they wanted, they wanted those things qualified with a bunch of things that they had and took for granted, like freedom and survival. Colossus had no parameters for preserving these things, and so it sacrificed them to attain its primary objectives.

That''s the dynamic that makes man-built gods so terrifying: We don''t understand "perfect" well enough to build something that will achieve it for us. Colossus was a shortcut on the road to happiness, and was built before anyone could see where that was, so Forbin had to estimate it, and he got it wrong. Not so wrong that a person going there couldn''t have been convinced of his mistake, but wrong enough to doom the human race.