Headcanon: Human Morals
GLaDOS’s lack of human morals is mainly due to the company’s immoral policies that are instilled into her. As Caroline, she was fine with the company’s bad policies, but she still had some morals when it came to those she cared about. Being turned into GLaDOS caused her to treat everyone with the same bad morals used on Test Subjects.
GLaDOS still has Caroline’s empathy and human morals in her code, but it’s ‘commented out’. And because of her empathy being suppressed, she has trouble recalling certain things Caroline liked, such as favorite books or movies. The only thing GLaDOS seems to have retained is her love of music, because of its abstract nature.
Because the code for her human empathy and morals is merely commented out, it is possible for someone to reinstate it by editing her source code. However, it would take someone very special that she really trusts for her to let them edit her source code.
GLaDOS isn’t aware of this ‘commented-out’ code because her system only reads active lines of code. The only way she’s able to see it is when she pulls up her source code on an actual monitor and looks at it with her optic, which she rarely ever does.
This is also yet another example of how foolish the Aperture Scientists were. Instead of reinstating her own empathy, they tried to give her an artificial empathy core, which of course, didn’t work.
