

I was put in the mind of HAL and 2001, though, because of an item that I came across recently that makes the movie’s lip reading seem already hopelessly antiquated. And the impression that these developments have left me with is that however fast we imagine the landscape of this technology to be capable of changing, our visions just keep falling behind. Cascade of warningsįor months now, I have been following developments in the world of artificial intelligence and its most popular manifestations, such as ChatGPT.
2001 a space odyssey computer name movie#
But the scariest part of this movie may be the thought that if Kubrick and Clarke were making their masterpiece today, it is highly unlikely that they would have thought that humans could have come out of this predicament so well. “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it.”Įven though Dave and his last surviving fellow crew mate had been careful enough to prevent HAL from overhearing their plans, they had not counted on the computer’s ability to read their lips from afar, through the small window of their pod.ĭave ultimately succeeds in getting back into the mothership and disabling HAL. “I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do,” HAL replies. “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” HAL answers in his crushingly smooth voice. After finding himself trapped outside the spaceship, the lone survivor, Dave, orders HAL to open its doors and let him back in.

One of them is soon lost in the void, murdered by the computer.

Two of the astronauts go into a space pod to ensure they won’t be overheard while they make plans to shut HAL down. The film 2001 can be interpreted in many ways, but at its heart lies a tale of technological dystopia in which a sentient and all-powerful computer with no history of ever having committed an error goes horribly rogue, taking over a manned spaceship and coolly killing its crew members. Clarke, may finally be coming to life – or perhaps better, turning into an objective reality right before our eyes. Nothing attests for that more than the fact that we may now be approaching the moment when the prescient and terrifying vision of the movie’s creators, the director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. The film ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ can be interpreted in many ways, but at its heart lies a tale of technological dystopia in which a sentient and all-powerful computer with no history of ever having committed an error goes horribly rogue, taking over a manned spaceship and coolly killing its crew members. The astronaut who looms large on the screen as HAL addresses him with a chilling purr is named Dave, but he is really a stand-in for all of us. The scene, of course, is from one of the greatest films of the 20th century, the 1968 sci-fi thriller 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the name of what remains perhaps the most famous computer ever is HAL, short for heuristically programmed algorithmic computer.

Take a stress pill and think things over.” “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly. “I can see you are really upset about this,” the machine says. In an unnervingly placid voice, a computer endowed with its own intelligence speaks to a human being and offers him some advice.
