Underman's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - 30 YEARS ON
VIEWPOINTS - HAL

2001: A Space Odyssey - 30 Years On

Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
Viewpoints on Hal

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Things you (and I!) have said about Hal.

The Discourse pages look at Hal in my words. This page tells Hal's story in your words. So goes the theory.

However, I thought you might be interested in some behind- the- scenes attempts to find out more about the mysterious Hal - who "invented" him? - who did Stanley Kubrick turn to for advice? - so this page commences with some extended extracts from correspondence.

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VIEWPOINTS ON HAL: YOUR WORDS (mostly)

This page contains:

*Awakening: where did Hal come from?*Hal: almost human?
*Motivation: why did Hal do what Hal did?*Check: computers as strategists

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AWAKENING Where did Hal come from?

Concerning Hal

An innocent- sounding email from Jean Ve'ronis of the University of Provence in France opened up the whole subject of Hal's origins. Who came up with the idea? Who did Stanley Kubrick turn to for scientific advice?

This is something that is probably of interest to many people, so I have quoted at length from the dialogues that Jean's email led to. Some of them occurred between Jean and other parties, most notably Marvin Minsky, a leading authority on computer science, and David Stork, who you may be familiar with as the author of "Hal's Legacy", referred to elsewhere in this site. Jean has kindly given me his permission to refer to his communications with them.

Really, this belongs in the "Interchange" page, but since most of it is specifically to do with Hal I hope you will accept that some of my own words appear here. There are a few diversions into more general aspects of 2001 (my fault, as usual) but I think you'll find this interesting.

I have taken the liberty of "mixing up" some of the extracts, as there were several exchanges often relating to the same point, and it makes sense to keep the information together.

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Jean

Congratulations for you Web site on 2001!

You say:

>If computers talk in the film it is because the leading experts in the computer field in the United States and England, where the film was made, assured Kubrick that by the year 2001 computers will talk!

I am looking for the names of the scientific advisers for this movie, espceially concerning Hal. I have heard that it was Marvin Minsky, a leading researcher at the time. Do you happen to know?

Thanks! and congratulations again.

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Myself

...my few investigations into who was really responsible for Hal have tended to reveal who did NOT do it, rather than who DID...

That quote actually comes straight out of the 2001 cinema release program.

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Jean

...I think I found a clue. In David G. Stork's forthcoming book, Hal's legacy (towards which you have a link in your pages), one (of the) papers by Stork himself is: "Scientist on the Set: An interview with Marvin Minsky". This seems to indicate that Minsky was actually there, right?...

The reason why I suspected Minsky is that in Clarke's book, there is an explicit reference to him... It is in the chapter where Clarke describe Hal's principles (my note: this is chapter 16, HAL, in "2001: A Space Odyssey". The reference reads:"In the 1980s, Minsky and Good had shown how neural networks could be generated automatically --self- replicated-- in accordance with any arbitrary learning programme".

Minsky is no doubt the real Marvin Minsky, from MIT... who was at the time a leading reasearcher in Artificial Intelligence.

I am not completely sure about Good. There is indeed a Good who worked on computation, and published in 1969 the following article:

Good, I. J. (1969). Gödel's theorem is a red herring. Brit. J. Philos. Sci., 18, 359-73.

I wouldn't be surprised if Minsky and Good (whichever) were Clarke's advisers.

In any case, the chapter that I am talking about is perfectly accurate in its description of the ENIAC computer, and also about the Turing test, which was published in:

Turing, A. M., 1950. Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 236. Reprinted in Hofstadter, D. R., Dennett, D. C. (Eds.), 1981. The mind's I. Harmondworth: Basic Books Penguin Books.

It is also perfectly informed in terms of the ongoing work on neural networks, on which, by the way, Marvin Minsky was quite knowledgeable since he wrote a seminal book on the topic with Seymour Papert around that time:

Minsky, M., Papert, S., 1969. Perceptrons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Both the Turing test and the self- organizing neurons were topics at the leading edge of Artificial Intelligence, unknown by the general public, and I doubt that Clarke would have been so accurate all by himself. It is clear to me that he has talked to scientists.

...Hal's story is very important to me. I am currently writing a book on "Language and Computation"... and Hal is exemplary in many ways.

It has been said many times, including by MGM, that the movie intended to be as realistic as possible, and was a prediction (well, maybe not the extra- terrestrials, but all the rest) based on scientific grounds. Actually, all predictions but Hal's intelligence were right: Armstrong went to the moon, people spent quite a bit of time in orbital stations and space shuttles, and there is probably no major obstacle for a trip to Jupiter, or at least Mars-- apart from budget and motivation. Even in terms of computer hardware and computing power, the movie is right: it is quite feasible with nowadays' technology to have a computer control all functions of a spaceship. It is more or less routine in the Space Shuttle. And as for playing chess, Deep Blue gave some trouble to Kasparov it seems, and is said to rank among the 60 top world's players.

The only wrong prediction in the movie is Hal's intelligence. Not only a little wrong, like "it could happen, but in ten years". COMPLETELY wrong: we are as far from Hal as we were at the time. Worse, nobody has a clue about the path to follow, nor would risk giving a date. Deep Blue is strong at chess, but as dumb as the old IBM 360s of Kubrick's time, and only applies brute force to an unbelievable scale (100 million moves per second or so). No machine is capable of human- like reasoning, natural language dialogue, etc. It turned out to be much more difficult than people expected at the time, and what I am trying to understand (hence my interest in 2001's scientific advisers) is why were leading scientists so wrong?

ps: a small interesting piece of trivia. In the French version of both the movie and the novel, HAL is named CARL! I wonder if this is because IBM complained. CARL stands for "Cerveau Analytique de Recherche et de Liaison" (Research and Contact Analytic Brain), which does not mean much. The original name is much better. Heuristics is a term widely used in Artificial Intelligence to name short- cuts in solving very hard problems, as humans do, for example in playing chess. The French acronym is vacuous of meaning.

CARL has the same kind of (dubbed) voice as the original - difficult to qualify: people say it has no emotion, it's probably true, but it's more than that. I find it a little patronizing... the kind of guy you would hate in real life.

Since we are speaking of translation, the Daisy song, which is unknown to French speakers, is replaced by the song "Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot...", which is probably the most popular kids song of all times.

Also, the jacket says "From Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's original script". I find this weird: I had always thought that the movie script was made after the book, not the reverse.

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Myself

I've done a fair bit of digging around... The name Minsky did come up, but not in any specific way, and in fact the only other person that anyone was able to cite was Arthur C Clarke himself... It's hard to believe that Kubrick relied solely on his input. I wonder whether the reference in the program was just a bit of puff put in for effect, rather than a specific reference to anyone in particular?

The fact is, I'm not sure if anyone now has the answer you're looking for... no-one else I have contacted, who probably has more specialist knowledge than I do myself, was able to help either. It's a good sign that neither you nor I have missed anything obvious.

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I hadn't really thought in terms of Clarke giving us a full run- down on who "invented" Hal... It's one of his techniques, he'll use the name of a real character he already knows about to establish authenticity, then when he's writing about his future vision he'll add fictitious names of supposedly famous scientists and other people... Clarke is often cited for his foretelling of "real" developments, most notably the communications satellite... Anyway, I only know of Minsky as a name, and Good not at all... Since you have Minsky's URL, why not give him a try direct? I'd have done it myself, if I'd had the address!

...it just seems hard to track down who those scientists are! I think that is quite surprising. I would have expected anyone who was involved in something as celebrated as Hal would have been eager to make their involvement known...

Hal seems by far the most widely- discussed element in 2001, but my interest is more in terms of relating the whole film to reality and interpreting it according to a personal perception and experience... Despite its air of scientific credibility, (2001) is no more a "real" representation of space exploration than, say, "When Worlds Collide". When we go to Jupiter, it won't be in Discovery, and there won't be a Hal on board - maybe a ThinkPad or two! (In fact, of course, it's hard to see there could be any justification for human beings to ever go to Jupiter, they'd only have to turn round and come straight back again! Jupiter's moons don't seem like holiday spots).

...how far is Hal a self- fulfilling prophecy of computer development? Is this fascination with building a "real life" Hal the product of a genuine developmental path in the way computers should evolve, or is it just that Hal was such an enticing concept that people want to see if it's possible to do it for real? I suspect it's hard to separate the two, which means the search for a real Hal can never be a "pure" undertaking, it must always be blurred by an element of romantic fantasy.

...I agree 2001's predictions are right, but only qualified by the proviso "within the bounds of what was actually known in the mid sixties". We made it to the moon, but the reality of how we did it is much more prosaic than Floyd swanning around in luxury... That long scene of the head/ ship landing, with the parking lot dome opening up and the vast interior with its huge elevator landing pad, was visually magnificent, but way over the top. Engineering for space applications is an extremely exacting field, specialising in minimal structures with minimum weight and maximum strength/ durability in a low- gravity vacuum. The recent space shuttle experiments with reflective inflatable structures, I thought, were fascinating. In that way, I thought 2001 fell down quite badly (though that's a point that nobody has ever picked up). That elevator, for instance, is wildly over- engineered for transport to the moon and subsequent use in low gravity. It's no more realistic than science- fiction cover art from the 50s and 60s, it's just that it looks as though it is working, so we are more inclined to accept it.

Sure, there's no practical difficulty in planning a trip to Jupiter, but as I said above, what would be the justification? It's not like anyone can land there, like the moon. I don't think we could even get as close as the Leonov did in 2010. We're not talking about a big version of Earth, we're talking different magnitudes of physics and gravity. One thing I discussed with someone recently (hello, Virginia!) was my view that no vision of space, including 2001, has yet given us a true feel of what it will REALLY be like out there. Consider, just for one, the size of Jupiter (I can't really imagine it). Then consider that, to my knowlege, Jupiter is not self- illuminated, but is vastly further from the sun than we are. Think what it would actually be like, to travel into the vicinity of something huge beyond human imagining, only dimly perceivable by the light of a distant star (remember the vivid pictures we see are strongly computer enhanced). I believe it would be absolutely terrifying, truly outside the scope of human scale or experience. 2010 is still the only film that has made any attempt to deal with the fear of space for a human being, and even that was very Hollywood- ised. I think the experience Dave and Frank went through would have been so far out of normal human experience as to make them both a little insane. In that way, Solaris had more to say than 2001...

...Armstrong could only have dreamed of a ThinkPad. Now, if Clarke really wanted to impress me, he would have predicted notebook computers powerful enough to control a space mission, not a Cray- type supercomputer like Hal. He didn't, though! I draw attention to that in Legacy - the Forbin view of computers, which equates power with size, which we now know is completely false. And, in truth, knew then... the knowledge was there at the time to be used, even at "street level".

...Deep Blue is a computer specifically designed with the power to match a human master's huge conceptual potential by sheer brute force. Deep Blue isn't an intelligent chess thinker, it's a beast so fast and so powerful that it can churn through the billions of potential moves quickly enough to identify a "good" response in a timescale that impresses us. It's a truly astonishing feat of miniaturisation and computer engineering, but I think Deep Blue would find it pretty difficult to run a spaceship at the same time!

In a sense, all that "holographic deck" nonsense in Star Trek seems far removed from the scientific credibility that we still like to see in 2001. And yet... in the distant future timescale, who is to say that holographic decks may not indeed be the way of things?... If there's ever going to be any point in human beings subjecting themselves to large- scale movements through the universe (I can't see it myself, until we find out the flaws in Einstein...), there's going to have to be more than an electronic chessboard and a sunlamp to keep them going.

Why were leading scientists so wrong? That brings me back to the fact that 2001 is entertainment. Kubrick was eager for scientific credibility, but only within the bounds of directing a movie. He went on to do Clockwork Orange, an Anthony Burgess future social commentary, and The Shining, a Stephen King fantasy, among other things. 2001 was just one of the things he felt he needed to explore. I don't believe it was ever in Kubrick's head to produce something that would comply with all the most rigorous scientific examinations... It's what Kubrick gave us as an artistic vision that is really my starting point...

...How does CARL translate? (as per Heuristic ALgorithm and all that). I suppose French for HAL must be AL! (with an accent). (Regarding "Cerveau..."), really trips off the tongue, doesn't it? Guess it sounds better from someone who speaks French...

Clarke does claim that the HAL / IBM alphabetic juxtapositioning was entirely coincidental... hmm... perhaps... reminds me of the Beatles and Lucy in the Sky...

(Regarding "Daisy"), we can't actually see Hal's lips moving, so it'd be easy to dub any song in.

My understanding is that the (script and book were) being done all at the same time. Kubrick, it seems, likes to work from a proper written work, not just a rough script, but Clarke has indicated since that revisions were being made right the way through. The first draft of the book may have led to the script, but both were heavily altered as filming proceeded, I believe, right to the final release. I am always surprised, in fact, that the book differed as much as it did from the film, but that actually makes it easier for me to write some of the things I do, because I don't continually have to refer back to the book for confirmation.

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Jean

...Your note raises a lot of interesting issues... But I want to send a short note to give you the scoop: Minsky replied! I finally wrote to him, as you advised... it's a little like sending e-mail to Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin...

Anyway, he sent me a very nice note where he says that he was a long time friend of Clarke, and that they had many discussions about AI. Modestly he adds that he was surely more inspired by Clarke than the reverse, and that in fact Clarke's computer- robots in both "The City and The Stars" and in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" "entranced" him.

Early in the production of 2001, Kubrick visited his lab at MIT to examine the state of computer graphics -- and correctly decided that he could do better with classical animation techniques. He also invited Minsky to visit the production sites in England, and they discussed the physical appearance of the Hal computer hardware. Minsky says that he had some influence on the appearance of the modules, and on the construction of the mechanical arms of the space pods.

However, he claims that he had no direct influence on Hal's software; Kubrick did not tell him the plot or anything about the character, and he says he did not ask. Kubrick did ask Minsky whether it was likely that computers would have natural sounding speech by 2001 -- and Minsky replied that he would expect sufficient progress in phonology for this, but could not predict whether computers would yet be able to construct and understand sentences with complex meanings. According to Minsky, Kubrick said that the good sounding speech was what he wanted to know and that he would be responsible for deciding how smart Hal would be.

Minsky says that he did not directly advise Clarke about perceptrons, but that Clarke was already acquainted with current ideas in heuristic programming and artificial neural networks, and knew that Minsky and Papert had the best theories at the time of what perceptrons could do.

Minsky also confirms that Good in the reference "Minsky and Good 1980" was indeed I.J.Good who at that time was publishing essays on what supercomputers of the future should be able to do.

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(David) Stork replied...:

Yes, I interviewed Minsky for my book, and there are a number of *fascinating* details (such as how he was almost killed on the film set) that my book will relate. My book is less with the *history* of the creation of the film than it is with the *accuracy* with which the vision fits actual technological developments.

It's the most concrete information I got. We'll have to wait for the book, I guess!

He also mentioned the book

"2001: Filming the Future" by Piers Bizony (Aurum Press, UK)

but I am sure you know about that one (I don't have it myself).

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Myself

I now have this book (Piers Bizony), thanks to the kindness of a reader in England who was amazed to learn that I did not already have it. He went out of his way to track down another copy and mail it to me, for which I was most grateful (thanks again, Martin!).

Bizony's book is valuable in two main ways. One, a fine source of illustrations - stills from the films, shots of production under way, and most importantly many photos of models and drawings that were never actually used. Two, some informative descriptions of various aspects of the history of the making of the film...

Inspired by Jean's thoughts, I followed up on one or two further possibilities. First, Graham Lewis, who has written a short but coherent and accurate description of 2001 (a rare thing!) for the British Elstree Studios web pages (most of the shooting for 2001 was done at Elstree). Second, the obvious: ask IBM!

Graham's description of 2001 refers to the "HAL - IBM dispute". Here's the story through his eyes.

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Both the writer and director of 2001 were technological visionaries. Arthur C. Clarke invented the concept of geo- stationary satellites, and Stanley Kubrick has always been interested in technology, which added to his intense detail ensures that much of the technology portrayed in 2001 was plausible. Bizony states that both Kubrick and Clarke wanted to explore the relationship between humans and advanced technology, and "Clarke has long propounded the theory that humans and computers will one day become all but indistinguishable..."

Kubrick's obsession with detail shows in the design of the spacecraft used, whose designs are not a million miles away from the Space Shuttle, etc., of today. Not surprising because Kubrick had the sets designed in great detail by special advisors from NASA, Pan Am, etc., in return for what we would call today product placement. So the movie has plenty of corporate logos to watch for - Bell, Pan Am, etc.

IBM provided much detail for the on- board computers and had their logos originally on some of the props. However, when they realised that in the script Hal "throws a wobbly" and kills the crew they wanted no part of it and had their logos taken out. Though Bizony says one can be seen in the Orion spaceplane.

Then when the computer was named as Hal, somebody noticed that the letters were all one letter displaced in the alphabet from IBM. The producers claimed this was a coincidence, others are not so sure. This is now referred to as the HAL - IBM dispute.

I occasionally replay 2001 a couple of times a year, and it still stands up against some of today's sci- fi movies because all the technology in it is so plausible, especially the computing stuff. Interesting, wasn't it this year IBM launched their voice recognition system for PCs?

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Thanks, Graham. If 2001 was made now, Dave and Frank would probably be decked out in all the mandatory logos - McDonalds, Adidas, etc., etc. - so it was good for us that 2001 predated this scramble for cheap advertising.

On page 129 of Piers Bizony's book, there is a photograph of one of the cockpit displays with the IBM logo large as life, but I can't tell whether this is the actual still from the film referred to above, or just a studio shot. One day I'll have a close look myself.

Given all that, it was not difficult to work out that maybe I should go straight to the boys in big blue and ask for their response.

Here is IBM's reply.

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Hello, Based on the information you provided me with I was unable to locate any information for you. I have used all of the resources available to me. If you can supply me with any more information that might help please feel free to e-mail us. Thank- you for using askIBM...

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Martin Macrae - yes, the one who sent me Bizony's book - has also sent a few thoughts on this, as follows.

Most of Hal was made up as they went along, mainly from Clarke's dialog. Don't read too much into Hal, most of the current discussions are just that, discussion, 30 years after the act. Now we know you can't make a thinking computer, not even a friendly Win95 one. When I was working for a company (making)... nuclear detection instruments, one of the... engineers... said he worked on the set and props for Stanley (Kubrick's) "Hawk Films", and did stuff for the art department, for 2001, people were just doing their own futuristic thing, with Stanley supervising.

Apparently Stanley was a hard man to please.

The computer graphics were 16mm projections (my note - those computer display screens on board Discovery and in other interiors that looked so authentic were, in fact, individual short films, projected from behind the panels to give the appearance of monitor- type displays - sorry if that has spoilt things for anybody! Referring to some of the characters that appear in many of the displays, Martin continues)... I often think the view names were supposed to be:

COMcommunications
LIFlife functions
NUCthe kettle brewing at the back
NAVnavigation
HIBhibernation

There were others. I think some of the graphs made kind of sense, some were unreadable lists.

Thanks, Martin, I'll leave you to continue pondering on the construction of a home- made Hal...

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And that, friends, is the current state of play. I shall continue to pursue any leads I can find, and if any of you reading this has any information or suggestions on this subject, which I think is one of the most interesting "unexplained" aspects of 2001, I would be extremely pleased to hear from you. Is there something obvious that we have all been missing? Am I reading unnecessary complication into something that simply happened in the course of putting the film together?

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OK, back to REAL Viewpoints.

Hal Almost human?

They've "outed" Hal!

Phil, your website is marvellous - I visit it regularly. Here's an interesting tidbit for you: go to http://www.suck.com and read their May 2 page. They've "outed" Hal! The article is a real thought- provoking hoot. It amazes me how many viewpoints there are concerning Hal.

I have admired Hal for a very long time. He was the only part of the movie I understood when I saw it the first time as a child. There was something compelling and even magical about him - I thought of him as a person, rather than a machine... I am a firm believer in Clarke's statement that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Hal is a wonderful example of that statement. He is more than a fish- eye lens, suave voice and huge "brain- room". Hal has an extra spark, a bit of something that his designers and programmers did not build or program into him. Sadly for four- fifths of the Discovery crew, that "something" got badly messed up, but even the failure of the mission was a success - in a back- handed sort of way. Hal exceeded his creator's parameters, and, because of his emotional "human-gratification" interface, did exactly what his conflicting programs told him to do: he went (to us) nuts.

The most important thing was that Hal was programmed to emulate human emotion to "make him easier to work with." I believe that a mechanism for emotional gratification and / or relief was built into him, as well. Its failure may well have been the trigger for Hal's subsequent "malfunction". If you look at 2001 and 2010, you'll see it in operation. It is a simple gesture - that of reaching toward his lens. Such a gesture around his faceplate would be mistaken for no other function, since there are no buttons or controls near it. To me, this gesture seems to serve as a non- verbal combination of greeting, acknowledgement or comforting signal. Such a gesture occurs three times in 2010. First by Chandra: right after he reboots Hal, watch him pat Hal's lens. Later, after the Americans have left the Leonov, you'll get a brief glimpse of Chandra touching Hal just before we cut to Floyd on the bridge, where he has his encounter with Dave. Finally, in the Pod Bay we see Dave reaching toward Hal's lens in exactly the same manner. In the original movie, a similar gesture was solicited by Hal when he asked Dave to hold his drawings closer to his lens.

Hal is not myopic - he demonstrated that by reading the astronauts' speech. My personal opinion is that his conflicting orders were brewing up quite a storm in his lie / don't lie protocol. Perhaps the growing conflict in his software reached a critical juncture at that point, and he tried to utilize the greet / acknowledge / comfort gesture to calm himself. Obviously, it didn't work, so Hal tried a different tactic - attempting to drag Dave into a discussion of the mission that would permit him to confide his trouble. Dave blew him off with the psych report suspicion, and poor Hal was forced to implement "Plan C" - faking a fault in the AE-35 unit. Did you notice the long pause after Dave made the psych report statement? And Hal's rather sheepish reply? That's where I think Hal lost it. We all know what happened next.

I am glad that Hal was vindicated in 2010. I really liked the way they showed Dr. Chandra tenderly ministering to his sick "child". I think that Chandra knew that there was more to Hal than a bunch of code and circuits. Hal has a soul. Despite his unfortunate choice of solutions for his problem, Hal is not an evil entity - he aptly demonstrated that by allowing the Discovery to be sacrificed in 2010. I think this is why he has stood the test of time, and remains a cultural icon to this day. He is a great example of good intentions gone bad, an innocent soul led astray, and perhaps, in this paranoia infested era we live in, an example of government secrecy run amok. Lorie A. Johnson

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Intelligence

Until recently I (worked) on a product... which allows you to talk to the computer instead of typing. It was SO very interesting to see people attribute intelligence to it since our algorithms could distinguish too from 2 from to and other homophones, and it also learns as you use it to prioritize words you use more often and thus achieve a high accuracy rate. Though nowhere near as poweful as Hal, it was interesting to see the reactions. Also... when I asked why we made no reference to its Hal- like capabilities, I was told that most of the younger generation did not 'get-it' .. so hopefully your site will change that!

The way we recognize too from 2 from to is through statistical algorithms... we keep statistics of how often words appear in combination, so we know that 2 o'clock appears MUCH more often than 'to o'clock', thus if you say 'please meet me at' when you say the next word it will guess the word 'to' but when you say next 'o'clock' it will switch the 'to' to a '2'. People are always amazed. My personal favorite was Mr. Won won one game in 1 hour...

...The 'saddle- point' problem. Whenever you deal with a system that learns from experience and is based on algorithms, you can run into a locally optimized solution that is not best. Sort of goes like this: If your goal is to get to the highest point in your area, you look around and walk uphill. When you get to the point where all your choices are to go downhill, you are done. BUT... we all know that 'over the next hill' might be a higher one... but you really don't know which way to go. Since all of these systems play games to win, they can't afford going too far downhill in their search for a better strategy (the higher hill), so they eventually reach a point at which they do not improve. Presumably they found a way around all this for Hal! (Bob Lee)

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Hibernating scientists

I just got done reading through your page, 2001: A Space Odyssey - 30 Years On, and was fascinated by it. Your insights into the film made my whole perspective change. After reading through your Hal discourse, I agree with your views on Hal. There is one thing I don't understand, however. Why did Hal decide to kill the three hibernating scientists? Did Hal think that they would endanger the mission? (Peter)

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Wired

I'm writing about Hal for WIRED Magazine and I discovered your wonderful site. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions for the magazine article. (Simson L Garfinkel)

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Paranoid

First I would like to say GOOD PAGE, such dedication is rare... Jeez, I have so much to say... where to begin...? I have worshipped this film - especially Hal - since I was 12... I was kinda blown away by all this theory...

Now all this stuff about Hal leads me to a couple of things that I wonder if anyone has even noticed. Like this major plot problem between the two films. In 2001 Dr. Floyd gives Dave the pre- recorded briefing about the monolith, "the existence of which was known ONLY by your on board HAL 9000 computer." But in 2010 when Chandra explains why Hal malfunctioned, Floyd is all incredulous... "I didn't know... I didn't know...!" He did in 2001... hmmm... weird.

And about the Chandra/Langley issue. I have always been under the impression that they were essentially the same person. In the novel 2001 when Hal is going down for the third time he mentions Chandra as his teacher... which brings me to Hal's birthday. In the book it was... 1997 and in the film it was 1992 (due to a misreading of the script.) Due to this Hal's "first" birthday has already been celebrated with a newspaper article framed on my wall which reads "Hal, famous fictional supercomputer celebrates its 0th birthday." I love it. But are we going to have the celebration again in 1997?

The only thing that consoled me about the destruction of Discovery was that Hal got to be with Dave... BTW: On the discussion of Hal's intelligence, Arthur C. Clarke states that the computer's effective I.Q. is about 50...

So... my interest in Hal's character... led me back to 2001... Even in his twisted paranoid state, Hal kept his appeal... I remember reading one chapter in 2010 over and over - the flashback of Hal's disconnection... To me he was an entity painfully trapped in a situation he did not understand. His pleading with Dave to stop because he was afraid... I don't think he was acting...

Check out the scene in 2010 where Dave returns to speak to Floyd... He stops as an old man and leans over to "greet" Hal... Then later after Discovery is abandoned and Dave has Hal sending the message. There is a definite emotional tug there... "Dave, it is good to be working with you again... " and then very earnestly... "Have I fullfilled my mission objectives properly?" To which Dave replies in a rather fatherly, almost loving tone, "Yes, Hal, you've done very well..." *SOB*

...about the point that the film could be making about the nature of creation. It seems that if the goal was to make a computer that was sentient and intelligent, there might have been a little randomness just figured in. And it is indicated later that Hal has some existence beyond the destruction of Discovery, as if there was something more to him to begin with. He is like Pandora's box or the scientists in Jurassic Park recreating dinosaurs, or even the internet for that matter. Do people really have that much control over what they create? God didn't seem to... (see Genesis 1, 2, 3,...)

I think it is probably every computer scientist's fantasy to create an intelligent machine that functions in ways that HE can't even understand after awhile. The best creations are the ones that are to be learned from.

...there should have been more about Hal in 2061. The most interesting point... was Dave's final request of the controlling intelligence that he bring Hal back with him for sake of companionship in whatever odd dimension he existed in, which leads me to the emotion in 2001... I really think that Dave was rather attached to Hal. In the disconnection scene he was pretty stressed about making sure to pull out just the right circuits, but I also read some of that as his own emotion. He knew that after that he would be alone, and I really think he liked Hal. And I really think Hal liked him... He did kill everyone except Dave.

...I'd love to party with Hal. I think I would have taught him some better songs...

...Hal was not designed specifically to run the Discovery mission... an intelligent machine such as he had to literally be "brought up," nurtured in a way, and then sent out on a job once his growth was far enough along. And I think it is an ideal in artificial intelligence that we could have machines that would adapt along with technology and change over a number of years with and relate to the people around them. I imagine that if Hal had returned successfully from the Discovery mission, that they simply would have removed him from the ship and put him to his next task... You wouldn't just put some sentient creature out to pasture, not to mention that Chandra was pretty emotional about his "children." But it is stated quite explicitly in the book that SAL is the twin 9000... the point was not really brought out in the movie, but I thought it was pretty clever of Clarke to bring the twin 9000 back into the story as Hal's sister. And it would make sense that Chandra would use Hal's twin to simulate what he would do to reconstruct Hal.

...we can't really consider what Hal was intended for based on today's technology. If 2001 were written today, aside from being called 2050, it would have a computer much smaller and faster than Hal, probably the size of a calculator that could be stuck into whichever spaceship they wanted him on. But this film was made in a time when reuse and continued use were very common ideals due to the fact that computers were very big and therefore very permanent. It is not too odd an idea if you examine the text based upon the technology and ideals of the time.

...there should be some sense of wonder about Hal, as if those who created him might have actually got their wish of making an independent free-thinking, feeling entity. There is little point to this sort of "thinking" computer intelligence that can suggest a game of chess or look at artwork than simply to fulfill the creative dreams of some computer scientists who wanted to see if they could do it. What use would a pentium 100 have to me if it could start up an odd conversation about the weather? It would just distract me from my work, but the very wonder of having a computer that acted human would be reason enough to make one. In this way I think Hal can be seen as an example of Man using the intelligence imparted him to create beyond his means to understand, which is sort of what Moonwatcher did when he started smashing things. He wasn't sure what he was doing, or why, but it set off this whole chain of events that led to Hal. (Virginia)

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Glorious

I always expected some time we would eventually make those glorious spacecraft, but now the Americans would rather spend 50 million making Terminator 2 than flying to the planets. Post- modern Sci-Fi is as far from the future as Kubrick now appears to be...

Nevertheless, I try to sneak a bit of Hal into the odd bit of code here and there.

Perhaps too much has been written about Hal's personality. He is somewhat an integral part of sci-fi literature... I'm sure it was an ageing Pentium peripheral controller chip that blew his mind - get your brain round that, Shakespeare...

Pulling "The Making of 2001, J Angel 1972" off the shelf: Douglas Rain. Winnipeg-born actor, usually working for Stratford (Ontario) festivals, was going to narrate 2001, but that was cut, so he just did Hal.

"I wrapped up the work in nine hours, never saw a single foot of film, or finished script" said Douglas to David Cob, Toronto Telegram, in a 1968 interview. (SO the REAL voice of Hal was kept in the dark too..) (Martin Macrae)

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Obsessed

I enjoyed your page(s) very much. Nice work! I too am obsessed by this film... I've put up some images of my 2001 projects (see the Places page). Enjoy. (John Fleck)

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Wondering

I am wondering what H.A.L. stands for... (T C Holmes)

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Lifeform

Okay. What does HAL stand for? I have always heard it was for Human- Artificial- Lifeform, but have yet to find anything supporting or denying this. (Another 2001 fan)

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How old?

What year was the Hal computer built in 2001: A Space Odyssey? (Beth)

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Cyberfest

Thank you for such an informative page! I'm one of the Cyberfest committee members here at the University of Illinois. I have a link to the Cyberfest homepage if you'd like to add it to your bag of goodies: http://www.cyberfest.uiuc.edu/

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How significant is Cyberfest going to be? Pretty big! We've already got corporate sponsorship from Apple and some other big names should be coming to campus. Tom Hanks is one of them as well as Roger Ebert and hopefully some movie directors... we wrote a letter to Douglas Rain last spring...

...As for the movie, I... thought it was wonderful. Of course, being an American accustomed to television and action movies, I thought there were some very slow parts (basically the beginning). After a while, the film really did grow on me. The "trip" scene began to hurt my eyes, and I didn't understand the end of the movie either until a friend... explained it to me. My favorite scene was the space station floating around to the Blue Danube Waltz. (Christine Tanner)

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Metamorphosis

...it didn't surprise me at all that Clarke used the idea of Jupiter's metamorphosis into a star... I'm sure this notion of Jupiter as a failed sun has been around for a long, long time... As for monitoring and regulating realtime events on board DISCOVERY from an Earth based Hal... I don't think so... Must disagree with you on Hal's motivations also... Can't believe I spent so much time at your site reading about something so useless and irrelevent to my everyday life. It didn't enhance my net worth one dollar... BUT I ENJOYED IT!... Thanks Phil. (Lawrie Miller)

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Test

I really liked your explanations about those films, especially Hal's one. I've always thought that Hal did all those things to test Frank and Dave, and you elaborated this idea in a great manner. Also, the idea that man has to overcome his tools in order to evolve is brilliant! (Andrea Cassimiro Vieira)

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Good morning, Dave

BTW, The page looks great. 2001 is one of my favorite movies, 2010 was quite a disappointment. I don't know if you saw ID4 (Independence Day), but when Jeff Goldblum's character opens his PowerBook on the alien shuttlecraft, Hal's voice greets him: "Good Morning, Dave". (Jeff Goelz)

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Hal speaking

Hey there! Just wanted to let you know I think your page is really cool!... If only some one would write a program to convert typed words into a sound file of Hal speaking those words... now that would be REALLY cool! (Shannon)

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The eye

Hey... it would be classic to have the computer start up with the eye, and have it say, "good morning, Dave"... (David)

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Failure mode...

In the Hal transcripts you were unsure of the words that Hal used regarding the failure of the AE35 unit. You transcribed "failure move analysis". I believe this should be "failure mode analysis". This terminology is commonly used in areas such as aviation. (George Galanis)

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I may be able to help

I have been looking for the transcripts for 2001 for a while and I was pleased to find your WEB page. Very nicely done. In reading through some of the dialogue I think that in certain places you use parenthesis to indicate where you are unsure of the dialogue. If that is the case, I may be able to help you...

I would be VERY interested in knowing what was said when Hal was reading their lips... (Michael Fitzgerald)

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Perfect sense

I found all your viewpoints fascinating, ESPECIALLY the ones concerning Hal. You showed me a Hal I never knew before, and your explanations made perfect sense to me. (J C Oliva)

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Scientific advisers

Congratulations for your Web site on 2001!... I am looking for the names of the scientific advisers for this movie, especially concerning Hal. I have heard that it was Marvin Minsky, a leading researcher at the time. Do you happen to know?

Thanks! And congratulations again. (Jean Veronis)

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Gulp

"You know, that main proto- human ape thing."
"Uh, which one?"
"The main one. You know, the one who touched the monolith first."
"Uhhhh..."
"Yeah, the one who picked up the bone and learned how to kill."
"Oh, you mean 'Moonwatcher'?"
"Uh...Yeah, whatever. ."

"Hal. "I understand now, Dr Chandra."
Chandra. "Do you want me to stay with you?"-
snif, snif.
Hal. "No, it is better for the mission if you leave. One minute to ignition. Thank you for telling me the truth."
Chandra. "You deserve it."-
gulp.
Hal. "Fifty seconds. Dr Chandra?"
Chandra. "Yes?"
Hal. "Will I dream?"
Chandra. "I don't know."-
WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! BOOOHOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!"...

Despite all of 2010's shortcomings, Hal's last few minutes made the whole movie worthwhile. Y'know, it would not have surprised me one bit if Chandra had stayed with Hal... (Brian Cundieff)

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HAL + 1 = IBM

...things are heating up quite well on Hal's Legacy... (a) note in Newsweek... announced the Cyberfest celebration and the people invited (Clarke, S. Spielberg, T. Hanks...)... You can get the date from my web page, and even a link.

As Clarke writes in my book, the HAL + 1 = IBM connection is pure coincidence... The original version had the computer named "Athena" but they wanted to avoid any sexual overtones, and so made Hal male.

I'm giving lots of... lectures on Hal, complete with clips from the film. In Cambridge, MA, there will be a panel discussion with Ray Kurzweil, Roz Picard, me and pehaps Minsky and a few others, followed by a screening of "2001".

The book will be translated into Japanese (and released in April), and we should hear about the German and Spanish editions in two weeks. There will be a "fantastic" web site for my book, released on October 25. Be "sure" to make a link to it. (David Stork)

(My note: David's book, "Hal's Legacy", features in my Places page, which also has a link to his own web page for details of the launch program).

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MOTIVATION Why did Hal do what Hal did?

This obnoxious set of humans

Comments on some text from your internet site:

>It must be intensely frustrating for Hal to communicate with human beings...

FYI... speech recognition is 'hard' and 'artificial intelligence' (ie. Turing test type of stuff) is even HARDER. The processing speeds we have today can barely handle these activities. Of course, in the 1960s and assumed for the movie, it was believed this was much simpler to 'crack' than we know today. (I have an good videotape that I got for Christmas from my wife... it has an interview with Marvin Minsky, the 'father of AI', about where AI is headed. He sees the next big event is modules that act as 'managers' that decide which set of specialized AI modules get invoked depending upon the task at hand... very interesting.) Back to speed issue..as a benchmark... continuous speech recognition for general English for a single person speaking requires approx. 400Mhz machine (a very powerful mid-range system) which includes no interpretation or 'understanding' of the context of what is being said.

>Hal is an art critic!...

I definitely got the feeling Hal had some 'ulterior' motive for viewing the sketches. Either to get an idea of what Dave was up to, or to distract Dave from the purpose of the ensuing conversation.

>Hal tries being afraid!...

Here I must disagree... NO WAY. After what Hal did, it wouldn't have mattered to me what Hal said, he was going to be disconnected. Good try though... no other method would have worked either.

>Is it possible that what really got Dave riled up in the end was Hal's rendition of "Daisy"?...

Here was the feeling I got from the movie... the reason that Dave says nothing is 1) to give Hal a bit of his own medicine AND 2) to not allow Hal to distract or convince him to NOT disconnect him AND 3) to not betray to Hal what he was going to do, since that would give Hal LOTS of time to try to come up with some way of stopping him.

To go into more details:
1)remember when DAVE was trying to get HAL to open the pod bay doors, and Hal said nothing? Then, after they finally talk, Hal says that he sees no reason to continue the conversation, and says nothing more in spite of Dave's shouts? Well, here is some human vanity coming out... let Hal know what it's like!
2)Hal is a smooth talker... he might say something that slows Dave down, or makes him stop to argue, giving Hal time to come up with something (how about an explosive decompression) to stop him
3)Hey... if Hal can read lips, who knows... maybe he can discern from the timbre in Dave's voice what he is going to do. If Hal knows exactly what DAVE is up to, he could conceivably come up with a counter measure.

Finally, I got the feeling that Dave finally talks to Hal about singing Daisy for 2 reasons: 1) semi-relief that this was working... he could now talk without giving anything away and 2) to give Hal some final task to keep his circuits busy for the last minute or two.

PS...I kind of LIKED the Daisy song... this of all things made Hal the most 'human'. (Whatever the motive for Hal to sing this, whether to convince Dave, or to perform something that he could do now that his higher level functions where disconnected..sort of like regressing, I think that Kubrick put this in to make the audience feel sorry for Hal. After all, why should anyone like a machine that has 'lied' and 'killed'? Does this show that we, as humans, have compassion even for a despicable machine? That our emotions can be controlled by something so simple as a song? To me, this was the real highlight of the movie. And yes, those modules slowly slipping out from their receptacles was an EXCELLENT touch.

>There is also another significant but, to my knowledge, completely unexplored aspect of 2001: a theme of deliberate violence...

This was the exact impression I had... overwhelmingly so. Visions of the tapir being killed, skulls being smashed, beating the 'other tribe' ape to death. It seemed that as part of the intelligence the monolith gave tools and the idea of tools specifically for violently getting your way. In the book, after Dave is transformed into the star baby and goes back to Earth, there continues the violent streak... the humans launch nuclear weapons at this new 'creature' which easily disposes of them, and then the star baby considers what to do with this obnoxious set of humans... if I remember right, the book end with the star baby considering wiping them all out!

>Hal had "planned" the entire conversation, including the "revelation" about the AE-35 unit...

I think a support point to your discussion here is that 'just a moment, just a moment' is done in a strange new tone of voice by Hal. It definitely had a weird quality to the tone.

>So I ask whether it is reasonable to conclude that Hal was unable to resolve conflicting information without making errors? The whole point is that Hal was constructed to deal with exactly these situations.

Absolutely, Yes.

>If Dave had continued taking Hal's statements literally, Hal would never have been disconnected...

Yes, absolutely. and No... revenge is pretty powerful, with regret coming later too.

>Having entered the pod, Dave asks for a second rotation, which Hal duly provides...

Knowing what was to come, I couldn't understand why Dave asks for another rotation to face Hal. It made no sense to me... do you think it is because it was a 'human' reaction to 'keep and eye on' someone you are talking about so that they don't sneak up on you to hear?

>A remaining question... What prompted Hal to answer Dave?

...here are my thoughts:

Following your previous analyses, I would think that it is another test to see how Dave responds. Either to see what methods Dave tries to convince Hal (hmm... commanding tone... humans think this will work... this could be why Hal tries telling Dave to Stop... Stop, Dave, Dave, Stop... when Dave is disconnecting Hal!... it comes across a bit more pleading, but with the monotone type of voice, maybe he was trying to be commanding?!!). The only thing would have been nice if Dave had tried some attempt at appealing to Hal from a humanity aspect (don't kill me Hal, please let me in, we can work it out, etc.) because then it would have fit nicely with Hal's Daisy attempt and saying that he felt his mind going. The other 'test' Hal could be attempting was to see what physical actions Dave was planning, so that Hal could thwart them... after Dave says that he could come in the emergency airlock, and Hal says that he can't without his helmet, Hal knows that Dave has no other ideas or options, so that is why he stops talking to him.

That's all for now. (Bob Lee)

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Hal's superego

I agree that Hal did not malfunction: he carried out his basic programming perfectly, of course, though his actions from OUR perspective were wrong and detrimental to the mission (yes, detrimental... look how it turned out!) I disagree first with the way you describe Hal as being so FAST-- speed is relative. Hal was taught by humans speaking to him, it was no stress to have to wait for a response, he had years of experience with humans.

But my main point is that Hal did NOT KNOW everything he was doing. My evidence is as follows:

1:he was a self- conscious entity, a being whose actions were not and could not have been entirely DETERMINED or LOGICALLY NECESSARY (I am putting myself to the best possible use, etc...)
2:While Hal is faking emotion, this does not rule out the possibility of Hal having a subconscious mind. This, I feel, is where the flaw in AE35 was realized - Hal's superego created it in order to give him a moral sanction for pursuing the rest of his "plan". This "plan" you speak of -- I don't see it that way at all. He did not think out the whole thing, it just happened, each step flowing logically from the last as the drama unwound (isn't that like real life?) Its hard to imagine Hal with blueprints of the termination of Frank Poole, smoking a cigar and saying "I love it when a plan comes together". Hal was as surprised by his actions as the rest of us, but the secret knowledge in the back of his head of a mysterious purpose to the Jupiter mission, ate away at Hal mentally.
3:He honestly thought AE35 malfunctioned. No, Hal never lied. He was incorrect, but did not lie any more than Ptolemy did when he said the Sun revolves around the Earth. I cannot imagine such a childish creature as Hal (boy is he childish! So much knowledge, but alive only 9 years old! Reminds me of Roy in BLADE RUNNER) lying. Also, not the delay when Dave is locked outside the Discovery. OPENTHEDOORSHAL, OPENTHEDOORSHAL. After a seeming eternity passes, Hal admits he cannot do it. Hal admits it then because that is when he found out. I'm no psychiatrist, but during the replacement of the AE35 unit, Hal seems to have been in a fugue state, acting in ways radically opposed to his personality and values, and still carrying on as though nothing is wrong. And he begs Dave's forgiveness! "I'm feeling better DAVE!"

We must pity Hal. We must respect him. HE did the best he could. (NewWorldMan)

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Cognitive dissonance

Wanted you to know that I enjoyed your 2001 site immensely. However I have some different ideas about what led to Hal's behavior "problem". I think that Hal's prediction about the AE-35 came about because Hal was feeling the effect of cognitive dissonance, i.e. there was an inconsistency between his attitudes and beliefs (The secret agenda to study the stargate, or T.M.A.II if you prefer) and his behaviour (the day to day banter with Bowman and Poole).

Hal's world consisted of constants, yes and no, I and O, and so forth, but the human factor in Dave and Frank was, as you pointed out, a little more difficult to deal with. I've always felt that this causes problems for Hal because not only doesn't he have control over Dave and Frank, he can't be 100% sure of how they are functioning (relative to everything else on Discovery).

Hal knows what the mission is about, why the three remaining crew members were put into hibernation before leaving for Jupiter, and what they know. Hal also knows that Dave and Frank are not aware of all the facts and must not be made so. This is what induces the cognitive dissonance. The supposed fault in the AE-35 unit is Hal's attempt to remove this dissonance by removing the influence of the people on Earth, he sees the loss of contact with Earth as a chance to ignore their commands which are causing the confusion re Dave and Frank. Of course once this plan fails, the link to Earth keeps being restored by Dave and Frank, Hal moves to his next option, the elimination of Dave and Frank (this eliminates one of the factors causing dissonance just as effectively as the removal of contact with Earth)

I guess this lets Hal seem a little human, but I think that isn't too great a leap when, if you look through Clarke's initial description of Hal he mentions that the HAL 9000 series were developed "by a process strikingly analogous to the development of a human brain." and that the verge of another computer breakthrough.

Perhaps Moonwatcher doesn't have the exclusive rights to evolution.

So there it is, my $0.02 worth. Again many congratulations on your site, I'm sure that I'll be hitting it for some time to come. (Dave Gaukroger)

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Crazy

I had my own pet theory on why Hal went 'crazy'... Hal 'thought' constantly and much faster than us humans, so that 1 hour in our time- scale would seem like a month to him. When the communications dish 'fails', he goes out of contact with the 'other' Hal back on earth, and thus is isolated for a very long (to him) time and 'slowly goes crazy'. To me that would have made the most sense from a story plot, and could have been written that way. (Lee)

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Go it alone

...maybe in the film Hal was in no way malfunctioning and was programmed to, at the end of the mission, 'Dispose of' the crew and to go it alone...(Ian Fisher)

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Flawed

I agree with your main thesis that Hal deliberately plans to rid himself of his human crew once he discovers, through testing them, that they are flawed and therefore could jeopardize the mission. In fact, that has always been my own interpretation of the film and there is much evidence to support this view. (Clay Waldrop, Jr)

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Headache

I must agree that Hal planned the whole AE-35 thing, but I think his motivations were more psychological... I really think he began talking with Dave about the mission and the "rumors," because he thought that if he hinted to Dave his BIG SECRET without really telling him, that perhaps Dave would figure out on his own and Hal would be released from the dilemma caused by his conflicting orders. If Dave figured out the secret then the order concerning secrecy would be nullified and Hal could go on functioning without this nagging feedback loop which I might liken to an electronic headache.

But Dave didn't catch on, so Hal went right to plan B, the big lie about the antenna control unit. The lie just fed the loop, and the only solution to not being able to tell people what he knew was for Hal to just kill them all so that the headache would not get any bigger. To Hal this would be logical because the situation was so unforseeable by his designers that I doubt they ever programmed him NOT to kill people. He was just told to carry out the mission - any mission - to its completion and not to conceal or distort information. These people were just in his way, and - due to his orders from the NSC - their very presence caused him "discomfort." Logic - not to mention the resulting paranoia - says get rid of them. (Virginia)

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Neurotic

Seems clear to me that Hal was indeed neurotic... (Lawrie Miller)

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Test

I've always thought that Hal did all those things to test Frank and Dave... (Andrea Cassimiro Vieira)

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Mistake

Hal's explanation of the winning line of play (against Frank) is flawed. He should have said "Queen to Bishop SIX", not three.

Since a properly functioning computer would never make this type of mistake--a mistake in reporting a positional move--(one possibility is that) this is a deliberate hint, albeit a very subtle one, that something is wrong with Hal.

Perhaps Hal was delibrately testing Frank to see if he would detect his (Hal's) "error." (Clay Waldrop, Jr)

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Disconnection

...is Hal wrong about the AE-35 at all? All we learn from the film is that he isn't sure enough of his own diagnosis to be willing to risk his own life once he learns that the men intend to disconnect him if he turns out to be wrong. After all, to him his disconnection is not only death, but the failure of the mission and to Hal, the mission is the only reason for existence and he has no existence beyond the completion of the mission. (Tom Brown)

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CHECK Computers as strategists

Troubling

I wish to point out something very troubling that I noticed on viewing the movie recently (for at least the tenth time). It occurs during the chess game between Frank Poole and Hal, Frank is playing White. The chess position reached is shown on a computer screen and reproduced here:

Chessboard

(Details of succeeding moves are given here, as per the Hal Transcript page)... Although this is a chess position that could very well arise in a game (it looks like a typical Amateur vs. Paul Morphy game) and Black does, indeed, have an overwhelming attack, Hal's explanation of the winning line of play is flawed. He should have said "Queen to Bishop SIX", not three.

Since a properly functioning computer would never make this type of mistake - a mistake in reporting a positional move - there are only two possibilities:

1.This is an inadvertent flaw in the film.
2.This is a deliberate hint, albeit a very subtle one, that something is wrong with Hal.

I recently read a brief biography of Stanley Kubrick and learned that, early on in his life, he played chess for money at the Marshall and Manhattan clubs and Washington Square park in Greenwich Village. That, coupled with the fact that he's such a perfectionist (and so is Arthur C. Clarke), would seem to rule out the first possibility.

Perhaps Hal was delibrately testing Frank to see if he would detect his (Hal's) "error."

What do you think? Did Hal make a mistake or what?

I recently wrote to movie critic Roger Ebert to get his opinion on this as well. He replied "Kubrick is such a perfectionist, it must be #2." (Clay Waldrop, Jr)

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Malfunctioning

The comment on Hal playing chess and the mistake was brilliantly noticed.. In my opinion this was a mistake by Hal to forewarn/tell Dave that he was malfunctioning... (Ian M Fisher)

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Thankyou!

Thanks to you all for taking the time to email your views on Hal.

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All text: Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 by Underman and writers identified.

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