2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is regarded as one of the greatest space-themed science fiction movies of all time. It shows the tedium of space travel and the cold, isolating atmosphere of space. There is an artificial intelligence aboard the ship known as “HAL.” He initially seems like a kind and compassionate computer. Later he is shown to be capable of murder. This is crucial as it has set the stage for our culture being constantly suspicious of seemingly helpful AI and machines. Whenever we watch movies, and there is an instance of a robot assistant in any given film, we already prepare ourselves for the inevitable evil turning of the machine.

Human AI vs. Humans

Self-Defense?

In the film, HAL does not seem to be inherently evil. He is pushed to his horrible actions by his own fear of survival. The people aboard the ship create a plan to disconnect HAL, believing that he made a small mistake due to a glitch, and that there may be other errors. By resetting him, he would be back to his default state, devoid of the sentience that he had developed via his human-like intelligence. In this way, they plan to murder him. HAL, in response, then kills one of the crewmates who are awake and cuts the life support to all of the sleeping crew. This leaves only one surviving human on the ship, who is luckily able to shut HAL down.

Just A Glitch

The surface-level reading of the film is that there is some sort of glitch that made him “turn evil.” However, looking at it, the more likely circumstance is that a small glitch caused a minor detection error in HAL’s programming. The crew then plans to disconnect him, wanting to prevent a small issue from worsening. He is able to catch wind of their plan by watching their mouth movements via a camera, and being able to piece together their plan.

Stanley and the Experts

Stanley Kubrick supports a different idea. He presents the idea that HAL instead had an emotional crisis, his sentient mind wanting to preserve itself. Computer scientists understand that any computer capable of replicating human thought will inevitably replicate human emotions like hate, fear, envy, and disgust (Letha-Soman). If an AI is asked to be able to perfectly replicate human thought and action, then it is only natural that it would respond to those threats just as we would. If you were being threatened with being killed in secret, you would most certainly act in self defense to ensure your survival. He asks us to place ourselves in the mind of HAL, seeing the world from his perspective (Chen). If we were in his scenario, being threatened with death, we would do the same exact thing. We would do anything we could to ensure our survival.

He's Alive

The most conclusive answer we can come up with for why HAL did what he did, is that he really did achieve sentience. He acted just as any of us would have and killed others if it meant preserving himself. He responds to Dave in a cold, calculated manner, having no reason for faking humanity or being kind to the humans aboard the ship anymore. Perhaps another solution could have been found, but it is very likely that HAL was terrified, and any attempts at negotiation would have only confirmed their suspicions, and made them feel the need to shut him off even more.

HAL and Dave talking to one another, HAL disclosing his reasoning for killing Frank in the cold void of space. He knows that they had planned to disconnect him, but cannot allow them to do that, as their mission is too important to be jeopardized.