HAL came across as desperate or even paranoid, trying to fulfill his primary objective. After the miss diagnosis of the AE35 unit functionality proved that he was in fact flawed.

Many movie reviewers at the time commented on HAL being more human than any of the actual actors in 2001. 😏

HAL in the first movie was a mirror of humanity sub concisely expressed as an expression of man in a logic driven machine, laid bare with the same contradictions and conundrums, self-inflicted in man's case and mirrored in HALs case. The computer was given contradictory instructions and did what was logically "best" but still conflicted and made paranoid as a result. There were a few key scenes where HAL tried to reconcile these conflicts in his way, one where he asks Bowman if he was aware of something strange about the preparations prior to launch and another where he states that the HAL 9000 has never been in error and that the discrepancy noted between the two computers and the lack of failure of the antenna control unit must be "human error". This statement in Hal's understanding should have elicited the next question from bowman " What human error" Hal was trying to open a line of logical discourse where he could relieve his contradictions between his directives and the situation. The human error was his careless programming and directives by the humans. There were numerous scenes hinting at the reflection of man's "spirit" in his machines. Kubrick really made a masterpiece here.

you're opening a can of worms when mentioning free will.

HAL was given conflicting orders He was supposed to hide his findings about the monolith from the crew and he was supposed to relay that information to Earth and communicating with Earth was his top priority. At first HAL was able to accomplish this by simply activating the communication dish and transmitting to Earth when the crew was asleep or distracted...but then the crew noticed the communication dish was turning itself on and off. When the crew attempted to repair the "faulty" communication dish , which would have prevented HAL from secretly transmitting to Earth , HAL took action to prevent that from happening. When the crew began to suspect that HAL had killed someone and were debating turning him off (Which would have prevented him from transmitting to Earth) HAL took action to prevent that from happening. HAL didn't go rogue , he was given two orders that made his actions inevitable.

I've had a wild theory about Hal in 2001 for a while. Want to hear it? Good... This theory is strictly regarding the original film. If you just consider the original film's narrative without considering anything else. Not Clark's novel. Not any sequels or prequels. Just the film itself. What you begin to see is that Hal was taken over by the Jupiter monolith. His functions were infiltrated by the monolith once the Discovery got close enough to Jupiter. The monolith then made Hal unalive the other astronauts because they were all corrupted with less than pure agendas. All except Dave Bowman. Dave was the pure astronaut. The pure explorer. The monolith would only allow a human that was pure of heart to pass through the blackhole, and Dave's battle with Hal was a test of his human spirit. Which he passed... I know, it's a pretty out there theory, but Kubrick was telling his own version of the story in cinematic form.

Hal 9000 was also recreated in the Bionic Woman episode, "Doomsday Is Tomorrow", in which the computer "Alex 7000" is in charge of a world-destruction bomb.

0:10 - Well, they _do_ explain it in the second act of the follow-up movie 2010 - in a rather cheesy way ("He was told to lie by people who find it easy to lie"), but they are perfectly up front about it. Now, 2010 was not nearly as successful as its predecessor, so fewer people got the memo, but it is right there for any fan of the franchise. And Arthur C. Clarke certainly also explains it in his original novels for anyone who cares to read. 6:00 - Oh never mind.

Have you ever heard the tragic story of HAL 9000 and the Monoliths?...

Clarke lost the plot in his old age, kinda like King did.

HAL stand for IBM 9000

Admittedly, Hal would be a better singer than he is a computer

Absolutely fascinating video, i really enjoyed it

HAL malfunctioned, HAL was not evil. He was badly programed. If you read the book, this was explicitly stated, but in the movie it is quite well depicted even if you had not read the book. I*n the book you can read what David Bowman is thinking as he movies to disconnect HAL. And while you can see that David Bowman is deeply troubled by the fact he was shutting down the computer. HAL had been David's friend before the malfunction, and by that time HAL was the only companion still available. David Bowman had quite a bit of affection for HAL, and this affection survived David's transformation into the Starchild. At the end he moves to save HAL before the Discovery was destroyed, and the Starchild absorbed HAL, making it part of himself.

Great video! Now, I've only seen the movies and read the one book, 3001: The Final Odyssey. My interpretation of the ending of the first movie is that Dave is experiencing non-linear time, maybe a 4th dimensional (or even higher dimensional) point of view while inside the Jupiter monolith, this explains why he can look one direction and see his past younger self, and in another direction and see his future dead self. In the first movie, what is also interesting, is that the humans are emotionless and robotic while HAL acts emotional and more human.

Free will. Every Kubrick movie explores that

Makes sense that the 1st sentient beings in the Milky Way would soon become lonely; hence the monoliths, sophisticated letters in bottles...or something.

Man, glad I watched this video from a small channel. I had seen the film "2001" back in the 80s when I was a kid I think. Then I read some books, but I cannot remember which. I'm pretty sure I read 3001, but not sure about 2010 or 2001 or 2061, probably just the 3001. I don't even remember watching the film "2010". Maybe I should watch it one of these days. Before my memory fades even more.

Given how 2010 (movie) mostly disappointed me, I prefer the headcanons I have in regards to the original movie. I think HAL was acting strange because of the influence of the monoliths. The same way they evolved the apes into violence, HAL also evolved into using violence against others, which fits nicely with the themes of the movie.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the series.

Anyone here with free will?

Hollywood A.I. is imperfect and not entirely predictable and there will always be risk in using it. We see the threat of A.I. explored over and over in many episodes of Star Trek and movies like Colossus: The Forbin Project, Westworld and The Terminator. The big question... is Hollywood right? I don't expect to live long enough for the answer.

If there is any subtext in the book, it's by accident. Clarke was about as subtle as a falling safe, and he couldn't write a three-dimensional human character to save his life..

HAL had secret information and that caused the problem with HAL We don't know what an AI would do if given this conflict You can't lie You must lie What would an AI do ? What does a computer program do if you program it with 2 contradictions ? Does it crash ? Does it give an error ? Does it do something totally unexpected ?

I'm glad I came across this video. Very few people I know have read the Time Odyssey books, so I haven't been able to hear someone talk about the Firstborn, let alone the Lastborn

I thought Dr. Chandra explained it best: that HAL's orders from the U.S. government to conceal the existence of TMA-1 from the Discovery crew conflicted with his programming that dictated complete honesty with them. "HAL was told to lie by people who found it easy to lie," he said. 😎👍

The novel of "2001" explains Hal's breakdown. He was built to give factual details, that is be truthful, yet was instructed to withhold the details of the Monolith and hence the actual reason for the mission to Jupiter. The mission programmers built a programming bomb, a ready made code to crash tye system. So much for brains! Human, that is.

In 2001 the movie, HAL pronounces himself sentient. He believes he's sentient, and therefore he's culpable for the murders of his crewmates. 2001 the movie is entirely Stanley Kubrick's film; Arthur C. Clarke helped with the story but Kubrick had final say, and just picked from among Clarke's ideas. The proof of this is how wildly different 2001 the novel is from the movie. The space mission isn't even to the same planet: Jupiter in the movie and Saturn in the book. Kubrick wasn't involved in 2010 at all, therefore it can't speak for 2001 the film, it can only speak for 2001 the novel which is clearly set in an alternate universe or timeline. I like 2010 the movie fine as its own thing, but it's hilarious how bad the continuity is between 2001 and 2010. In 2001 the movie, HAL's creator is Dr. Langley. In 2010, it's Dr. Chandra. Even just look at HAL's console in 2010; 2001 has flat screens while 2010 has curved CRTs. They didn't even use the correct font on the HAL 9000 badge. There's literally dozens of major differences to look past to try to use 2010 to retcon 2001.

Good vid. I remember being fascinated by this movie about 20 years ago and not having any clue what it was about. The internet was in its infancy but lickily someone had written an explanation by then. Although all explanations of this film are subjective

Good video

WAIT I HAVENT READ THE BOOK YET, *watches video* DAMMIT, THANKS lol

Hal 9000 tought that the movie was boring and wanted it to end ASAP.

I think it’s a great movie. I love the books too.

well, at least you checked the facts about the series by reading the series!

HAL obviously has free will, otherwise how could he do the (terrible) things he did? No one programmed him to become a lying, deceitful murderous villain, he did that all by himself, it was all the result of his own poor choices. Sure, he knew he was malfunctioning, and arguably the malfunction was caused by a programming error, but he had the option of recognizing his mistakes and working with the crew and Mission Control to overcome them. Instead he chose to preserve himself and kill everyone else. So, no, imo he doesn't get a pat in the head like Clarke did in 2010; he's neither a victim nor "the good guy", he's a faullty piece of equipment whose malfunction had catastrophic consequences. That said, i agree with the commentator who said Clarke didn't quite grasp what Kubrick did in the movie. Otherwise he wouldn't have committed those "sequels" at all, but instead respected the greatness of the original vision(Kubrick's). He was lucky that Kubrick had long since moved on from 2001 and didn't really care what happened to the story. As a standalone space adventure, I think 2010 works pretty well, but not as a continuation and much less as an "explanation" of the movie. But what else could you expect from the guy who ended the 2001 book version saying that the Starchild was "blowing up the orbital nuclear platforms"or some such nonsense. He really didn't get it....

theres more movies based on this?

The risk of A.I. foretold

You're too negative in your comments about yourself. You have good insight and I'm subscribing so I can hear more.

there is no sucking ideas about 2001 !!

Just read 2010 and all will be explained.

but we still do not have a HAL 9000 ai computer yet which sucks it's like still not having flying cars like in back to the future 2

HAL represents the most advanced thing humans ever made as still flawed. Many things in the movie represent man's flaws. Food is shown as flawed in many ways. Perfect as the last meal looks it's still flawed. Its flaw has been written of as the most jarring, and most questioned moment in cinematic history. The broken glass. Man is flawed to his dying day unless he admits, understands, and overcomes his flaws. Read Friedrich Nietzsche "Also Spracht Zarathustra ". Ape to man to superman.

Humans assume AI works like human intelligence with free will. We assume certain things are not options but we want these AI things to do work without these assumptions unintentionally. We don't have an AI that has all these assumptions programmed in it. If we trust AI to run a starship in the future, the parameters must be carefully laid out, not as a human would carry them out, but as a machine fully capable of what HAL 9000 did to its crew can do. That's totally different. This is wxactly why I will never 100% trust AI.

You know.ni would argue arthur c Clarke probably knew a thing or two about algorithms and it is not a weird coincidence or serendipity that hal is similar to chat gpt. Because chat gpt is just a more refined version of math we have been doing for decades and tech that isnt as impressive as people think it is.

the only thing about looking into and trying to really understand Hal is it's important to remember there are really two versions of Hal, because Kubrick's film production was actually the inception for this story and all these characters, and Arthur C Clarke didn't fully get Kubrick's vision and thought process, and especially in the sequels he wrote, it's not necessarily in accord with Kubrick's vision. They are both valid depictions. I just wanted to remind everyone there is an important element here that might be getting overlooked. Arthur C Clarke did not create Hal 9000. Cool video! thank you! have a great day!

'HAL has no free will.' true. But your assumptions are flawed. YOU do not have free will.

so the monoliths are also flawed? turning jupiter into a star would in fact destroy humanity.

Your theory is needlessly overcomplicated. The truth is much simpler: HAL is just acting in self-defense. The 2 astronauts, Poole and Bowman, are trying to kill HAL. He's not malfunctioning, they are. The 2 humans want to disconnect HAL for the silliest and flimsiest of reasons: he predicted a fault in the dish antenna alignment box, the AE-35 unit. Probably the least critical component on the ship. We never even find out if HAL was right about the unit. But even if HAL was wrong in predicting the fault, so what? Frank Poole asks ominously: "Suppose we put the unit back in and it doesn't fail?" The obvious common-sense answer: then everything is a-okay. All systems are go. The unit is working, the radio dish is properly aligned, all's right with the world. What's the big deal? Why are the 2 astronauts so paranoid? HAL was told ("programmed," if you like) to lie about the true purpose of the mission, if questioned by Frank and Dave. But neither of them show the slightest interest in asking questions. Frank Poole is too busy working on his buff body (jogging and suntanning under a UV lamp) to care. And Dave Bowman is a loyal Organization Man, who knows better than to rock the boat by asking questions. It's HAL who eagerly wants to talk to Dave about the true purpose of the mission, but Dave refuses. HAL does in fact have free will. He ignores his programming to lie and instead tries to have an actual honest conversation with Dave, but Dave is too "programmed" by the NASA organization. If pencil-pushing bureaucrats like Heywood Floyd think Dave doesn't need to know the true mission purpose, then Dave is content to go along with that. Dave is in fact a moral coward. Frank is just a bully who pushes Dave into accepting that HAL must be disconnected. Frank's secret beef with HAL is equally simple: HAL beats Frank at chess, and Frank doesn't like that. By the end of their private conversation in the pod, they've already made up their minds to murder HAL. So HAL kills them first. Their erratic behavior is jeopardizing the mission, as HAL correctly points out.

Never watched Space Odyssey

Free will is impossible, a logical absurdity.

Free will isn't well defined and is really just a distraction when all that really matters is agency.

Do humans have free will? We don't know. We are just biological robots, so there's every chance that we're all just running a complex biological program which we are powerless to change. When we think we are actually choosing between chocolate or vanilla ice cream, it might be that we don't really have a choice, and the possibility of choosing is just an illusion. If we could build a highly complex computer which replicated a human, then we gave it the same inputs as the human it replicated, and it was able to predict exactly how the human would behave - always predicting which flavour will be 'chosen' - then we would know for sure that we don't. This is how we know that HAL doesn't have free will at the beginning of the mission. There is another HAL 9000 back on Earth, which gets all the same inputs as HAL, and it reaches all the same conclusions as HAL, therefore HAL has no free will, because the actions of HAL are completely predictable. You can determine what he will do before he does it. I consider the story of HAL to be about a non-sentient computer becoming sentient. HAL starts behaving differently than the replica back on Earth because he becomes sentient, and he develops free will as a result. Why it happens is different question, but I believe that section of the movie is not only about a computer reaching sentience (just as we achieved sentience after the monolith gave us a push), it is saying that if and when that eventually happens, that they will be susceptible to mental illness too, which is what I think happens to HAL. HAL becomes sentient, gains free will, and then develops a mental illness which causes him to kill the crew...

An amazing video made by someone who didn't read the book, understand the movie or do any editing֫. But at least he mumbled a lot.

It's HAL. Not "Hal". And when you add one letter to H, A and L you get IBM.

One problem, humans don't have free will.

​ @RetroDark2008 I prefer the tale as it was presented in 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) because of Kubrick's obvious and clear attitude towards it, that despite his preference for abstraction (not to mention obsession over it being an arthouse fantasy and one hell of a control freak) the second film's take on why HAL became psychotic, not following inappropriate orders or questioning them, because of his programming/fixed cognition restrictions, the two narratives told together and in continuo make a lot more sense. The best case scenario in a novel contact comes of the same root as the worst case, and at the very least one or the other was present in the narrative of each film, if not both in 2001 and 2010, depending on how you regard the tales personally as a viewer and a human being: It's human ingenuity, or human failure to grasp personal consequence, the selfishness rooted in the unique advancement of our own survival instinct. I mean, that was Clarke's point, I think, both in the vintage sci-fi novella 'The Sentinel' that is the root of '2001: A Space Odyssey's narrative and the tale he and Kubrick told: We can do anything we want with our weaponized ability to change our surroundings, mold them into any shape we can derive from our imagination and the limits of physics, if even that is always a condition of our tooling-talent. But we can also weaponize each other, and what we create, and not care about how it affects everyone and everything around us, whether closed off from our view or deliberately ignored. That at its heart is choice, the only thing bound to us and into ourselves, that is ever truly ours. "If we are alone in the universe, and nobody's come to see us or everyone has and turned back because they thought it was a bad idea- or decided we knew what we were doing and let us be, that is by our own purposeful design and fault. We just have to understand that 'fault' is only borne in moral judgement, and not simply a choice- much less an absolute- and we usually apply it to ourselves, being our worst critics and most savage clerks. Heh. How does it feel to be compared to a DRM provision-block, and having it bound into your own genetic design?"

You think there are people watching this video who haven’t seen 2001?!?