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.
Yeah, thats the only real thing that disproves some of this video, but I think it was a retcon, because the misdiagnosis of the AE35 unit could have been him lying. But in 2010 its said that he can't lie and that his malfunction was caused by the White House. So I chose to ignore the messy continuity of 2001 and 2010. I probably should have addressed it in the video.
He did lie about the AE35 unit. From HAL's perspective, it was the only way he could carry out his orders, even though the act of lying violates his core programming. As Dr. Chandra said, HAL "became trapped" between two core tenants of his programming: obey all orders from humans, and not to lie to them. This paradox caused HAL to behave irrationally, believing that Bowman and Poole were jeopardizing the mission.
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.
This is an excellent argument, though I doubt Kubrick himself was aware of Clark's intentions with his follow-up story. The vagueness of HAL's "malfunction" makes the audience ask questions, which is enough for the purposes of this film.
I like your explanation about that scene in question; I also always felt that HAL wanted to maneuver Bowman into asking questions to which he would be able - no, compelled - to answer by telling the truth. But the point is that HAL seems to question things (or to be precise, the mission) more than the humans do, or at least Bowman does. (He also seems to be more considerate; there is one scene where it is Frank Poole's birthday and HAL rather than Bowman congratulates him, although it would have rested with Bowman as Poole's most immediate boss to do that). But, concerning the other point, if humans are given contradictory instructions for their work and their behavior, they are likely to screw up as well, especially when being put between a rock and a hard place. So HAL is only "human" in this respect. The entire movie can be read as a study of evolution, and of what drives beings to evolve, and in this respect HAL is no different than humans. Ostensibly, the movie is about human evolution, but it is in reality so much more. The examples we are shown in the movie of what drives evolution forward is always the instinct to want to survive - it's what makes the ape at the beginning of the movie take up the animal's bone and use it as a weapon, and the space weaponry we see in orbit a few minutes after that are no different - the drive to survive by gaining an edge over the other side. And it's significant that whîle HAL initially may be paranoid, he does not tune in to full defense and killing mode until Bowman and Poole start discussing switching him off. In other words n- he only starts to kill when he sees his existence threatened. And if you watch the scene closely where Dave switches off HAL, there is a moment during that process where Dave as a truly shocked, almost stricken expression on his face - and I think that this is the point where he recognizes he is not just switching off a machine that's gone haywire - he's about to kill a sentient being.
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.
That does make sense when considering it as its own film, and in my first viewing I felt like the monolith was doing something like that. The original film by itself is so vague that anything could make sense.
Interesting idea about HAL being taken over by the Monolith. I hadn't thought of that angle before. I haven't studied the other sources, but at least the sequel movie "2010" doesn't appear to me to prove otherwise. Chandra could have been right about HAL being corrupted by conflicting programming, yet wrong to assume the source was human.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Makes sense that the 1st sentient beings in the Milky Way would soon become lonely; hence the monoliths, sophisticated letters in bottles...or something.
HAL was going to be an IBM 9000 computer named Athena. IBM was intensely involved in the development of 2001 and you can still see many IBM references in the movie, including the flight computer seen in the Orion III spaceplane that has HAL-like screens and displays. It was only when the computer started killing crew that IBM pulled out, and the IBM computer got renamed HAL by Kubrick. All this can be verified if you care to do a little research. "Heuristic Algorithmic" is a very clumsy backronym, but it's the best they could come up with.
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.
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..
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
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.
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.
Not sure I even want to live long enough for the answer. I'll assume you're around my age if you remember The Forbin Project, another reason there's no Alexis in this home. THX 1138, not so much about AI but a future I don't want. There has to be an off switch.
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 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. 😎👍
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....
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
The Book explains a lot, and is where I pulled a lot of the info from. I have read the entire space odyssey book series, I finally finished 2061 a few weeks ago because it was so horrible I couldn't finish it for two years.
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.
I liked it being a mission to Saturn more because if I can recall the rings of Saturn were implied to have been made by the monolith, it just feels better.
@@RetroDark2008 Funny how Clarke even broken continuity between 2001 the novel and 2010 the novel, by making Discovery have gone to Jupiter instead of Saturn.
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!
ACC even admitted that the novels don't all form together in a coherent timeline, and have many cases of "In one volume they say this, but in another volume they say that." Many fans were disappointed with 3001 for revealing that the mystical wondrous Monoliths are just advanced computers. The way the Monoliths are overcome in 3001 was pointed out at the time to be very similar to the resolution of the then-recent movie Independence Day, which was in turn a reworking of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.
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.
@@RetroDark2008 even worse: you would need to make jupiter 81 times heavier to get it to turn into a red dwarf wich is relevant because even the mass increase to create a brown dwarf would totaly wreck the solar system.
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.
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.
"Frank Poole is too busy working on his buff body (jogging and suntanning under a UV lamp)" - They are in space, confined to a small space, exercise is necessary for survival.
@@bztube888 So why doesn't Kubrick show Dave Bowman doing the same thing? Dave must be doing that too, you're right, they're in space, they both need exercise and UV tanning. But Kubrick emphasizes different aspects of each man's personality. Frank Poole is shown to be the physical guy, the jock, the man of action. But Kubrick chooses to show Dave Bowman drawing and sketching. Dave is the artist, the thinker, the intellectual, that's why he's the Mission Commander (and not Frank). They are two different kinds of men, the thinker and the doer, the introvert and the extrovert. Because Kubrick is a visual director, he SHOWS us all this rather than TELLING us.
I am open to being criticized, it has been a bit since I have watched some of these movies, and some of read some of these books. I can agree that the editing was bad, and I could work on my speaking voice, there is always improvement to be made.
@@RetroDark2008 Don't worry about it. I've got the same problem. I usually have to read a line five or six times before it's something I'm not ashamed to upload, lol.
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...
@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?"
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.
Yeah, thats the only real thing that disproves some of this video, but I think it was a retcon, because the misdiagnosis of the AE35 unit could have been him lying. But in 2010 its said that he can't lie and that his malfunction was caused by the White House. So I chose to ignore the messy continuity of 2001 and 2010. I probably should have addressed it in the video.
He did lie about the AE35 unit. From HAL's perspective, it was the only way he could carry out his orders, even though the act of lying violates his core programming. As Dr. Chandra said, HAL "became trapped" between two core tenants of his programming: obey all orders from humans, and not to lie to them. This paradox caused HAL to behave irrationally, believing that Bowman and Poole were jeopardizing the mission.
Reporting that the AE35 unit was about to fail was a ploy to get David and Frank outside the ship. HAL did not make a mistake, he lied.
@@erictaylor5462 yep.
@@RetroDark2008So maybe The White House ordered him to lie about the malfunction?
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.
The exact same thing is occurring in llms right now.
Look at Google Gemini right now. It's a gas lamping machine.
It really is.
This is an excellent argument, though I doubt Kubrick himself was aware of Clark's intentions with his follow-up story. The vagueness of HAL's "malfunction" makes the audience ask questions, which is enough for the purposes of this film.
@@Lennis01 What was the purpose of the film, I mean, what was Kubrick getting at?
I like your explanation about that scene in question; I also always felt that HAL wanted to maneuver Bowman into asking questions to which he would be able - no, compelled - to answer by telling the truth. But the point is that HAL seems to question things (or to be precise, the mission) more than the humans do, or at least Bowman does. (He also seems to be more considerate; there is one scene where it is Frank Poole's birthday and HAL rather than Bowman congratulates him, although it would have rested with Bowman as Poole's most immediate boss to do that).
But, concerning the other point, if humans are given contradictory instructions for their work and their behavior, they are likely to screw up as well, especially when being put between a rock and a hard place. So HAL is only "human" in this respect. The entire movie can be read as a study of evolution, and of what drives beings to evolve, and in this respect HAL is no different than humans. Ostensibly, the movie is about human evolution, but it is in reality so much more. The examples we are shown in the movie of what drives evolution forward is always the instinct to want to survive - it's what makes the ape at the beginning of the movie take up the animal's bone and use it as a weapon, and the space weaponry we see in orbit a few minutes after that are no different - the drive to survive by gaining an edge over the other side. And it's significant that whîle HAL initially may be paranoid, he does not tune in to full defense and killing mode until Bowman and Poole start discussing switching him off. In other words n- he only starts to kill when he sees his existence threatened. And if you watch the scene closely where Dave switches off HAL, there is a moment during that process where Dave as a truly shocked, almost stricken expression on his face - and I think that this is the point where he recognizes he is not just switching off a machine that's gone haywire - he's about to kill a sentient being.
Have you ever heard the tragic story of HAL 9000 and the Monoliths?...
you're opening a can of worms when mentioning free will.
I know, thats the point.
@@RetroDark2008Sure you won't reconsider?
@@kopeofonrac2084 Its 12 am for me right now, idk really.
He has no choice…
🥰 nah, dont change it, its a very important part of sentience
a very valid point.
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.
That does make sense when considering it as its own film, and in my first viewing I felt like the monolith was doing something like that. The original film by itself is so vague that anything could make sense.
Interesting idea about HAL being taken over by the Monolith. I hadn't thought of that angle before. I haven't studied the other sources, but at least the sequel movie "2010" doesn't appear to me to prove otherwise. Chandra could have been right about HAL being corrupted by conflicting programming, yet wrong to assume the source was human.
Honestly I always thought this interpretation was kinda "obvious" when I saw the movie as a kid.
@@salvatronprime9882 It's the only thing that makes sense. But it's very subtle because that's the kind of genius film maker Kubrick was.
That's what I thought too.
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.
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.
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.
In fairness, that style of acting was fairly common in the 1960's. I don't think it was a deliberate creative choice.
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.
Admittedly, Hal would be a better singer than he is a computer
😂
Makes sense that the 1st sentient beings in the Milky Way would soon become lonely; hence the monoliths, sophisticated letters in bottles...or something.
HAL stand for IBM 9000
HAL is one step ahead of IBM.
I agree, but I'm curious about your opinion on the significance of the "9000" part is. Why that number?
No, HAL means Heuristic Algorithmic. It was never any coded reference to IBM.
HAL was going to be an IBM 9000 computer named Athena. IBM was intensely involved in the development of 2001 and you can still see many IBM references in the movie, including the flight computer seen in the Orion III spaceplane that has HAL-like screens and displays. It was only when the computer started killing crew that IBM pulled out, and the IBM computer got renamed HAL by Kubrick. All this can be verified if you care to do a little research. "Heuristic Algorithmic" is a very clumsy backronym, but it's the best they could come up with.
Clarke lost the plot in his old age, kinda like King did.
Yeah, 2061 is more of a book about the diamond economy than a space odyssey
Kind of like Lucas as well, sadly...
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.
Absolutely fascinating video, i really enjoyed it
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..
I was rereading the 2001 book for the third time, and yeah, the flaws get more clear after each reading
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 never even knew they existed until now!
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.
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.
Not sure I even want to live long enough for the answer. I'll assume you're around my age if you remember The Forbin Project, another reason there's no Alexis in this home. THX 1138, not so much about AI but a future I don't want. There has to be an off switch.
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 ?
Free will. Every Kubrick movie explores that
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. 😎👍
Anyone here with free will?
Yeah, but it's too much trouble...
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....
The name Chandra also means Moon.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the series.
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
The Book explains a lot, and is where I pulled a lot of the info from. I have read the entire space odyssey book series, I finally finished 2061 a few weeks ago because it was so horrible I couldn't finish it for two years.
Hal 9000 tought that the movie was boring and wanted it to end ASAP.
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.
I liked it being a mission to Saturn more because if I can recall the rings of Saturn were implied to have been made by the monolith, it just feels better.
@@RetroDark2008 Funny how Clarke even broken continuity between 2001 the novel and 2010 the novel, by making Discovery have gone to Jupiter instead of Saturn.
@@MacbthPSW Clarke said that 2010 was set in a continuity which mishmashes elements of 2001 film and book.
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!
ACC even admitted that the novels don't all form together in a coherent timeline, and have many cases of "In one volume they say this, but in another volume they say that."
Many fans were disappointed with 3001 for revealing that the mystical wondrous Monoliths are just advanced computers. The way the Monoliths are overcome in 3001 was pointed out at the time to be very similar to the resolution of the then-recent movie Independence Day, which was in turn a reworking of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.
well, at least you checked the facts about the series by reading the series!
I think it’s a great movie. I love the books too.
Good video
The risk of A.I. foretold
theres more movies based on this?
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
But at least we have that Zero Gravity Toilet.
Can't have everything. No one predicted everyone having access to anything like the modern Internet back then, y'know...
Just read 2010 and all will be explained.
I read that book a while back, and its a bit odd, the continuity is a bit broken, but I liked it.
You're too negative in your comments about yourself. You have good insight and I'm subscribing so I can hear more.
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.
so the monoliths are also flawed? turning jupiter into a star would in fact destroy humanity.
Not only that, they also destroyed all Jovian life.
@@RetroDark2008 more likely all life in the solar system. new stars are dagnerous you know.
@@Irobert1115HD Yeah, that was always weird in the books and movies. A star that only lasts 1000 years created by a bunch of rectangular prisms.
@@RetroDark2008 even worse: you would need to make jupiter 81 times heavier to get it to turn into a red dwarf wich is relevant because even the mass increase to create a brown dwarf would totaly wreck the solar system.
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.
WAIT I HAVENT READ THE BOOK YET, *watches video* DAMMIT, THANKS lol
there is no sucking ideas about 2001 !!
Never watched Space Odyssey
😲
'HAL has no free will.'
true.
But your assumptions are flawed.
YOU do not have free will.
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.
That is a great theory, there are many possible interpretations of this series, it is nice to see others takes on things.
I'm not sure I agree, but it's an interesting theory.
You assume that HAL had survival instinct, but that's our "directive". HAL doesn't care to die later in the story.
"Frank Poole is too busy working on his buff body (jogging and suntanning under a UV lamp)" - They are in space, confined to a small space, exercise is necessary for survival.
@@bztube888 So why doesn't Kubrick show Dave Bowman doing the same thing? Dave must be doing that too, you're right, they're in space, they both need exercise and UV tanning. But Kubrick emphasizes different aspects of each man's personality. Frank Poole is shown to be the physical guy, the jock, the man of action. But Kubrick chooses to show Dave Bowman drawing and sketching. Dave is the artist, the thinker, the intellectual, that's why he's the Mission Commander (and not Frank). They are two different kinds of men, the thinker and the doer, the introvert and the extrovert. Because Kubrick is a visual director, he SHOWS us all this rather than TELLING us.
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.
I am open to being criticized, it has been a bit since I have watched some of these movies, and some of read some of these books. I can agree that the editing was bad, and I could work on my speaking voice, there is always improvement to be made.
@@RetroDark2008 Don't worry about it. I've got the same problem. I usually have to read a line five or six times before it's something I'm not ashamed to upload, lol.
Free will is impossible, a logical absurdity.
Thank you, I feel better now.
You can't make me believe that. You are not my supervisor.
Free will isn't well defined and is really just a distraction when all that really matters is agency.
It's HAL. Not "Hal". And when you add one letter to H, A and L you get IBM.
I know, its just simpler to say Hal. HAL is basically an advanced IBM computer.
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...
@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?!?
Look at my channel before this video, it was a gaming channel. I was not expecting it to be this popular lol.
I know lots of people who have never seen the movie or even Star Wars. I just figured almost everyone has seen it.
@@Jacob-ed1bl I saw 2001 in 1968, 2010 in 1984, and 1984 in 1984, and 1941 in 1979.