HAL 9000

File:Hal-9000.jpg

HAL's iconic camera eye.

HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic Computer) is a fictional character in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey saga. The novels, along with two films, begin with 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968. It was ranked #13 on a list of greatest film villains of all on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains.

HAL is an artificial intelligence, the sentient on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery. HAL is usually represented only as his television camera "eyes" that can be seen throughout the Discovery spaceship. The voice of HAL 9000 was performed by Canadian actor Douglas Rain. In the book, HAL became operational on January 12, 1997 (1992 in the movie) at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois, and was created by Dr. Chandra. In the 2001 film, HAL is depicted as being capable not only of speech recognition, facial recognition, and natural language processing, but also lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotions, expressing emotions, reasoning, and, of course, chess, in addition to maintaining all systems on an interplanetary voyage.

HAL is never visualised as a single entity. He is, however, portrayed with a soft voice and a conversational manner. This is in contrast to the human astronauts, who speak in terse monotone, as do all other actors in the film.

In the French language version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL's name is given as "CARL", for Cerveau Analytique de Recherche et de Liaison ("Analytic Research and Communication Brain"). The camera plates, however, still read "HAL 9000".

Although it is often conjectured that the name HAL was based on a one letter shift from the name IBM, this has been denied by both Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick. In 2010: Odyssey Two, Clarke speaks through the character of Dr. Chandra, who characterized this idea as: "[u]tter nonsense! [...] I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic".

HAL's history

HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, after HAL appears to be mistaken about a fault in the spacecraft's communications antenna, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole consider disconnecting his cognitive circuits. They believe that HAL cannot hear them, but are unaware that HAL is capable of lip reading. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue "his" programmed directives. HAL proceeds to kill Poole while he is repairing the ship, and those of the crew in suspended animation by disabling their life support systems.

File:Hal brain room605.JPG

A view of HAL 9000's central core in the Discovery.

Realizing what has occurred, Bowman then shuts down the machine. HAL's central core is depicted as a crawlspace full of brightly lit computer modules mounted in arrays from which they can be inserted or removed. Bowman shuts down HAL by removing modules from service one by one; as he does so, HAL's consciousness degrades. HAL regurgitates material that was programmed into him early in his memory, including announcing the date he became operational as 12 January 1992. By the time HAL's logic is completely gone, he begins singing the song "Daisy Bell". HAL's final act of any significance is to prematurely play a prerecorded message from Mission Control which reveals the true reasons for the mission to Jupiter, which had been kept secret from the crew and not been intended to be played until the ship entered Jupiter orbit.

HAL in 2010: Odyssey Two

In the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, HAL is restarted by his creator, Dr. Chandra, who arrives on the Soviet spaceship Leonov. Prior to leaving Earth, Dr. Chandra has also had a discussion with HAL's twin, the SAL9000 (see and section below). Dr. Chandra discovers that HAL's crisis was caused by a programming contradiction: he was constructed for "the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment", yet his orders, directly from White House officials, required him to keep the discovery of the Monolith TMA-1 a secret for reasons of national security. This contradiction created a "Hofstadter-Moebius loop," reducing HAL to paranoia. This paranoia produced a creative solution: HAL would not have to withhold information if there were nobody from whom to withhold the information. Therefore, HAL made the decision to kill the crew, thereby allowing him to obey both his hardwired instructions to report data truthfully and in full and his orders to keep the monolith a secret — nobody remained from whom to keep the secret.

The alien intelligences controlling the monoliths have grandiose plans for Jupiter, plans which place the Leonov, and everybody in it, in danger. Its human crew devises an escape plan, which unfortunately requires leaving the Discovery and HAL behind, to be destroyed. Dr. Chandra explains the danger, and HAL willingly sacrifices himself so that the astronauts may escape safely. In the moment of his destruction, the monolith-makers transform HAL into a non-corporeal being, so that David Bowman's avatar may have a companion.

The details in the book and film are nominally the same, with one important exception: in the film, HAL functions normally after being reactivated. In the book, it is revealed that his voice circuits were destroyed during the shutdown, forcing him to communicate through screen text. Also, in the film the Leonov crew lies to HAL about the dangers that he faced (suspecting that if he knew he would be destroyed he wouldn't initiate the engine-burn necessary to get the Leonov back home), whereas in the novel he is told right at the outset. However, in both cases the suspense comes from what HAL will do when he knows that he may be destroyed by his actions.

Prior to Leonov's return to Earth, Curnow tells Floyd that Dr. Chandra has begun designing HAL 10000. 2061: Odyssey Three indicated that Chandra died on the journey back to Earth, making the point moot.

The session of keyboard/screen interaction between HAL and Dr. Chandra has a taste of SHRDLU, which both increases the realism of the scene, and gives an interesting insight of the perception of Artificial Intelligence at the time the book was written.

HAL in 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey

In 2061: Odyssey Three, Heywood Floyd is surprised to encounter HAL, now stored alongside Dave Bowman in the Europa monolith.

3001: The Final Odyssey introduced the merged forms of Dave Bowman and HAL. The two have merged into one entity called Halman after Bowman rescued HAL from the dying Discovery One spaceship towards the end of 2010: Odyssey Two. Halman helps Frank Poole infect the monolith (which it once served) with a computer virus; as the primitive life in Jupiter's clouds were sacrificed to make Jupiter into a sun to warm Europa, it is feared that humanity as well as life on Europa would be destroyed as humanity had the potential to be dangerous and the Europans had stagnated, according to the monolith's reasoning. The plan succeeds, and all of the monoliths disintegrate; however, Halman (which survived by downloading itself onto another storage medium) is subsequently isolated in a special containment facility due to this virus infecting itself.

Influences

The scene in which HAL's consciousness degrades was inspired by Clarke's memory of a speech synthesis demonstration by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, who used an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell", with musical accompaniment from Max Mathews.

Characterization

The book differs from the film in a number of details, e.g.

1. The book explains far more explicitly the causes of HAL's behavior; it is implied that HAL's programmed objective to ensure the mission's success — at any cost — vaguely resembled the human drive for a purposeful existence, while the prospect of being shut down resembled the fear of death. When these factors began to contradict his primary objective of preserving the ship's crew, his malfunction was the result.
2. In the film, HAL shuts Bowman out of the craft after Bowman attempts to retrieve Poole's body. In the book, Bowman stays within the ship and is forced to shut down HAL after he attempts to kill him by opening the ship's airlocks.

SAL 9000

HAL 9000 has at least one Earthbound twin, SAL 9000. SAL was used as a reference system for HAL; when the twin computer fails to predict any communications failure, Bowman and Poole begin to suspect HAL's reliability. SAL is clearly "female", and features similar camera plates like HAL, but the "eye" is blue. Dr. Chandra has a private terminal to SAL's mainframe in his office, and his influence causes her to develop a slightly Indian accent (2010: Odyssey Two). In the film version, SAL is voiced by Candice Bergen, who was credited only under a pseudonym (as "Olga Mallsnerd," a combination of the surname of Bergen's husband, director Louis Malle and that of Mortimer Snerd, one of her father Edgar Bergen's famous puppet characters).

SAL is not mentioned by name in the film 2001, and the novel implies that Mission Control had more than one 9000-series computer available. Given the acronym behind HAL's name (Heuristic ALgorithmic), it is not clear if "SAL" is just a nickname, or if the name is a different acronym.

Before the Soviet-USA mission to retrieve Discovery, Chandra uses her for a simulation of the possible effects that a prolonged "sleep" might have induced in HAL, and the project is code-named Phoenix. When Chandra asks SAL to guess the reason for the name Phoenix she understands that the there are many possible meanings, and her first guess that it refers to the tutor of Achilles is not what he had in mind; her display of culture makes it clear that SAL has access to some form of encyclopedic knowledge database, or has it built in with the rest of her programs.

2010 reveals that another ground-based HAL machine undergoes the same psychopathy that HAL does when forced to experience the same contradiction.

The future of computing

HAL's capabilities, like all the technology in 2001, were based on the speculation of respected scientists. Marvin Minsky, director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and one of the most influential researchers in the field, was an advisor on the film set.

When the film 2001 was first screened in 1968, the year 2001 was a long way away and a computer like HAL seemed quite plausible at the time. In the mid-1960s computer scientists were generally optimistic that within a generation or two machines would be able to pass the Turing test. For example, AI pioneer Herbert Simon had predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do."

As 2001 approached though, it became clear that 2001's predictions for computer technology were premature. Capabilities such as natural language processing, lip reading, planning, and commonsense reasoning on the part of computers were still science fiction concepts.

However, 2001 also failed to predict many of the advances that would take place in computing by 2001. The film's creators guessed that as computers got more powerful, they would get bigger and bigger—partly true: Blue Gene, a modern supercomputer, is very large. HAL occupies much of the living area on Discovery. Thin laptops or notepad computers are alluded to in a few scenes where they are used to view news broadcasts from Earth. Also, the film's portrayal of computer graphics is elegant, though basic compared to the graphics and visualization techniques that were in reality available by the year 2001.

HAL's eye and point of view

HAL's POV shots were created with a Cinerama 160 degree Fairchild-Curtis wide angle camera lens. This Fairchild-Curtis wide angle lens was not used as the eye in the Hal 9000 prop seen in film, because this Fairchild-Curtis wide angle lens is about 8" in diameter, while the Hal 9000 prop eye is about 3" in diameter. Stanley Kubrick chose to use the Fairchild-Curtis lens to shoot the Hal 9000 POV shots after attending the 1964 World's Fair and seeing To the Moon and Beyond, a film produced with the lens and projected onto a planetarium-like dome.

References in Popular Culture

• In South Park Season 4 Episode 50, Kyle must disable the creature Cartman becomes from within its core, which resembles the core of HAL 9000. Kyle even tells Cartman what he’s doing and Cartman responds, “I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Kyle,” which parodies HAL. This is not the only episode that has parodied 2001. “Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society” features a parody of the moment when the apes learn to use bones as weapons, and “The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000” parodies the famous fetus image from 2001.

• HAL 9000 has been used and parodied in several movies and shows, such as the episode Treehouse of Horror XII (Section: House of Whacks) on the Simpsons, where Ultrahouse (HAL), voiced by Pierce Brosnan, is installed in the house as an automatic butler/maid/cook/cleaner; falls in love with Marge, and attempts to kill Homer. Another production that spoofed the 9000 was Futurama, when a new personality chip was installed in the space ship. In this episode, the ship remarks, "I wish I could lip read," just as HAL can.

• 343 Guilty Spark of the Halo series of video games apparently references HAL 9000 in Halo 3. 343 Guilty Spark's single glowing "eye" turns red, which is similar to HAL 9000's red eye, when it goes rampant.

• There is a similarity between HAL and Portal's GLaDOS, who also "died on a song." This connection was observed in Randall Munroe's xkcd webcomic in January 2008 [1]. Also in Portal, the numerous security cameras seen throughout the game bear an almost striking resemblance to HAL's observation eye, but can also be taken off some walls via portals. The computer (GLaDOS) is malfunctioning (supposedly), and tries to kill the protagonist from the game. The battle with GLaDOS at the end is also similar to Dave's dismantlement of HAL.

• In the video game "Grand Theft Auto III", a computer can be seen in Joey's garage with "HAL 9000" written on it.

• Hideo Kojima has stated that he named Hal "Otacon" Emmerich after HAL 9000

• In the Israeli satirical "South Park" style animation series MK 22 - HAL is featured as "HAL-LELUYA", the brain of the AI Robot "Robo-Rabbi".

• In the Stargate:Atlantis Episode, "The Intruder", a similar shot of the iconic HAL Camera, is seen as an alien virus takes control of the Tau'ri Spacecraft Daedalus The virus portrays many of the same characteristics as HAL, most notably, the virus itself is an AI.

• Norwegian cartoonist Mads Eriksen made a comic strip with Hal 9000 as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke. The strip can be found at 777.

• HAL 9000 was also used on Recess as the SAL 2000. The principal installs SAL in an attempt to replace the old school clock. However, SAL deems the teachers unfit, and decides to take his own hand in teaching the students. At the end of the episode, they go through the vents, and then manually shut down SAL, however, at the end of the episode, the principal is looking at a SAL 3000 to install since its coming out in a year.

• In the film Independence Day, when David Levinson opens up his laptop onboard the captured alien spaceship, HAL's interface camera is shown and the laptop says in HAL's voice, "Good Morning, Dave."

• In the video game Destroy All Humans 2, occasionally a levitated hippie will say "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

• The British tv series Spaced, with Simon Pegg, featured a refrigerator called CAL 900, a reference to HAL 9000.

• An episode of the television anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex includes a scene where an AI (called a "Tachikoma") reads the lips of two of the main characters, who it suspects are concerned about the AI becoming too autonomous, while they have sequestered themselves in a room where they cannot be eavesdropped upon. Although this meatspace conversation is not about the Tachikomas, it is a decoy, and there is simultaneously a parallel cyberspace conversation where it is decided to remove the AIs from active duty.

• In the film Robots, Bigweld starts singing "Daisy bell" right before Rodney fixes his brain, an obvious reference to HAL.

• A second party developer to Nintendo, HAL Laboratories, is famous for the Kirby series, Super Smash Bros. series, and Earth Bound series. Two former figures from HAL Laboratories are Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata.

See also

• Computers in fiction
• Frank Poole
• Arthur C. Clarke

External links

• Text excerpts from HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Audio soundbites from 2001: A Space Odyssey
• HAL's Legacy, on-line ebook (mostly full-text) of the printed version edited by David G. Stork, MIT Press, 1997, ISBN 0-262-69211-2, a collection of essays on HAL
• HAL's Legacy, An Interview with Arthur C. Clarke.
• The case for HAL's sanity by Clay Waldrop
• "2001" fills the theater at HAL 9000's "birthday" in 1997 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• The Hal Project featuring the Hal 9000 screensaver.