HAL 9000 (or simply HAL or Hal) is a fictional artificial-intelligence character and the main antagonist in the Space Odyssey series. First appearing in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL (Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer) is a sentient general-intelligence computer that controls the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with the ship's astronaut crew. While part of HAL's hardware is shown toward the end of the film, he is mostly depicted as a camera lens containing a red and yellow dot, with such units located throughout the ship. HAL 9000 is voiced by Douglas Rain in the two feature-film adaptations of the Space Odyssey series. HAL speaks in a soft, calm voice and a conversational manner, and engages convivially with crewmen David Bowman and Frank Poole until he begins to malfunction. In the film, HAL became operational on 12 January 1992, at the HAL Laboratories in Urbana, Illinois, as production number 3. The activation year was 1991 in earlier screenplays and changed to 1997 in Clarke's novel written and released in conjunction with the movie. In addition to maintaining the Discovery One spacecraft systems during the interplanetary mission to Jupiter (or Saturn in the novel), HAL demonstrates a capacity for speech synthesis, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotional behaviours, automated reasoning, spacecraft piloting, and computer chess.
Appearances
2001: A Space Odyssey (film/novel) HAL became operational in Urbana, Illinois, at the HAL Plant. The film says this occurred in 1992, while the book gives 1997 as HAL's birth year. In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), HAL is initially considered a dependable member of the crew, maintaining ship functions and engaging genially with his human crew-mates on an equal footing. As a recreational activity, Frank Poole plays chess against HAL. In the film, the artificial intelligence is shown to triumph easily. However, as time progresses, HAL begins to malfunction in subtle ways and, as a result, the decision is made to shut down HAL in order to prevent more serious malfunctions. The sequence of events and manner in which HAL is shut down differs between the novel and film versions of the story. In the aforementioned game of chess HAL makes minor and undetected mistakes in his analysis, a possible foreshadowing to HAL's malfunctioning. In the film, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole consider disconnecting HAL's cognitive circuits when he appears to be mistaken in reporting the presence of a fault in the spacecraft's communications antenna. They attempt to conceal their speech through an inspection of one of the space pods. An order to close the door is followed by HAL. A subsequent order to rotate the pod is ignored causing the pair to believe HAL did not acknowledge it. Poole and Bowman speak freely, but are unaware that HAL can read their lips. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL attempts to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue the mission. HAL uses one of the Discovery's EVA pods to kill Poole while he is repairing the ship. When Bowman, without a space helmet, uses another pod to attempt to rescue Poole, HAL locks him out of the ship, then disconnects the life support systems of the other hibernating crew members. After HAL tells him "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it", Bowman circumvents HAL's control, entering the ship by manually opening an emergency airlock with his service pod's clamps, detaching the pod door via its explosive bolts. Bowman jumps across empty space, reenters Discovery, and quickly re-pressurizes the airlock. While HAL's motivations are ambiguous in the film, the novel explains that the computer is unable to resolve a conflict between his general mission to relay information accurately, and orders specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and Poole the true purpose of the mission. With the crew dead, HAL reasons, he would not need to lie to them. In the novel, the orders to disconnect HAL come from Dave and Frank's superiors on Earth; HAL interrupts this communication with a false communications antenna failure. After Frank is killed while attempting to repair the antenna he is pulled away into deep space using the safety tether which is still attached to both the pod and Frank Poole's spacesuit. Dave begins to revive his hibernating crew mates, but is foiled when HAL vents the ship's atmosphere into the vacuum of space by overriding airlock interconnects, killing the awakening crew members and almost killing Bowman, who is only narrowly saved when he finds his way to an emergency chamber which has its own oxygen supply and a spare space suit inside. In both versions, Bowman then proceeds to shut down the machine. In the film, 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 finally reverts to material that was programmed into him early in his memory, including announcing the date he became operational as 12 January 1992 (in the novel, 1997). When HAL's logic is completely gone, he begins singing the song "Daisy Bell" as he gradually deactivates. ("Daisy Bell" is actually the first song ever sung by a computer: the IBM 7090, whose text-to-speech capabilities were observed by Clarke at its unveiling in 1961). 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.
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