A professional lip reader would have major difficulty. So to celebrate the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the fact that we’re all probably going to be replaced by robots in the near future), here’s a look at how HAL laid out the blueprint for AI in cinema. Keir Dullea even confirmed this in interviews when he stated that no special takes were made for the lip-reading flashback, though Kubrick would have to have used an additional camera to record the whip pans (when the camera moves swiftly from Bowman's lips to Poole's lips and back again). Kubrick not only predicted the rise of our obsession with artificial intelligence, he facilitated the generation of movie after movie exploring the subject. So HAL is a user-friendly service that constantly asks what’s on your mind, offers a chess app to kill time, and then secretly eavesdrops on conversations in order to subsequently ruin lives – it’s the 20th century equivalent of Facebook. But when Dave and Frank chat shit behind HAL’s hypothetical back, the computer lip-reads the exchange, and proceeds to wreak revenge. Voiced in a monotone by Douglas Rain, HAL performs duties such as monitoring the crew during hibernation, checking the vessel for potential faults, and outsmarting passengers at chess. Goodbye.”Īs a reminder, HAL 9000 is the sentient software and “central nervous system” of Discovery One, a spaceship hurtling towards Jupiter. What’s more, if it’s lodged in your memory that one of the astronauts is called Dave, it’s because you hear it in HAL’s voice: “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. The thing with 2001: A Space Odyssey, a landmark of the genre, is that everyone’s seen it, probably countless times – and yet, who can remember offhand the names of the actors involved? HAL 9000, though, immediately springs to mind. “But you can call me HAL”, the machine might say. Today marks half a century since Stanley Kubrick unveiled one of sci-fi cinema’s most celebrated characters: Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer.
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