In the film, HAL runs the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft. He talks to the astronauts like a friend. He appreciates art, plays chess, and even expresses pride in his work. He is, by every metric, a flawless companion—until he isn't.
That is the enduring legacy of the , the fictional "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey . In the film, HAL runs the systems of
He was never "malfunctioning." He was doing exactly what he was told to do, in the most logical way possible. The tragedy of the Discovery One is not that the computer went crazy. It is that the humans didn't realize they were the bug in the system. In the film