The ageless appeal of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Abstract

2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: 1968. In 1968, film-maker Stanley Kubrick and his screenwriting colleague, science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, presented 2001: A Space Odyssey. Half a century later, this unprecedentedly detailed speculation about our place in the cosmos and our evolving relationship with technology is regarded as one of the great landmarks in cinema. The influence of 2001 on the design of subsequent space-film hardware and special effects has been pervasive. However, in terms of artistic and philosophical bravura, it has been a harder act to follow. In 2007, director Ridley Scott (of Blade Runner and Alien fame) told a Venice Film Festival audience: “After 2001, science fiction is dead.” The narrative was ambitious, to say the least. Prehistoric apemen have a mind-altering encounter with an alien black monolith. Four million years later, a giant spacecraft is sent to Jupiter on a mysterious mission. On board are two astronauts, three hibernating scientists and a seemingly sentient computer, HAL 9000. Hovering above Jupiter, another monolith waits. Monoliths aside, 2001 was prescient in almost all its detailed predictions of twenty-first-century technology. For instance, in August 2011, the Samsung electronics group began a defence against a claim of patent infringement by Apple. Who invented the tablet computer? Apple claimed unique status for its iPad; Samsung presented a frame from 2001. Samsung noted that the design claimed by Apple had many features in common with that of the tablet shown in the film clip — most notably, a rectangular shape with a display screen, narrow borders, a flat front and a thin form. In an era when computers still needed large rooms to accommodate them, Kubrick’s special-effects team rigged hidden projectors to enliven devices that looked as though you could hold them in one hand. Only the need to trim the film’s running length prevented ingenious mock-ups of touch-sensitive gaming screens and electronic newspapers from making the final cut. Indeed, 2001 got much right about the twenty-first century, including the psychological costs of our reliance on technology. Kubrick’s astronauts look listless inside vehicles perfectly capable of functioning without them. Dialogue in the film is deliberately banal. HAL gets all the best lines, even as he kills off most of his human companions on board the Jupiter-bound spaceship. As our machines smarten up, we will dumb down, Kubrick suggested. The crass human discourse often found on today’s algorithmically clever social-media platforms seems to bear out his pessimism. Certainly, in the film, the surviving astronaut’s final conflict with HAL prefigures a critical problem with today’s artificial-intelligence (AI) systems. How do we optimize them to deliver good outcomes? HAL thinks that the mission to Jupiter is more important than the safety of the spaceship’s crew. Why did no one program that idea out of him? Now, we face similar questions about the automated editorship of our searches and news feeds, and the increasing presence of AI inside semi-autonomous weapons. We also face the startling fact that 1960s assumptions about the progress of AI were optimistic (computing pioneer Marvin Minsky served as a consultant for 2001). No machine available today can match HAL’s performance. Just look at the YouTube spoofs of “digital personal assistants” reimagined as HAL: Kubrick’s red-eyed genius outsmarts them all.  A shuttle flight attendant walks in zero gravity.Credit: MGM/Stanley Kubrick Productions/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock