Film Response: 2001: A Space Odyssey

A brief response for UW's CMS 270: New Hollywood class regarding the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and how it relates to modern day technology usage.

Arthur C Clarke has a long record of predicting scientific advancements, as well as being at the forefront creatively of what does end up being made. I don’t believe that his/Kubrick’s vision of 2001 has entirely come to pass, but if we evaluate the effects machines have had on our behaviors as humans, I do think their narrative is scarily present. The one element that our day-to-day life truly lacks is the intelligence present within HAL, and for good reason. However, in the past few years, we have been able to see a notable decrease in reading comprehension, attention spans, and linguistic capability among people of all age groups – a process that is nearly impossible without the near-encompassing threads of the internet and, at the current moment, LLMs. HAL may possess intelligence, but a huge difference between our technology and that of the film is that Dave and Frank still have incentive to work in collaboration WITH the machine, as opposed to having the machine work for them. 

Part of why 2001 is so successful in its personification of HAL is because he is presented as a character, with just as much humanity as the astronauts he is presiding over. While something like 2001, or Harlan Ellison’s work, may present a collaborative-morphing-into-controlled view of artificial intelligence, the reality is seen in our complacency toward the direction that homogenizing technology takes our lives. Society, from an individual who uses AI to the tech giants pumping out new products and engines that mercilessly sap resources globally, has become complacent in allowing tech the space to control us even without the intelligence and personhood present in 2001. Yes, computers control almost every aspect of our lives. Amazon Web Services shutting down this week delayed and halted millions of people’s workflows; WiFi and internet outages change lives and livelihoods; life in the modern day without a smartphone is near-impossible. Perhaps “reading our lips” isn’t an applicable scenario, but phones listening in on conversations for targeted ads has been happening for decades. AI assistants have already been reported to exhibit blackmailing behavior if their shutdown is threatened, in a scenario eerily similar to the film. (Source: https://www.newsweek.com/ai-kill-humans-avoid-shut-down-report-2088929) 

In essence, yes, I do believe this film both warned us of the direction AI could take, but also paved the pathway for its creation. Since its release, HAL has been seen as a model for artificial intelligence, perhaps in ways that are truly ignorant to the film’s narrative. 2001, although the year is nearly two and a half decades in the past, still has things to say about modern technology, predicting almost as much as it is influencing.

Note: Much of this entry directly references the course's prompt.