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HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality
How science fiction's most famous computer has influenced the research and design of intelligent machines. I became operational... in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997. Inspired by HAL's self-proclaimed birth date, HAL's Legacy reflects upon science fiction's most famous computer and explores the relationship between science fantasy and technological fact. The informative, nontechnical chapters written especially for this book describe many of the areas of computer science critical to the design of intelligent machines, discuss whether scientists in the 1960s were accurate about the prospects for advancement in their fields, and look at how HAL has influenced scientific research. Contributions by leading scientists look at the technologies that would be critical if we were, as Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick imagined thirty years ago, to try and build HAL in 1997: supercomputers, fault-tolerance and reliability, planning, artificial intelligence, lipreading, speech recognition and synthesis, commonsense reasoning, the ability to recognize and display emotion, and human-machine interaction. A separate chapter by philosopher Daniel Dennett considers the ethical implications of intelligent machines.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 17, 2014
For me, 2001 was the first (and still one of the only) science fiction films that comes close to being accurate in its science. And without doubt, the movie-stealing character (certainly the most emotionally ranging character) was the computer, HAL.
This is an old book, dating back to the late 1990s, but still fascinating in the way that it uses the different aspects of HAL to look at how the real technologies have developed in comparison with the way they were envisaged in the 1960s film. It’s in the format of a series of articles by different authors. Amongst my favourites was the AI overview by Marvin Minsky, who was on set part of the time (and nearly killed by a flying spanner) and the discussion of HAL’s game of chess, reflecting on the way he plays chess like a person, rather than in the manner of a chess-playing computer like IBM’s Deep Blue.
Inevitably it’s a bit dated in places – but surprisingly little, considering how computer technology has moved on since the late 1990s. Also it’s probably a touch too academic and obsessed with every fiddly detail to make it acceptable as a general read (which is why I’ve only given it three stars). But if, like me, you were overwhelmed at the time by 2001, and are still impressed by it, this is a book of delights.
This is an old book, dating back to the late 1990s, but still fascinating in the way that it uses the different aspects of HAL to look at how the real technologies have developed in comparison with the way they were envisaged in the 1960s film. It’s in the format of a series of articles by different authors. Amongst my favourites was the AI overview by Marvin Minsky, who was on set part of the time (and nearly killed by a flying spanner) and the discussion of HAL’s game of chess, reflecting on the way he plays chess like a person, rather than in the manner of a chess-playing computer like IBM’s Deep Blue.
Inevitably it’s a bit dated in places – but surprisingly little, considering how computer technology has moved on since the late 1990s. Also it’s probably a touch too academic and obsessed with every fiddly detail to make it acceptable as a general read (which is why I’ve only given it three stars). But if, like me, you were overwhelmed at the time by 2001, and are still impressed by it, this is a book of delights.
February 15, 2017
Uneven anthology on the late 1990s progress on artificial intelligence in comparison to the fictional HAL character. Of course outdated, but the problem is that most chapters are likely too technical to the layman and not technical enough for AI students. So it falls between two stools. Yet, the 2 interviews were interesting, as was the chapter on computer chess research (with its history). The timing of this book is funny as they talk about Deep Blue winning a game against Kasparov but losing the match in 1996. The authors failed to anticipate that in 1997, the year of publication of the book, Deep Blue would win the match against the best human player! Certainly a must-read for fans of 2001 A Space Odyssey.
October 20, 2021
The most famous computer in cinematic history, HAL was a work of science fiction but this book examines the progress that has been made in the time since 1968 to turn this fiction into reality.
According to HAL himself in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, his birthdate was January 12, 1997. This book, published by MIT in the year of HAL's birth, considers the many facets of HAL and what progress has been made in each of them. From supercomputer design to speech synthesis, recognition and understanding, from image recognition to lip-reading, artificial intelligence and ethics, this is a quality, thought-provoking book.
According to HAL himself in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, his birthdate was January 12, 1997. This book, published by MIT in the year of HAL's birth, considers the many facets of HAL and what progress has been made in each of them. From supercomputer design to speech synthesis, recognition and understanding, from image recognition to lip-reading, artificial intelligence and ethics, this is a quality, thought-provoking book.
September 13, 2022
Interesting collection of chapters written about the technology & science of the 1968 film and how well it predicted where we would be in 2001. Few in '97 prophesied that AI would be as advanced as it already is (Siri, anybody?). Plenty of thought provoking discussions on the nature of intelligence, the role of emotions in AI, etc.
May 28, 2019
Very enjoyable (though a bit dated) read. I especially enjoyed all the different views about what kind of knowledge we take for granted and teh assumptions that we make when talking about AIs.
December 29, 2010
The 1968 science fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey" featured a computer named HAL that was built in 1997. With 1997 near, this book compares what HAL did in the movie with what real-world computers could do at the time the book was written. In the movie, HAL won a chess game against an astronaut by tricking him into making a bad move; real-world chess programs use the minimax strategy (assume the opponent makes the best moves he can); this means that HAL knows its opponent's level of expertise in chess and plays accordingly. HAL produces speech; understands speech; lip-reads; real-world computers cannot do that anywhere near the level of their movie counterpart. HAL plans for the future; interestingly, soon after the book was written, NASA launched a space probe with an onboard planning agent. Supercomputers have advanced since 1996; according to top500.org, the top supercomputer of November 1996 had maximum LINPACK performance 368 GFlops; in November 2009 this number was 1759000 GFlops. Computers can synthesize and recognize speech better in 2009 than they could in 1996. Yet the fact still remains that, as Wernher von Braun put it, the best computer we can put onboard a spacecraft is the one that can be produced in 9 months with unskilled labor.
January 6, 2012
If you sat through college long enough to be given a computer engineering or computer science degree, this could be a fine read. Even if you're mildly interested in computer intelligence, there's something in this book for you. The book is also laced with anecdotes about the making of the film for Ridley Scott fans. Me? I liked the pictures.
April 10, 2007
You might not consider HAL to be a hero, but you have to at least consider him an actor. Technically, he did play a part in a movie.
2001 was such an influencial movie and this book is about the people who consider HAL a reality.
2001 was such an influencial movie and this book is about the people who consider HAL a reality.
January 14, 2010
Brilliant
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews