Alexa, Why is “2001: A Space Odyssey” Such an Important Movie?
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film showed more than a deep flaw in AI.
By the late 1960s, the idea that technology could run amok and make our lives hellish — or even obliterate us — was stock-in-trade for science fiction television and movies. For every hopeful vision like Star Trek, there was a darker, dystopian reality like Westworld (1973). The trend continued throughout the Seventies and into the 1980s, abating, curiously, just as home computers began to become part of our everyday lives.
The basic premise was usually that technology would get out of hand in some way or another and begin to rule rather than serve humans. Collosus: The Forbin Project (1970) is a great example, in which the U.S. develops a supercomputer that is programmed to do anything to avoid nuclear war (nuclear power is itself frequently used as an example of technology that gets away from us). The problem is, the Soviet Union steals the plans and builds its own supercomputer. The two computers get together and decide that the way to prevent nuclear war is to rule over humans with an iron hand, infiltrating every aspect of our lives.
A more subtle approach is taken in 2001. HAL, the supercomputer onboard the spaceship bound for Jupiter (I’ll assume you’re familiar with the plot), goes rogue at one point in the mission, possibly as the result of a malfunction. What is clear is that HAL reacts poorly to being called out for making a mistake, and kills the entire crew except one (and not for lack of trying).
The specter of AI getting defensive, and in fact a little pissy, before lashing out aggressively is a little unnerving, especially as HAL never loses his sickeningly calming vocal patterns — worthy of any call center worker (HAL’s voice also seems to be something of a model for Alexa and other AI voices that are popular today). Anyway, it is apparent that AI has gone one step too far when it (he?) develops emotions. Rather than the more common scenario of hyper-rational but unsympathetic, HAL has seemingly developed feelings, but he deals poorly with difficult emotions.
This is where Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the script, take it to another level. What’s apparent is that AI is a product of human consciousness, and human consciousness has gone about as far as it can.
Our limited approach to life is shown in many ways in the film. We’re reminded of our banality even in the midst of grand progress. One of my favorite scenes is a video call (decades before Zoom) from space to Earth. At the end of the call the telephone company reviews the charges: here we are, able to travel around the solar system with marvelous technology, and we’re still fumbling for change to pay the phone company.
(Kubrick loved to skewer the phone company, as he did in Dr. Strangelove. Today, not many people will remember the days when Ma Bell was the very image of impersonal corporate dominance of everyday life).
The failure of AI is one theme of the movie, but so is the failure of human consciousness — hence the mission to Jupiter and the unexpected result of the seeding of the next iteration of homo sapiens. At the start of the film, after the encounter with the monolith, humans transform into homo habilis — the tool-users. By the end of the film, we’ve run our course with technology and need to step into some unspecified new version of ourselves.
And yet 2001 is not anti-technology. In fact, it is technology that gets us to the turning point in history at the end of the movie. We need to transcend technology, not reject it. It’s all well and good to be able to go to the Moon or Jupiter (or Mars), but if we bring our limited sense of existence with us, we won’t have accomplished much. I don’t know what Kubrick and Clarke had in mind for the next upgrade of humanity, and I don’t think they did, either.
Now…
Through no doings of my own, Alexa sits in my living room waiting for a chance to be helpful. More or less, she’d like to help me buy something. Many people fear such intrusive technology, and I would be one of them were it not for its abject triviality. If Alexa and her cohort are spying on my conversations, or if my browsing history is being recorded, it’s all for the nefarious purpose of selling me snow tires or tickets to a show.
Alexa can tell me the current temperature in my town, and she is pretty good with information like celebrity birthdays. When I ask her for anything more complex, she usually messes up. One inquiry about Forrest Pizza in my town yielded a response about a pizzeria three thousand miles away. Unlike a Google search, which gives a number of results from which we can choose (though still biased by a number of factors), Alexa selects one answer to present to us. The results are often comically absurd.
Still, as AI becomes more and more a part of our lives, with all its snafus and commercialism, it’s worthwhile to remember one of the core messages of 2001: A Space Odyssey — that it’s up to us to transcend. We might very well fear AI, but it would be better to stay one step ahead of it. Computers may be smarter than humans, but they aren’t going to be more mindful. I would suggest that those of us who are familiar with spiritual traditions and who have a more elevated view of consciousness than standard Western materialism have a leg up when it comes to this issue, for the tyranny of AI is ultimately limited to the material realm.
