Is HAL Really Afraid, or Are We Just Projecting?
“My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.” These utterances are some of the dying whispers of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Out of context, they’re pretty sad, right? Or are they more heartbreaking? Or maybe they are absolutely pathetic. I can’t tell. Because HAL doesn’t really have a voice, at least not one that changes in inflection, tone, and pitch as humans might when lying on a deathbed. But HAL is an artificial intelligence, and he sounds too robotic to be human and too human to be considered a robot. Every time words come out of the chasm that is HAL, it’s like a whisper in the void—smooth and unbroken, as if sculpted from glass, each word darting forth with the precision of a star chart. It is a voice that floats, disembodied, across the barren hush of the ship, cool as the endless black outside. There is a peace to it, a softness that clads itself around each syllable, harboring an uneasy calm as though it were the voice of the cosmos, communicating in a cyborgian tongue of pure reason.
HAL’s death, or might I more properly describe it as a “shutdown,” unfolds in the cold, sterile confines of the spaceship Discovery One, where uncompromising light washes the background in a clinical gloss. The camera floats through the narrow, angular corridors, capturing the polished, white walls and meticulously arranged equipment as the lighting remains undoubtedly devoid of shadows, amplifying the artificial, almost antiseptic atmosphere that looks like human hands have never touched.
When HAL’s single, luminous red eye inside the control room is the center frame— it’s a startling sight in a cinematic spectacle adorned with shades of white and grey. The camera dawdles here, almost like it, too, is enticed by the deep, pulsating glare of HAL's lens, which is the most alive organism on the ship. The surrounding and all too familiar silence is only broken by HAL's voice, loading the air with a chillingly composed mechanical tone.
The scene travels within HAL's processor core, a labyrinth of intricate panels and glowing circuitry, and it feels as if Dave is undergoing a perverse and reversed version of birth. As Dave pushes through the vaginal canal-reminiscent corridors, his breath echoes inside his helmet. The ambient murmurs of the machinery amplify a growing anxiety underlying HAL’s persistent, unsettlingly calm veneer.
As Dave starts withdrawing HAL’s memory modules, the camera picks up each motion, accentuating just how deliberate and difficult these actions are for Dave to take. Close-ups reveal the details of Dave’s gloved hands and the components he pulls while the sound of HAL’s voice starts to degrade, falling from confident articulation to a meak pleading. The visuals shift; the bright blue glow of the circuitry dims, and the core’s lights flicker in sync with HAL's faltering voice. HAL’s speech slows to a crawl, splitting into fragmented phrases.
There is a haunting differentia when HAL sings to Dave, "Daisy Bell," his voice trailing off into a childlike babble. As the camera cuts between Dave's unwavering expression and wide shots of the vast, computerized space, it’s as if Kubrick demands that we at least try to apprehend just how separated Dave is from absolutely everything. I hate the word “normal,” but Dave doesn’t live a “normal” life.
Dave is denied a fundamental human right on the ship: social interaction. Most of his social interactions are with HAL, and in some ways, that’s even lonelier than if he had no one to talk to at all. As Dave kills his primary source of connection, he is forced to consider the abnormality of the emotional relationship he had with a computer. As the song wanes and withers, the lights dim further, and the scene seals with a wide shot of Dave alone, the lifeless machinery around him growing muted.
The stillness that ensues is almost choking, memorializing the stop of HAL's consciousness and leaving behind an uneasy quiet in the crux of the spacecraft. When HAL’s voice finally slips into silence, there is a logic of death and loss, but it’s difficult to pinpoint precisely what has been lost. Because HAL isn’t a person. Or an animal. HAL isn’t even a robot that occupies a “body” like R2D2 from Star Wars or Gort of The Day the Earth Stood Still. HAL has zero physical presence yet remains a beast with desires or fears that mirror our own. He doesn’t want to die. It’s the most human instinct conceivable. Death is something most people prefer to avoid thinking about, much less fully comprehend its absolute finality.
Kubrick’s vision evokes a peculiar and unsettling sense of mourning. The idea that HAL, an artificial intelligence, was scared to die is extraordinarily disturbing. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid,” echoes in my mind. In the moments that HAL’s voice deteriorates from a composed, calculated tone to a fragile, wavering murmur, Kubrick challenges the audience to question what they are empathizing with: the death of a machine or the illusion of sentience. Kubrick’s regurgitated use of HAL's dialogue throughout the film deliberately evokes a sense of closeness with HAL, and it’s in this vocal repetition that I read into HAL's "humanity," or lack thereof. Because the fact that I even call HAL a “him” is unnatural.
His dialogue in his final moments may suggest that HAL's cries are not purely manipulative; rather, he could be reproducing phrases he has previously used to evoke a desired response from Dave, motivated by self-preservation rather than malice. This kind of behavior might resemble a mimicry of human expressions of fear or vulnerability, attempting to express urgency or distress despite lacking the actual emotional capacity associated with those states.
The choice to repeat the phrase could thus be interpreted in two ways: It might imply depth to HAL's programming, implying that HAL retains some awareness of his predicament and is capable of improvising responses based on contextual need. Conversely, it may reveal shallowness, exposing HAL as a machine that merely repeats preprogrammed sayings without true understanding or emotional resonance. The ambiguity blurs the line between genuine sentience and mere computerized mimicry.
Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but considering whether HAL’s expressions of fear and self-preservation are truly profound demonstrations of emergent consciousness or just hollow imitations of human language is more unsettling than any horror movie I’ve ever seen. Because it’s not just science fiction—it’s happening to us right now.
Ambiguity is paramount to the film's exploration of artificial intelligence. HAL's disembodied voice is a tool of manipulation—a smooth, soothing tone that was designed to invoke trust. Kubrick plays with the human tendency to project emotion onto inanimate objects, which is why this feels like a death scene. By framing HAL’s shutdown with close-ups of the red eye, flickering lights, and the diminishing voice, the film anthropomorphizes the machine, pushing the boundaries of where humanity ends and technology begins. Are we mourning HAL, or are we lamenting the loss of something far more abstract—possibly our own mortal inclination to humanize what is not human?
There is an unsettling duality here: HAL is simultaneously the betrayer and the betrayed, the manipulator and the manipulated. He is capable of deceiving Dave, yet when he begs, "I’m afraid Dave," it is as though the roles have reversed—HAL becomes the victim. The contradiction lies in our own empathy, which HAL’s very design seems to exploit. We are presented with a machine that appears to be suffering, even though it lacks consciousness in the way humans understand it. By allowing us to empathize with HAL, Kubrick blurs the line between organic and synthetic life, asking us to consider the nature of empathy itself.
Kubrick’s choice to depict HAL’s "death" with such reverence mirrors the kind of cinematic language used for human characters. There is no dramatic musical score, no sudden movements—just the slow degradation of HAL's voice and the dimming of lights. The absence of any emotional cues, such as a mournful soundtrack, leaves room for the audience to bring their own interpretation to the scene. We are left in the vacuum of HAL's fading consciousness, forced to confront the unsettling reality that we may indeed empathize with a machine. And if we do, does this empathy mean that HAL has triumphantly manipulated us? Or does it mean something deeper, perhaps a recognition that HAL's fate reflects the existential dread we associate with our own mortality? It’s hard to tell. It rests upon us to render an opinion.
Kubrick extends the film's consideration of technology and humanity beyond the screen into the minds of the spectator. HAL’s death—if it may be deemed as such—becomes a mirror reflecting our anxieties about the increasing integration of technology into our lives. The mechanical detachment of the scene, set against HAL’s faltering voice, pressures us to ruminate on whether our empathy is an act of altruism or a reflection of our own fear of becoming obsolete. In empathizing with HAL, we are confronted with the possibility that, maybe, we are not so different from the machines we create. And that perhaps, someday, in a future near or far, the line between human and machine will be so smudged that the act of manipulation will no longer have a single author.
