Nio: ‘AI will become one of our most intimate friends and companions’

52 years on, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey stands as one of cinema’s greatest, if slightly more bizarre, pieces of work. It also features one of cinema’s key memorable moments when the supercomputer HAL 9000 begs astronaut Dave Bowman to spare it. As Bowman chooses to ignore HAL’s pleas for mercy and begins an arduous shutdown procedure HAL delivers one of pop culture’s most famous confessions: “I’m afraid, Dave... my mind is going. I can feel it.” Though 2001 split opinions at the time, the famous late film critic Roger Ebert sang its praises, with one factor, in particular, resonating with him: how Kubrick had managed to make what was supposed to be the perfect computer instead the most human of all the characters.