Stork: HAL, of course, was intelligent, or certainly seemed that way, and did evil actions. Do you somehow link intelligence inherently to evil actions?
Clarke: Intelligence is not easy to define. I like to think it's appropriate reaction to any circumstance. HAL was faced with a situation where he thought the mission would be jeopardized by the behavior of the astronauts, and he made a decision that he later admitted was an unfortunate one.

Stork: Throughout the film there is this link of development of tools to weaponry. The beautiful scene where the bone is floating and cuts through to a nuclear weapon in outer space. There seems to be this linking between intelligence and conflict at least.
Clarke: It's a sad fact that much technological development, maybe most, has been driven by conflict warfare, and that is one of the themes of 2001. It wasn't really made clear in the movie that when that bone goes up into the air, what it turns into is an orbiting nuclear bomb. That was what we really meant.

Stork: So, why did you have HAL decide to kill the crew?
Clarke: In the film the killing was raised to give some drama to a story which some critics have called rather leisurely, not much happened. We didn't explain why he did it. If we explained too much it would have spoilt some of the magic. In fact I've been accused of destroying the movie's magic by explaining far too much in some of the subsequent novels.

Stork: So, you're really not going to explain it now?
Clarke: Well, I did explain exactly why HAL did what he did. But, as Stan was fond of saying, we were trying to construct a myth. And a myth should be inexhaustible and have any number of explanations depending onÉin fact; whole books have been written by other people saying what they thought 2001was about.

Stork: Kubrick called 2001 spiritual. What do you think he meant by that?
Clarke: Kubrick's use of the word "spiritual" in connection with the film is rather hard to define. I think emotional is perhaps better.

Stork: It's remarkable that its so emotional when so many of the characters are emotionless.
Clarke: Surprisingly, much of the emotion comes when HAL disconnects the sleeping astronauts and you see their life support system flatlining, that's very gripping.

Stork: Well, so many of the crisis points occur in silence. Can you describe some of them.
Clarke: We tried to be accurate in every way. Much of the action takes place outside The Discovery, in space, which of course is totally silent.

Stork: What do you think are the prospects for Artificial Intelligence?
Clarke: I think it's generally agreed that Artificial Intelligence, at least by some definition, will be here in a decade or so.

Stork: Do you really believe in a decade
Clarke: I know people like Marvin Minsky have been saying for the last 30 years that AI is only 10 years ahead. One day they'll be right.

Stork: If you were writing the same story today, would you have made HAL the same character?
Clarke: In 2010 I did change the character of HAL, and eventually made him a good guy. If I had the prospect of making a new movie, I would certainly develop that further.

Stork: Why would you make him good?
Clarke: I think even the worst people can be reformed eventually and it's an interesting challenge to make HAL a good guy.

Stork: So you don't think of it as a natural extension of human evil?
Clarke: Intelligence is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Human history proves that without intelligence you can't do anything. It's like fire. Without fire we wouldn't have civilization, and look at all the damage that fire has done in the past.