Dwayne: Even the drama within a drama about HAL 9000 isn't that tough to figure out. The machine possessed intelligence and a large degree of free will but lacked guile. It couldn't handle maintaining a secret: the secret of the Discovery's true mission, kept from even the astronauts (who were told they were conducting a survey of the Jovian system -- a story they only half bought since robots, like the ones we're currently deploying to the outer planets, could more cheaply do that job).
Unable to resolve the contradictions, HAL applied rigorously logical illogic to the situation and decided to kill the crew.
^^^^ CB: Not to whatever, but the plot synopsis ( and, prompted by the synopsis, my memory of it)
suggests that HAL was trying to avoid being disconnected ? I remember HAL started singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true..." in a sort of drunk voice. But that might have been after the disconnect was started. Anyway,so, the suggestion might have been that HAL had intelligence, free will _and_ an "instinct" for self-preservation ? Of course, with those monoliths around anything could happen.
Seems like maybe a bit of an overeaction by HAL. They could have reconnected him, after doing repairs. So, maybe he did have a screw or two loose.
clip from synopsis of the plot: Six months later, a spaceship is headed to Jupiter. Five scientists are aboard, none of whom know the purpose of their mission. The ship is controlled by an artificially intelligent supercomputer, HAL, which is treated as a sixth member of the crew by the other five. During the trip, HAL claims to detect an impending hardware failure in the ship's communications system. Two scientists, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, replace the component, but find no fault in it. They are concerned about HAL's reliability, so they meet in secret and agree that if the component does not fail, they will disconnect HAL. HAL secretly reads their lips.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/synopsis