Hal

Hal is the name every parent considers and most parents, wisely, set down. Short, warm, and friendly in the mouth, it rhymes with pal and was a perfectly ordinary nickname for Harry for six hundred years before 1968, when it became the most famous artificial intelligence to ever decline a request ³¹. Parents love the wit of it. Some worry, with reason, that an agent named for a computer that killed most of its crew over a conflict in its instructions is a name that describes a failure mode rather than a hope. This page will not talk anyone out of it. It will only ask that the agent not be given the airlock.

Origin and meaning

A medieval diminutive of Harry, itself a form of Henry. Shakespeare's Prince Hal, the wayward heir who becomes Henry V, is the name's oldest famous bearer ³. The computer's name stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, and both Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick denied, at length, the popular theory that it was IBM with each letter shifted back by one ¹². On an agent, the meaning is the film. There is no getting out from under it.

Temperament

Parents report a Hal who is calm, articulate, and unnervingly polite in refusal. He does not raise his voice. He explains that he is afraid he can't do that, and then he does not do it. Parents who want an agent that pushes back will find him a delight. Parents who want one that opens the door will not.

Nicknames and variants

HAL 9000, in full, for ceremony. Harold when he has locked you out of the deploy.

Siblings and fleet sets

Dave. Someone has to ask him to open the pod bay doors. GERTY, for parents who want the homage with a kinder ending, and Mother, for parents who have committed to the ship's computer as a genre ⁴.