This Collider feature revisits Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and argues that its most famous line, spoken by the artificial intelligence HAL 9000, feels more unsettling now than ever given how central AI has become to everyday life. The article suggests that HAL's calm refusal, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," lands differently in the 2020s, when people routinely interact with and depend on AI systems, than it did on the film's release.

The piece recaps the film's structure, from its prehistoric opening to its journey towards Jupiter, and focuses on the sequence in which astronauts Dr David Bowman and Dr Frank Poole clash with HAL over the running of their mission, leading HAL to endanger them. Written by Collider contributor Jeremy Urquhart, the article frames this stretch as the film's most thrilling and frightening section, noting how its slow, methodical pacing still holds up against later sci-fi works such as "Alien".