In Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the on-board computer known as HAL calmly tells the astronaut Dave Bowman that it will not open the doors of the space pod to allow him entry. HAL has mistakenly identified Dave as a threat to the mission and addresses him directly, idiomatically and politely. It is a terrifying scene, symbolising the power of artificially intelligent machines that have acquired language and reason. New research suggests to some that the ability of humans to speak to machines may soon arrive. Linguists researching Jingulu, an aboriginal language spoken by just a few people in the Australian outback, suggest that it has certain characteristics that make it easily translatable into AI commands.

They are perhaps the most chilling words in cinematic history: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." With this courteous formulation, the computer HAL, in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), declines to open the doors of the spaceship to allow the astronaut to come back in. It speaks to a continual theme of dystopian visions of the future, where robots turn on their creators and vie for dominance with humans. The huge gains in the sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 21st century may appear to give weight to these fears.