The computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey is HAL, usually identified fully as HAL 9000.
HAL controls the Discovery One spacecraft and communicates with its human crew in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film. Its calm voice, red camera eye, and eventual conflict with astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole made it one of cinema’s most recognizable artificial-intelligence characters.
The name is generally expanded as “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer.” The computer is sometimes called simply HAL in the film, so the stored answer is a fair canonical response; HAL 9000 is the more complete designation.
Fans have long noted that H-A-L sits one alphabet letter before I-B-M, but author Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick said this was coincidental rather than an attack on IBM. HAL’s imagined abilities reflect the 1960s optimism that human-level artificial intelligence might soon become possible.