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No such machine exists in the real 2001 and perhaps that's a good thing. Beneath his suave veneer, HAL is the ultimate computer bug, an out-of-control murdering machine. After watching HAL singing his slow motion swansong "Bicycle Built For Two," we can't be faulted for wanting our machines to sound like machines. Today's state-of-the-art speech synthesis programs like DECtalk (used by astrophysicist Stephen Hawkings) don't sound anything like HAL. If anything, they sound the opposite-tech-like and robotic. We seem to prefer it that way.
The unsung Dudley was a pioneer in figuring out how to synthesize sounds and quickly ascertained the vocoder (or voice coder) possessed a creative potential far beyond the transmission of phone calls. In fact, the device proved to be of crucial importance World War II, scrambling transoceanic conversations between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
In the years since the vocoder has leant atmospheric touches and a futuristic ambience to a bevy of songs, including Laurie Anderson ("O Superman!"), Kraftwerk ("We Are the Robots") the Beastie Boys ("Intergalactic"). The vocoder's popularity somehow seems fitting. Its trance-like effect has elements of human warmth but also a decidedly metallic tone. A product of the communications revolution, the vocoder has become a perfect fit for artists seeking a "new millennium" sound.
Photographs (top to bottom): Courtesy of Apple; Courtesy of AT&T Archives; from the collection of Eric Lefcowitz; Courtesy of Apple
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The voice of HAL in Stanley Kubrick's space classic 2001: A Space Odyssey has become a cultural icon-the smooth, reassuring sound of machine intelligence in the future.
Invented by a Bell Labs whiz named Homer Dudley (pictured right) to improve telephone service in the 1940s, the vocoder broke speech patterns into components, allowing them to be re-transmitted efficiently over a narrow bandwidth.
In 1971, the vocoder entered the pop culture mainstream when Kubrick invited composer Wendy Carlos to score the music to his controversial adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Employing a vocoder to "sing" on "Timesteps," Carlos produced a classic of early electronic music. 
As for the sound of the future-the real sound of artificial intelligence, Arthur C. Clarke, co-author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, admits he still hears HAL's every time his computer fouls up. "I tell my computer to do something stupid, and it says reproachfully, 'I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that." 