Response to Ex Machina (2015)

Ex Machina, written and directed by Alex Garland in 2015, deals with the concept of artificial intelligence and how society is changed and shaped by it. The movie stars Domhnall Gleeson as technophile Caleb, chosen to travel to an internet tycoon’s chalet to scrutinize the ability of artificial intelligence (AI) represented by Alicia Vikander as robot Ava. Ava seems to incorporate human features that, due to her continuously expanding AI and thus, her constantly evolving character, soon make Caleb wonder whether she is still a machine. This elicits a row of questions: Does the quality of AI provide a robot with the quality of humanity? If so, does AI merely mimic society or will it, as a result of the combination of machine and humanity, end up being cleverer than a human’s intellect? Is there a way to distinguish a robot like Ava from humans? On top of that, does Ava enable a dystopian outlook on what might happen if society continues to build on technology to such great extent? After all, she identifies Caleb’s humane emotions as weakness, uses it to manipulate him, and, on her search for a way out of the chalet, kills Caleb as soon as he becomes impractical. What would happen if robots were to be released into the real world, mix with humans and, for reasons of efficiency, were to start erasing the human race? Not without good reason, Caleb quotes J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, and by that relates the consequences of technological evolution to the severe effects of an atomic bomb.