"In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains, On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
The good deeds a man has done before defend him."
- Bhagavad Gita
About half a year ago I was roaming though movie trailers on YouTube and was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Ex Machina, an AI thriller set to be released in early 2015. Opting to check it out in theaters over its conceptual competitor Chappie, I waited patiently for the limited release to expand into my area. Finally it did, and I’m happy to say the film didn't disappoint – a simple plot and a very complex machine made for quite a fun time. Spoilers ahead!
Summary
The film begins with tech employee Caleb Smith winning a contest to visit who is presumably his company’s founder, Nathan, in order to put a new technological breakthrough to the test. The breakthrough is the first functional artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the test is a variant on the famous Turing test – in this case, our lucky lad is to spend a short period of time each day speaking with the AI in order to decide whether or not he thinks it is conscious. Caleb is flown via helicopter to the remote and secluded research facility, where his nonchalant boss encourages him to relax his nerves and treat their time together as time between two normal guys.
An artificial general intelligence is essentially a computer that can successfully perform all of the operations of human cognition. The film’s AI, named AVA, is composed of a gel brain installed into a robot that resembles a human female in shape and function. She (never “it”) is locked within her own section of the facility, consisting of a make-shift bedroom and a corridor leading to the room where the interviews take place. Caleb is able to speak to AVA from the other side of a thick glass wall, and although their first conversation is charming and friendly we get our first ominous undertones as he notices a conspicuous crack in the glass on her side.
