Ex Machina Screening Reflection

Alex Garland's "Ex Machina" chronicles Caleb Smith, an employee at a Google like company, "winning" a contest to take a trip to the CEO of his company's isolated home. When Caleb arrive, he discovers that Nathan, the CEO, has created artificial intelligence and he must conduct the Turing Test to determine whether or not his robot, Ava, can exhibit indistinguishable intelligent behavior from a human. As Caleb conducts the tests, he begins have sympathy and develop feelings for Ava, while he also learns more about Nathan's previous attempts at artificial intelligence. Toward the end of the trials, Caleb and Ava plan an escape together, however, Nathan reveals that seeing if Ava could use her cunning and sexuality to deceive Caleb to escape was his test to prove her sentience. With the escape already planned, Ava is able to get out of her room and ultimately leave the house with a complete disguise with the movie ending with her walking in a city. The premise of the dangers of artificial intelligence covered in "Ex Machina" has been an ever increasing discourse, as more and more science fiction films have begun to explore the topic. Additionally, in the scientific community, we are continually seeing new strides in creating sentience in robots, most recently with a robot named Sophia, who obviously is miles behind how Ava is portrayed still gives off a haunting presence. Speaking to the dangers of artificial intelligence, I'm reminded of an anecdote from a Stephen Hawking interview. "There's a story that scientists built an intelligent computer. The first question they asked it was 'is there a god?' The computer replied, 'there is now,' and a bolt of lightning struck the plug so it could not be turned off." Many other high ranking members in the scientific community has echoed these concerns and as we inch closer to achieving this feat, the dangers that come with artificial intelligence, especially in an increasingly digital world, is certainly something that we must be cognizant of.