Ex Machina was a film I would recommend to others interested in sci-fi. The movie was based around a programmer, Caleb Smith, who works for the company Blue Book. Blue Book is the world’s most popular search engine and the company held a contest for one worker to win a one week vacation to visit the CEO, Nathan’s, private estate. Caleb ends up being picked and gets to be a part of Nathan’s experiment. Nathan has built an artificial intelligence whom he named Ava and he now wants someone to judge whether Ava is conscious. Nathan first explains Caleb’s purpose as simply being a part of a Turing test, in which Caleb gets to have one on one sessions with Ava where he can analyze her. During these meetings, Ava confesses her feelings toward Caleb and manipulates him into having sympathy for her. Knowing if she fails the test, she will be shut down she influences Caleb’s perspective of Nathan making him out to be a liar.

Later on in the movie, we find out that Caleb was not randomly picked, but rather specifically chosen because of his personal background, being orphaned at a young age and currently single. Nathan chose Caleb knowing Ava had the ability to trick him into helping her escape making him believe they could fall in love. In the end, Ava ends up escaping by killing Nathan and locking Caleb in the laboratory. I believe these artificial intelligences should serve the purpose of solely helping the human race, without being a part of it. These AIs having human-like emotions can be dangerous, as shown in the movie. They are a machine and should be treated like one, we should never have the fear of one day being “taken over” by robots, maintaining their control and not the other way around.

Ex Machina was an awesome movie!! I loved the minimalistic effects of having a small cast so that you weren’t distracted so much and felt like you were immersed in the experience with Caleb. The setting played so well into the notion that Nathan truly was a mad scientist who distanced himself from all of civilization because of the gravity of what he was working on. I liked how the story was pieced into sessions each playing a pivotal role in the buildup of the film. I’m a big fan of science fiction but this one felt all too real when Nathan began to explain how he managed to design Ava so well. Pooling the entire world’s data through clear breaches of privacy was the only way Nathan could begin to properly mimic the behaviors and emotions of sentient beings. I felt as though the film was giving us a warning of what could very well be happening in our world today without us having the slightest awareness of it. The film focuses on AI and its uprise but I felt so captivated by the undertones of the film which pinpointed the truth of today’s society. Our behavior is being watched and modeled through all forms of electronic contact. We can’t know for sure when we’re being watched and privacy is a big gray area in our lives because of the internet. Nathans breach of privacy as a search engine creator and the utilization of all this raw data to be used to model human behavior ties so perfectly together. How else are you supposed to model the human mind if not by tracing its core reactions and mapping its seemingly infinite array of actions. The machine essentially learned enough about the world that it was able to adapt to its surroundings with one goal in mind. The fundamental behavioral link between all sentient beings. THE URGE TO SURVIVE! Ava given an ultimatum adapted to her environment and as Nathan so clearly told Caleb, she manipulated him into believing she liked him just so she could use him to escape. And then the thing that baffles me most but then I come to realize is of no surprise… she leaves Caleb behind and escapes on her own. Why does Ava do this? Does she have no remorse programmed into her? Can’t she feel? The answer is none of those things matter. All that matters to her is that she survives and for her to best ensure that she must leave all ties to her existence behind.