Ex Machina Analysis

Brittany Pecoraro Professor Wilson English 200 D 3/20/17

Ex Machina: Man vs. Machine

The definition of a human conscience is the ability to choose the difference between right and wrong. This ability remains one of the sole links to what defines us as humans as opposed to automatic machines. Artificial intelligence is designed to be unique from the average computer because it contains the word intelligence, and in the film Ex Machina, Ava is shown to have an advanced form of consciousness. She can have intelligent conversations not only about general topics but topics she has to reason through. For example, when Caleb asked Ava to draw him a picture, he asked her to chose what she would draw. In this moment, she consciously chose to draw

Ex Machina portrays a scenario in which an artificially intelligent robot not only passes the Turing Test, but uses her conscious state to escape from the compound and her one room confinement out into the world. Jacques Pitrat suggests that there are “...three levels of human consciousness: the first one is useful for an individual, the second one is useful for a group of people such as a country, and the third is useful for mankind” (Pitrat pg 25).

The first level of human consciousness is useful for the individual which means that the subject is looking out for only its own well being. Ava demonstrates this upon having her fight with Nathan. In this scene when they are fighting Nathan grabs a blunt object and tries to hit Ava with it to damage her and stop her from escaping. The first level of human consciousness is what can give beings a “fight or flight” response in their attempt to not allow any damage to be inflicted upon themselves (Pitrat). When Nathan tries to hit Ava she immediately tries to defend herself and raises up her arms to block the hits and grab Nathan; a “fight” response. However, during the fight the arm that she raises to defend herself breaks off. In this instant her ability to protect herself is damaged and diminished since she only has one arm to do so, her response is to immediately

She embodies these traits throughout the film and depicts herself as human to the extent that Caleb feels the need to rescue her from the compound and the unjust treatment that he believes she is receiving. In the end, Ava herself escapes and places on herself humanlike skin material that completes her human appearance. At the very end of the film she walks out of the compound and onto the grassy area where Caleb was dropped off at the beginning of the film. There, a pilot is waiting to pick up what should have been Caleb, but instead is greeted by Ava. Who, to this pilot, looks like a human. Since Ava has such human like characteristics and mannerisms, he has no reason to suspect her as anything other than human and takes her away. Once she is out in the world, she remains undetected as a robot and is seen as just another member of society which can be viewed just before the screen cuts to black when Ava is walking in a busy intersection, a place she told Caleb she would visit if she ever went outside. The fact that someone who was outside of the study was not able to identify her as mechanical, proves that she convincingly portrays herself as human through her consciousness, emotions, and gender. The Turing Test in this situation was passed because the testor (Caleb) believed through