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Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a nerdy computer programmer, wins first
prize! Who knows for what, but hey, Caleb is pretty excited about it. All Caleb
knows is he gets to spend a week with Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the founder of Blue
Book (read: Google), which is a tech company that is best known for its search
engine that handles almost all internet searches.
At first Nathan seems like some kind of burly bro hipster.
He is personable at times, but he also has a mad scientist way about him. When Nathan
jokes to Caleb that he had all the people who built his home killed to protect
his secrets, you know it is a joke, but you also look into Nathan’s squirrely
eyes and think, “Um, are you maybe serious?”
Nathan is also a hermit. He lives way out in the middle of
nowhere in a very secure, high-tech compound. When Caleb is flown in by
helicopter, the pilot has to leave him a ways off from the compound because the
pilot is not allowed to get any closer.
So what’s the prize? Well, Caleb gets to stay with Nathan,
hang out with Nathan, party with Nathan (oh, yeah, Nathan is an alcoholic). But
most importantly, Caleb gets to see Nathan’s latest work—his work on artificial
intelligence.
Hence, Caleb meets Ava (Alice Vikander). Ava is artificial.
That is clear from the humming machinery visible through the transparent skin
covering most of her body. But Ava is also intelligent. Her speech, while a tad
formal, is smooth and responsive to nuanced questions, and her facial expressions
are subtle and remarkably human.
And so it turns out that this “prize” week is really
Nathan’s way of getting Caleb to put Ava through the so-called “Turing Test”.
The Turing Test has someone interface via a computer with one human and one robot/computer,
and if this someone cannot tell which is which, the robot passes the test. Some
people think this is a test for intelligence, thought, a mind, or even
consciousness (though even Turing himself recognized its limitations with
respect to the latter). But Nathan brings Caleb in for a sort of extended Turing Test: Caleb does not
interact with Ava via a computer. He talks to her, interviews her, confides in
her, listens to her desires and worries, gauges her facial expressions, weighs
her movements, and so on. This is supposed to be the ultimate, decisive test
for intelligence.
And that is what this film is all about. It has a singular
focus: The Turing(-ish) Test. It is all about the test in one form or another.
And one of the beauties is that we, the audience, are the ones running the test.
Caleb is the interviewer, but we are the judges. Is Ava a person? Does she have
a mind? Is she conscious? And it’s not just Ava. More generally: Who are the
real people, and who are mere automata? And, by extension: Who is to be praised
or blamed, who deserves freedom or punishment, and whose life is worth
preserving?
I like that filmmaker Alex Garland is so obsessed with this
Turing Test idea. Focus is good. But it is also risky. It is risky because if
the heady AI stuff fails to come off, there isn’t anything else to back it up. There
is little else driving this movie.
But, at the end of the day, who really cares? This is a
sci-fi movie. Risks are what it’s all about. What matters is that “Ex Machina”
stokes the imagination. It succeeds in its playing around with ideas—with this
notion of external marks of the mental, in particular, and with the forms and
importance of observation more generally. I say, “playing around” because “Ex
Machina” is a sandbox. It is play—an exploration. It is not about answers
(though it does eventually offer some answers, which is regrettable given how
the rest of the film goes). This movie is about possibilities, what-ifs, potential
advances and dangers, and an examination of what we are, could be, or could do.
Now, “Ex Machina” does not ask any new questions or raise any new puzzles. But it does offer a fun
look at some really good questions
and some really interesting puzzles.
