The Role Of Personhood In 'Ex Machina (2015)'

1032 Words3 Pages

A Bad Person is still a Person Ex Machina (2015) is a science fiction psycho-thriller directed by Alex Garland. The film is about an alcoholic, abusive, genius with a god complex who creates an artificial intelligence (AI) that appears to meet popular metrics in determining personhood. The AI’s creator, Nathan, wants to find out whether or not his AI, Ava, is capable of deceiving a human. The target of this deceptive test is the human, Caleb. The end of the film results in a challenge for some regarding whether or not Ava is actually a person or simply just a complex machine with complex programming. This challenge is easily avoided by recognizing that bad people are still people.

Ava is a Person Whether or not Ava is a person is difficult …show more content…

My current personal definition is an amalgamation of John Locke’s persistence of consciousness, Aristotle’s seeking of the means in attaining the good life, and some of Carl Sagan’s thoughts on person-hood as well. In an attempt to not make this paper about the argument of Ava’s person-hood, I will summarize my qualifications for it and assume the reader either agrees with my metric or via their own metric have concluded that Ava is a person. My requirements are that a given entity displays three qualitatively measured values of specific traits and that the entity has persistence of persona (it can switch off, but not permanently else it loses its person status.) The three traits are sentience, heuristic capability, and synthesis. The first two traits are straightforward; the latter requires a little more detail. In saying synthesis, I am referring to an entity’s ability to form complex, abstract models based on prior experience in order to synthesize new experience. The synthesized experience can then be used to heuristically form decisions and take action given new, previously un-encountered, stimuli. To me, synthesis is the trait that allows for the capacity of empathy; synthesis is a framework for empathy. Please keep in …show more content…

She employs Kyoko to “provide” the initial stab wound; however, she directly inserts the blade the second time. Ava murders Nathan. After re-watching the scene, I have convinced myself that Ava’s unknown words to Kyoko during their face-to-face meeting involves instructions to stand in the hallway holding the blade. I do not feel Kyoko could manage directly assaulting Nathan. Maybe Nathan followed some of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics loosely. Pure conjecture. Nevertheless, Ava does deliberately slide the blade into Nathan’s chest. She is a murderer. That is the direct murder. There is also an implied murder. Ava leaves Caleb locked in Nathan’s room indefinitely without the means to survive. Ava has the capacity to understand the risk of life here, but proceeds to leave him there anyway. Even if we assume Caleb survives, Ava has still murdered Nathan (her

Open Document