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

the trees in her room, further validating her conscious state. The emotions she displays and the gender that Nathan assigns Ava upon building her give the audience a filter over their eyes which makes it easier for them to view her as more of a human and less as a machine. The film Ex Machina successfully depicts Ava as having the three levels of human consciousness proposed by Crockett, emotions, and gender which give her character a more human presence.
The Turing Test is something used to challenge the consciousness of artificial intelligence and the goal is for the tester to be able to differentiate between human and machine. However, if the tester is unable to do so, the Turing Test is passed. Larry Crockett says in his book, The Turing Test and the Frame Problem : AI's Mistaken Understanding of Intelligence “While there is no claim that a program has passed the full fledged test, [A.L.] Ziechick's claim is that ‘we're
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not far from having imitative programs that can pass a limited Turing test with ease and do well on an unrestricted test, as Turing proposed it’"(Crockett pg 2).

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

become more forceful in her escape from Nathan. At that moment her sole focus is to escape from the situation so that no more damage can come to her and she can continue to operate and function. Thus, demonstrating an awareness for her well being.
The second level of human consciousness refers to when an individual is concerned for someone other than his or herself. Ava shows this level of consciousness the most throughout the film when she creates the blackouts with Caleb. She tries to warn him about the dangerous nature
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of Nathan in an attempt to save Caleb from any harm. In Caleb’s second session with Ava she times a blackout after she asks the question [to Caleb] “Is Nathan a friend?”. Once he responds yes Ava sends him a warning when the cameras are down and says “You’re wrong, he isn’t your friend”. These warning continue through the blackouts when they have their sessions and Ava continues to depict Nathan as a deceitful and evil person. Her warnings to Caleb are evidence that she displays concern for others and her persistence with them also show that they are a recurring feeling.
The third and final level of human consciousness illustrates awareness for a much larger span of people, mankind. This level of consciousness could be difficult to analyze due to the fact there are only three other characters in the film other than Ava. Although, she does demonstrate a concern for the posterity of gynoids as a species. When Ava finally is released from her one room confinement by Caleb’s hacking skills, she comes in contact with Kyoko for the first time. Ava has never been in contact with another robot like herself before. Instantly they share a connection and exchange a small conversation that is unheard by the audience. After their small interaction they band together to fight Nathan. At this moment it is no longer Ava against Nathan but gynoids against man in an attempt to save their numbers. The two characters unifying together can be interpreted as them attempting to save the future creations of artificial intelligence and therefore showing concern for their entire species.
The ability to have a conscience also gives us emotional responses. When we do something directly against our conscience, we feel sadness or guilt which encourages us to respect our consciences’ direction in the future (Pitrat). Ava, throughout the film, shows multiple levels of emotion; sadness, happiness, attraction, and anger. When she first meets Caleb there is
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instant curiosity about who he is. Ava even shows signs of joy towards meeting a new person, going as far to ask him if they will meet again. Later in the film when the power goes out and Caleb tells Ava that Nathan plans to shut her down, she immediately responds with sadness and fear. True emotions are often shown immediately after their triggers. Ava immediately shows emotion after these events and for a moment, the audience forgets that she is even a robot. It is the emotion Ava’s character portrays that gives the audience an illusion of her having human qualities. Caleb himself described his thesis to Ava on artificial intelligence and said that it was knowing what the outside felt like that made her human. This feeling of emotion proves to be the blueprints for our humanity and Ava is exceptionally skilled at projecting these emotions to Caleb throughout the film.
By giving Ava a gender identification, Nathan allowed her to build on so much more of her consciousness and emotions. In the film when she went to put on what she would wear on her date with Caleb, she tried on a dress with a sweater which is something lots of women pride themselves in and enjoy doing. Nathan explains in the film that he gave her a gender so that the conscious state of artificial intelligence would be more believable as opposed to something without one. Her gender also gave her sexuality which was something that was brought into question when she felt attracted to Caleb. It turned out that her feelings toward him were something not pre-programmed according to Nathan, who claimed that he himself had no hand in influencing Ava’s feelings towards others. Feeling love towards another person is something that is in our human nature whether it be towards family members or friends. Ex Machina further depicts Ava as having human characteristics in this way by giving her a distinctly habitual human trait.
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The film Ex Machina successfully depicts Ava as having the three levels of human consciousness proposed by Crockett, emotions, and gender which gives her character a more human presence.

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

their multiple conversations that Ava demonstrated such an advanced speech pattern and thought process that she did in fact pass the test.
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Work Cited
Crockett, Larry. “The Turing Test and the Frame Problem : AI's Mistaken Understanding of
Intelligence”. Intellect Books , 1994. Ablex Series in Artificial Intelligence. EBSCOhost.
Ex machina . Dir. Alex Garland. Perf. Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac. N.p., n.d. Web.
Pitrat, Jacques. “Artificial Beings : The Conscience of a Conscious Machine” (1). Hoboken, US:
Wiley-ISTE, 2010. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 March 2017. Copyright © 2010. Wiley-ISTE.
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