Siri or Savior?

Two films to come out fairly recently, Ex Machina directed by Alex Garland and Creative Control directed by Benjamin Dickinson, both explore humanity's relationship with technology. These films are all the more relevant as they were released in the current era known as the iPhone generation, in which technology has expanded and evolved so much that the premises in these films don't seem too far off from where we are now. Something I think both films touch on greatly is that humans may be flawed, but much of the technology they make may not be, which could cause the technology made to surpass the original creators. This is particularly related to artificial intelligence, which is the main technology focused on in both Ex Machina and Creative Control.

While Ex Machina in my personal opinion is definitely the superior film, it is also the more obvious one. A sci-fi thriller set in a remote compound, complete with a synthesizer score that recalls the futuristic classics of the 1980's, a la Blade Runner and Terminator. What I find most notable in Ex Machina though is the characterization and portrayal of Oscar Isaac's character Nathan Bateman, a genius with a God complex (wait, is that like a thing?) who has an answer for everything. For the vast majority of the film, Nathan can respond to any of Caleb's (Domhnall Gleeson) qualms or worries regarding the creation and software of Ava (Alicia Vikander), an fully functioning piece of artificial intelligence. Nathan stubbornly believes that no matter how progressively capable and possibly dangerous Ava seems, he is in control because he created her and he is a human being, therefore he is the superior. However, in the film's climax, Nathan is murdered by Ava with the help of another AI, Kyoko, when he attempts to stop Ava from leaving his research facility. There is a moment as the AIs jam a large knife into Nathan that he looks up at them with such disbelief, he can only utter, "What the fuck." What the fuck indeed. Nathan's end is both horrifying and ironic, as the man with an answer for everything cannot explain what leads him to his end. I viewed this as a warning by Garland that while we as a species may be accomplishing amazing things with AI and other tech, we should also be cautious when playing with the idea of life.

Creative Control is of a very different genre, as it is a sci-fi social satire, yet it is nonetheless quite disturbing in the way it shows how strong technology's grasp is over human beings in today's times. David (Benjamin Dickinson) is shown to be a guy who both hates technology, but cannot seem to fathom his life without it, even in spite of illusions he gives himself that he could live without it. Feeling depressed and desiring his best friend's girlfriend, Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), he creates an AI version of her to pleasure himself with. Although he created this piece of tech, the AI has all the control over David as he submits to it in exchange for the feelings of elation and fulfillment it brings him. However, as this creation of his comes to light and he deals with it in the face of his best friend, Sophie, and his girlfriend Juliette (Nora Zehetner), David comes to realize the gross control the AI has over him and how it has ruined him. When David follows this revelation by telling Juliette they should move far away and start over in order to get away from the technology and everything, Juliette agrees to and David decides he will leave his tech job that is driving him crazy. However, when his company tells him about the success of David's product and his ascendancy in the tech world, Juliette already knows he won't be able to turn away from this life and goes into the kitchen to make dinner. Both of these films end extremely ominously and both films end with an ambiguous yet frightening future for us to ponder, as we wonder what happens after the screen fades to black. Not only is that a sign of good filmmaking, it also helps us see that maybe we should take a look at ourselves as people before downloading the newest Angry Birds update.

Artificial Emotions

Alex Garland’s Ex Machina showed an unsettling prediction of the future, when Artificial Intelligence will have been developed further and let into society. Caleb is selected to participate in an experiment with Ava, a refined invention of Nathan. He sets out to question the Turing Test with his interactions with Ava, and examines her emotions and responses with each visit to her confined room. Ava, the robot, appears to be infatuated with Caleb and, in his eyes, passes the test, as she begins to exhibit intelligent human behavior. But towards the end of the film the audience realizes that Caleb is the real subject of the experiment. After having led Caleb to betray Nathan and free her from her cell, it is evident that the machine was intelligent to an extent that Caleb and Nathan had not expected. Rather than finally uniting with Caleb, like the movie falsely foreshadows with repeated dream love scenes, she proceeds to make an escape. She exhibits the “third option” as an outcome to the Turing Test that Nathan and Caleb brought up later in the film. The question at hand, all along, was not whether or not Ava has emotions. In her time in the cell, she was able to mimic intelligent emotions, even though she wasn’t feeling them and had no empathy or sympathy for Caleb. She appears to only have been intelligent enough to manipulate Caleb’s emotions as a means of escape. The film comes to an end with Ava entering civilization, having left Nathan dead and Caleb stuck in the facilities forever. Ex Machina introduces the viewer to a potential threat posed to humanity by artificial intelligence. While these machines can mimic and present emotions in their behavior, they don’t allow themselves to control their actions like humans do. Unlike films like Her, where artificial intelligence is portrayed with deep emotions and empathy, giving humans the upper hand in that relationship, Ex Machina definitely gives the upper hand to Ava, and proves that she wasn’t burdened with emotions or feelings towards Caleb and only acted in her self interest.

Maybe the future isn't so grim

Generally speaking, Creative Control and Ex Machina are both films about the arrival of advanced technology. Generally speaking, both films give, at first glance, a fairly negative view of the future. Ex Machina does not hide the psychotic features present in Nathan and Creative Control doesn't attempt to mask the twisted actions taken by David while using Augmented Reality glasses. Just because Nathan and David are shown in a villainous light does not necessarily mean that the future and the technology that will come with it is as gray as the colors in Creative Control.

If one takes a deeper look at the character of Nathan from Ex Machina, one can see a talented individual who wants to change the world. The fact that he wants to change the world does not, however, take away from the fact that he wants to do it according to his own terms. Selfishness and power hungriness seems to be at the very center of most of the worlds problems. Had Nathan openly shared his research and technological findings, it could be possible that Caleb (Ava's human testing partner) would have found out about Ava in a medical article published in some newspaper. Instead, he found out the truth through the psychotic vision of Nathan. The atom bomb (second blog post to use this reference but it works well) was invented by goodhearted people and used for destruction. Ava was invented by a psychotic person and as far as we know, hasn't been used for anything useful. She did manage to kill two people with her own robotic hands. Ava was programmed by Nathan to escape the test by any means necessary. He just never realized what means she would take and that ended up costing him dearly. Still, had Nathan programmed Ava a little differently, maybe she would have become something more useful. Artificial intelligence could be less about creating a human copy but rather something that acts human yet is in total control of a human. That would possibly lessen the damage something like Ava ended up doing. One cannot blame Ava for doing what she did. One cannot credit Ava for doing what she did. One can only see a product of a madman in it's physical form.

Technology generally gets all the blame when the very reason it is bad is because it is misused by humans. Instead of telling people cellphones are bad, maybe its more important to teach them how to use them safely. Augmenta, the augmented reality glasses present in Creative Control show this off fairly well. Nobody knew what Augmenta was capable off. At the end of the film, David's creation becomes a major selling point for the glasses because it is completely novel. The technology is so knew its full potential hasn't been realized yet. Of course, the person who realizes what the technology is capable to a certain extent has to be a shallow and confused human looking for an escape. Much like the question raised by Ex Machina, what if a more stable human had been given the glasses to work on? What if a doctor was given the prototype and asked to integrate them into their work? Rather than seeing a woman made into a virtual sex object (without her consent) we could have watched a movie about the advances in the medical field. Probably far less exciting than a marital crisis but more morally sound.

Ex Machina and Creative Control show what happens when humans misuse technology. They don't take a stand against technology but rather warn future humans not to misuse it. Generally, the only effective way for a human to learn to not do something is to do it first and then realize they should not have done it in the first place. We'll have to wait and see what happens with wearable technology and artificial reality to find out which path was chosen.

Ex Machina and Creative Control Blog Post

I had to watch this film seven times to understand the beginning. Just kidding, I use mild attentiveness when watching it the first time. Regardless of the amount of times viewed, Ex Machina (Alex Garland 2015) is a simply ridiculous film. This film is a anthropologically enhanced version of Avatar on cocaine. Alright, once again, just kidding. Partially. Ex Machina delves into a genre of film that is sometimes hard to take seriously. Most robot films are either animated (Wall-E) or just went with the big explosions and "get to the choppa". This film takes on the outer edges of the reality of human and robot interactions, and does it quite well honestly.

Creative Control. Is this the name of the film or the name of an required IB course? Just kidding (sips tea). But on a more serious note, this film is so interesting to me because it takes a more serious and sad tone to an all too real idea. The over development and intrusion of technology on human lives. This film made me incredulous to Apple. Just kidding. But it did have a significant effect on my not only as an audience member, but as a member of society who looks from his Iphone, only to see 100 other people on their Iphones. A bit scary in retrospect.

AI Proves how Gender is a Social Construct [Ex Machina, Garland, 2015]

An interesting quote: "It’s not like HAL 9000 ever sparked up a relationship with Dave in 2001: A Space Odyssey the way Samantha did in Her. “Her is playing on the fact that the audience knows what [Scarlett Johansson] looks like,” "

And another: "If the goal is for a machine can convince a human that it’s human, then the machine has to assume some kind of gender because we see all humans as having a gender."

Ex-Machina certainly provides a shock to anyone who walked in (or really, Amazon-Primed-In?) hoping for a slick sci-fi about AIs, technology, and the ultimate battle of human vs machine. For one, the film's gender aspect consumed its reviewers, some exalting its "beautifully subtle" commentary on masculine fragility while others incriminating Garland for perpetuating the male gaze onto robots. The production design of Ava and Co. indicates that this isn't so much a film about AIs as it is about gender illuminated in the context of consciousness and intelligence. The many choices made about Ava are not for sake of scientific imagination - why does Ava assume a humanoid form? Why does she require skin, senses of touch, or facial expressions? These are all interesting questions about the nature of intelligence and the purpose of AIs. But in Ex Machina's case, they are choices that turn the lens back on us. This might be a film about AIs, but the true topics of exploration are very much human. 

Why does Ava have a gender is a scientific question - does intelligence and consciousness, a sense of being and existence, need some kind of association with a gender? - but why is Ava female is a wholly social one. Garland in *some* interview acknowledged the femme-fatale stereotype which Ava follows, asserting it intentional: Why does Ava, with her knowledge based solely on Goo--- I mean, Bluebook, searches, decide sexuality would be her best strategy for escape? Didn't she essentially learn it from us? The male characters are "defeated" because they bought into their own "damsel in distress" perception, and such a set up reinforce what could be perceived as Garland's examination of patriarchy. The intentional failing of the Bechdel Test opens up a confusing debate - on one hand, patriarchy is shattered by its own illusions and perceptions of the other gender, so let's do away with the patriarchy? On the other, female characters exploiting the stereotypes of their gender to gain power isn't quite avante-garde.

Of course, the added mess in here is that Ava isn't a human female. Femme fatale entails that the femme, by seduction or some method with gender-definition, triumph over the male gender, taking over the power structure. Does Ava's escape mark some kind of win for the female gender? Or is it far larger than that? Because, philosophically, the necessity of gender to intelligence and consciousness is unclear. Ava could be female and incorporated the seduction plan to overcome the male-gaze. OR, she could've incorporated the concept of gender itself as a way to overcome human control - in this instance, the patriarchy. Ava's gender could be as much a ploy as her sexuality; perhaps the oppressor in her mind isn't the males, but humans in general. She took on a familiar human social construct, and used it to her advantage. Her escape is an assertion of AI's superiority, their ability to exploit human psychology and society to rise above. 

Ex Machina's dealings with Artificial Intelligence is a premise, not an exploration. With an all-male inventors team, Ava has features built more for social commentary than for science-fiction hypothesis. The discussion helms little in terms of the nature of intelligence or "life". Rather, the questions we are left wondering are more of "why are we inclined to build robots in our form?" or "if the inventors were women, what would "Ava" be like?" As said in the beginning, the lens is on us humans, not AI. The interesting, incomprehensible jargon here is twofold.

1) Why do we envision artificial intelligence to take on our form? What does it say about us when we want robots to have skin, touch, expression and motion? And by those responses, are we really creating the next wave or are we really looking for like-wise companions in AI?

2) Does an AI need characteristics of life we have? Does consciousness need constructs like gender, society, and structure? And perhaps most importantly, does it have to take on human interpretations of those? That is, wouldn't our social constructs become manipulatable and archaic in the face of higher intelligence?

Who is the real one in control? The man or the machine?

Shortly after watching both Ex Machina and Creative Control by Alex Garland and Benjamin Dickinson, I noticed the plight, or rather downfall of the human expression. Right off the bat, both films are centered on a human trying to make sense out of the artificial intelligence that they have created. It's almost like we see a downfall of the protagonist throughout the film. For ex_machina, we see Nathan using Ava to try to pass the Turing test to see if she could be passed a legitimate human being, and in Creative Control, David uses his faux-Google Glass product to try to have an affair with Juliette. However, I think that these two films are trying to get at something. In the near future, how far are we going to take technology? At what point can we draw the line? These innovations and improvements are a detriment to future societies, and now that the technology is accessible, we are using it for harm instead of good. Or at least I think that's what both films are trying to say.

Over all of the abundant examples of using technology to help people, from prosthetics to improving education, our society never seems to look at the examples of harmful use until it is presented in the news. For example, we never really mention drones or spying unless it makes breaking news. Maybe they are understated in these films to prove a point. What I am trying to get at is that both films are trying to connect the detriment of technology towards a specific person as the root cause for society's collapse due to our fixation and "addiction" of consuming technology. How do we know that Nathan was trying to let Ava escape and pass the Turing test so that Ava could commit genocide or something of that nature? How do we know that David's manipulation of Sophie through the glasses was on purpose or something that he accidentally discovered? The answers are not very clear...

So now I think the question is who is really in control? The man or the cell phone? The man or the robot? The man or the machine? Will Ava become the norm in 10, 20 years? Possibly, I am not ruling it out. But I do believe that there is a mass conspiracy where the technology of today is going to be so advanced that the robots will coexist with humans and we will have no way of knowing. But who is responsible for this? We all are. And there's no stopping them.

Should artificial intelligence be part of our future?

There are 2 current films that have touched upon what it means to be human and how humans nowadays, because of incredible technological advances, want to create a virtual/robotic human so as to reinvent humans. These 2 films that have this similar theme are Ex Machina directed by Alex Garland and Creative Control directed by Benjamin Dickinson. While Ex Machina, to me, is a far better and more intriguing film than Creative Control, it is hard to ignore the film’s message – humans are like avatars; both enter in and out of real and imaginary worlds.

Ex Machina is essentially about a programmer named Caleb Smith who wins a contest that enables him to spend a week at the private estate of Nathan Bateman, his firm's brilliant CEO. When he arrives, Caleb learns that he has been chosen to be the human component in a Turing test to determine the capabilities and consciousness of Ava, a beautiful robot. However, it soon becomes evident that Ava is far more self-aware and deceptive than either man imagined. Through this brilliant plot, the film raises questions about the similarity and differences of human and robotic consciousness, morality and technology. For me, it was so interesting to see how Nathan and Ava developed throughout the film. While Caleb seemed to be more of a static character (an almost naiive yet good morals), Nathan and Ava were more dynamic characters. One way we can see this is how much we learn throughout the film about Caleb through the sessions with Ava. He reveals where he lives, what he does, if he is in a relationship and much more. Caleb is an open book from the start while we never know who Nathan is. He’s only interested to use Caleb for his own benefits and self-knowledge. Ava is also an ambiguous character because she is always questioning Caleb. While she has feelings for Caleb, we never know if they are real or programmed. It’s painful at the end to realize that her emotions were programmed, and she was also using Caleb to gain her independence. This film reminded me a lot about Tarkovsky’s 1972 sci-fi classic Solaris.  When Hari, the dead wife of Kelvin, appears on Solaris through the power of the Solaris Ocean, Kelvin questions whether his ghost-like wife is real or unreal. While Solaris affirms that humanity isn’t determined by biological makeup but by the capacity for emphathy, forgiveness, kindness and developing relationships with other humans, Ex Machina believes that robots have a place in our future if we treat them equally.

Creative Control is essentially about David, an overworked, tech-addled advertising executive developing a high-profile marketing campaign, featuring musician/comedian Reggie Watts, for a new generation of Augmented Reality glasses. Feeling stuck in his relationship with yoga teacher Juliette, he envies the charmed life of his best friend, fashion photographer Wim, and his entrancing girlfriend Sophie - so he uses the glasses to develop a life-like avatar of her. While Garland’s film is more of an inner film about hidden meanings and conceptions, Dickinson’s film is merely about the interpretations of beauty and questioning whether technology can help us understand what beauty is. One of the ways the director tries to illustrate beauty is by referencing other films (like Blow-Up, A Clockwork Orange and much more). While watching the film, I felt isolated looking at looming buildings of a corporatized city, New York. The people who live in this city seem disunited too; the people who work in these skyscrapers rarely seem to have a feel for life at ground level. David is lost within his own life too. He doesn’t know which woman to sleep with or marry? The avatar that David creates seem an escape from real life and into fantasies. He doesn’t need to worry about his decisions when dealing with technology because it doesn’t judge him. While Ex Machina seems hopeful of a world with robots and AI, Creative Control is ambivalent and warns that it might not be the answer.