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.