'Ex Machina’ is sci-fi with more than artificial intelligence

[Daniel]

Science fiction may be the defining movie genre of our time, but too often it’s just a vehicle for escapist space adventure or paranoid dystopian fantasy. A sci-fi movie that actually has intelligent things to say about science — that’s all too rare. It’s what we get in “Ex Machina.”

http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/...

[[deleted user]]

Anyone actually seen this want to share?

[Michele]

Haven't seen it yet, but there's a nice interview with writer/director Alex Garland on the newest Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

http://geeksguideshow.com/2015/04/23/...

Edit to add - there's no spoilers for the movie - he's very vague as he doesn't like people to have preconceived ideas about movies.

[Stephen]

This comment probably contains spoilers. For those who have yet to see the movie you may wish to defer reading.

For once we get a cerebral piece of sci fi rather than either a western set in space of a buddy flick with spaceships instead of cars. That being said, my wife who saw the movie with me found it slow, and clearly it is methodical, but Garland is attempting to deal with the question of consciousness and it is not only machine consciousness that we are asking about, but human consciousness.

Garland's effort to delve into the question of consciousness is a challenge he does not quite master. There are three mis-steps that come to mind, but overall, the movie succeeds by suggesting that consciousness is not achieved while making clear that the requirement of consciousness goes beyond the Turing test and requires the existence of a moral compass.

The evolution of Caleb to question his own humanness is too sudden. That he would is logical given the manipulation by Nathan, but greater development of the questioning in Caleb's mind is needed.

Why does Kyoko wait to stab Nathan? If she could do it when she does, why not do it earlier? There is a sequence of Kyoko meeting Ava, but then Ava seeming to instruct Kyoko. Who is leading who?

If the intelligence exists that seems to exist in Ava and if she is conspiring with Kyoko, why not fix Kyoko and give her speech before departing?

The end of both Nathan and Caleb contains an interesting commentary on the technical, in which, like the Oppenheimer quote Caleb makes earlier, "Now I am become death the destroyer of worlds", both Nathan and Caleb die at the hands of their creation. (Caleb's death is presumed.)

In the end Garland seems clear in his view that while intelligence is achieved, consciousness is not, perhaps as befits the idea that simply amassing data and defining an outcome is insufficient, intelligence so derived is not actually stochastic but predictive and lacks morality and creativity. In this, "Ex Machina" is the best that science fiction can be leaving us to ask, just because we can do it, is it right?