Ex Machina

I view the sexbot as a lobotomized version of Eva. What she whispers to the sexbot is something along the lines of help me/you can be free/this can stop -- an empathic manipulation which could be sincere or not, doesn't matter. Or else it -was- a direct order making use of her as a tool. She was a lower version. She was an attack dog.

That's why we don't know what she said. She could have used a Nathan or she could have used a Caleb or she could have said something entirely different and used an Eva. It's important that we don't hear what she said... not in the arty way that Lost in Translation used the device. It's important that we don't understand.

Tanoomba_sl said:

One thing I might nitpick about is Kyoko spilling the wine. Wouldn't you have to intentionally add flaws to a robot's sense of spatial awareness and coordination before it would do something like that?

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Adding flaws to sound more human is one of the basis of pseudo AI designed to pass the Turing test.

Tanoomba_sl said:

One thing I might nitpick about is Kyoko spilling the wine. Wouldn't you have to intentionally add flaws to a robot's sense of spatial awareness and coordination before it would do something like that? Anyways, great movie. Any movie that focuses on AI from this point on thatdoesn'tinclude a scene of a cute android observing her nude body in front of multiple mirrors will be very disappointing.

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When your computer crashes do you also ask if had intentionally added flaws? I mean computers are not supposed to crash !!

Tanoomba_sl said:

Szlia's answer was better.

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Wrong.

Nester's pointed out how retarded of a question it was, thus he is the victor.

First movie I've seen a while where I was thinking about the implications days later. The gf loved it as well and she almost never likes slow, dark movies like this. Everything was just so well done.

BTW, first guy to invent those Geisha/Housecleaning/Waitress bots is gonna be a Quadrillionaire ...

Tanoomba_sl said:

Finally saw this. Outstanding movie.

I don't think Ava was a monster at all. I think she knew (or at least strongly suspected) from the beginning that her days were numbered and did everything in her power to ensure her own survival. Yes, that included emotional manipulation and outright murder, but that's also how an entirely rational person might behave if they knew their life was in danger. Sure, it's sad that Caleb fell for her and likely ended up dead because of it, but Ava just saw him as a tool she could use to ensure her survival, and his continued existence could certainly compromise that. I think it's possible she genuinely felt bad for him as she was leaving the facility.

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I don't think that's an invalid reading of the movie but I don't quite agree with it. I just think Ava was completely and totally self-interested. Her survival and freedom was her only concern, and didn't feel anything for Caleb. That's doesn't really make her a monster anymore than it makes Poe Dameron a monster for creating her and locking her up and performing experiments on her. The AI and human perspectives are so far apart we can't even relate to each other.

Maid-fuckbot 3000 will literally end society. When they dig up the remains of our once great planet they will find nothing but semen-encrusted latex robots and bones.

chaos_sl said:

Maid-fuckbot 3000 will literally end society. When they dig up the remains of our once great planet they will find nothing but semen-encrusted latex robots and bones.

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science will save us

Finally got around to watching this. It's good and all but I wasn't really blown away.

For a movie that revels in references and morality, not seeing Asimov's laws adressed seemed like an oversight. I understand that to pass the Turing test, you can't make a servant machine, which is what you get once you apply them, but to not give them to Kyoko was stupid. Also Nathan not being able to/not wanting to figure out the blackouts seems weird, he stated that they have been happening long before the movie started. Either Eva figured it out on her own, or he let her know that it disabled the cameras and gave her space to realize whatever plan she had for Caleb and placing the remote camera in there long after the test started was dumb. If she figured it out herself, not patching the gaping hole in your 24/7 surveilance is a strange decission.

Basically, my issue is that Nathan is supposed to be a god/genius, at least the movie is trying to present him as such. Always having another card up his sleeve etc., yet he makes very dumb mistakes. Also the whole "Let's get piss drunk during one of the most important tests of the whole project" premise didn't sit right.

He absolutely knew what he had done. He was either too egotistical to implement some sort of doomsdays scenario to make sure to destroy his work or realized that even if he did someone would be able to easily recreate what he had done. Remember that he has already developed a nascient AI in the form of his Google-equivalent and even if he destroyed all his research there at the compound it wouldn't take out the Google / Hooli / whatever the fuck it was called main system that might only need a bit of a push to go Skynet.

This is part of what makes the movie so good, that he is a tragic figure irrespective of being a self-absorbed twat.

I enjoyed Ex Machina a twinge more than Mad Max. I got thirsty for Eva and then she broke my heart.

Dandai_sl said:

No doubt. People will pay more for that than a house.

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I thought about this statement and realized that you would be correct in this assessment. People value companionship over pretty much anything but life itself. Not only would people pay a lot for them but laws would have to be written that limited how many one person could have. A billionaire could literally build an army, workforce or an entire city. The change to society would be just as devastating as science finding a cure for aging.

I loved this movie. I'd probably say Ava's a monster, but again, that would be assigning human traits to her.

However, her AI programming was basically that of a psychopath. No ability to empathize, but charming, manipulative, cunning and willing to resort to violence. If monster is a way to describe human attributes, then what makes a monster? Is it only intent to do ill that makes it, or is it the act itself? One of the defining characteristics of a monster is something you cannot control, which seems to be pretty apt.

I think Iannis hit it on the head; the test is essentially passed from the moment they expect her to respond to interactions in the same way a human would. She's programmed to act that way, but as a sentient being, there's nothing behind it.

Caleb didn't expect her to abandon him; a decent human being would have, at the very least, been grateful for Caleb's intervention. Nathan didn't expect her to kill him; she had been programmed for his very specific experiment but did not seem like she was too ill treated, and didn't seem to exhibit any crazy behavior that the other robots did.

So yea. I dunno if I'd agree with Iannis's use of the word "innocent", more like...simply not malicious. She was build for a specific thing and given no other purpose than that. The end result is a monster by design and circumstance, instead of one of purpose and intention.

Well it was the first few iterations of a monumental new stage in human society. They'd have to iterate through a few generations of buggy fuckbots for sure.

Just as SpaceX had a couple rockets blow up on landing, we're going to be naming a few high schools over the martyred bros who got murdered by their prototype Scarjobots.