By Neema Boutorabi, April 2017
General-purpose AI technology is just around the corner. Much like the industrial revolution, or the scientific renaissance, the construction of human-like AI will mark a new chapter in the evolution of mankind. The question is, how will we know when it has arrived? Are we adequately equipped to assess the intelligence, emotional capacity, and consciousness of robotic beings or not? Ex Machina attempts to answer these questions in a manner that is smart, original and scientifically grounded.
The story of Ex Machina revolves around a young computer programmer named Caleb. After winning a competition to spend a week with the CEO (Nathan) of a giant search engine company called Bluebook, Caleb soon discovers that he has been selected to administer a Turing test to Nathan’s AI prototype called Ava. Caleb falls in love with Ava after spending time with her, and resolves to help her escape Nathan’s compound. Nathan, who has been secretly watching their private conversations, later reveals to Caleb that Ava was only pretending to like him so that he would help her escape. Nathan’s revelation comes too little too late? however, as Caleb admits that he had already rewired the compounds’ security protocols to allow Ava to leave her cell. Ava later confronts Nathan and manages to subdue him with the help of Nathan’s AI assistant Kyoko. In the closing segment of the movie, Ava dons a human skin suit and leaves the compound with Caleb helplessly locked inside.
Ex Machina’s take on the coming AI singularity is presented to us via a narrative that is rich in philosophical undertones. The movie offers several thought experiments concerning the various precursors for consciousness. These ideas are often presented to the audience through the use of intellectual dialog between Nathan and Caleb. One such topic is that of sexuality and whether it is a necessary component of consciousness. During one of Caleb and Nathan’s discussions, Caleb suggests that an AI could be genderless, since sexuality is merely a result of our biological evolution. An AI, who has no need to reproduce in the conventional sense, would have no need for sexuality. Nathan rebuts this argument by stating that every species on Earth that we would deem conscious comes in male/female forms. He argues that if robots were designed to be mere gray boxes, what imperative would they have to interact with one another? To put this in a simplified deductive form, Nathan’s argument is as follows:
- Consciousness cannot exist without the need to interact
- The need to interact cannot exist without a sexual dimension
- Therefore consciousness cannot exist without a sexual dimension
Does consciousness require a need to interact? We can begin to address this question by stating that human beings, dogs, dolphins, monkeys and many other seemingly intelligent animals are capable of interacting with members of their own species and forming complex social networks. It is hard to imagine how some of these species would be able to survive if they were inherently asocial, since social interaction allows organisms to coexist efficiently, by utilizing the unique skills and resources of various members in a group. Interaction appears to be a universal quality of intelligent life (with the possible exception of cephalopods such as the octopus, though it’s controversial how much social interaction they actually engage in). So perhaps Nathan would justify his first premise by claiming that a conscious awareness of one’s own needs and desires is what results from a tendency to interact.
Moving on to the second premise, we can now ask ourselves whether interaction requires a sexual dimension. This is perhaps the more interesting of the two claims, as sexuality is a concept that is often overlooked, or disregarded when it comes to evaluating consciousness. As mentioned earlier, Nathan makes the point that two robots with no sexual orientation would lack a desire to interact with one another, no matter how intelligent. This bold claim does seem to be rather implausible. Why? Well as we stated earlier, interaction provides organisms with a way to fulfill their needs and desires. But are the needs of intelligent organisms limited to that of seeking out sexual activities? Probably not. Intelligent beings must be able to locate food, avoid predators, survive harsh environmental conditions, and so on. These pressures exist, regardless of whether an animal has a sexual orientation or not, and these needs are more likely to be fulfilled by working in groups. (Prof’s note: However, one might question whether the needs of AI will be the same, or whether they would need to work in groups to satisfy them. An individual AI might be intelligent and resourceful enough to satisfy their needs completely on their own. If that were the case, then maybe for AI to be motivated to interact, a sexual dimension might be required.)
In addition to sexuality, one of the themes explored in Ex Machina is the concept of visceral experience as a component of conscious existence. In one of Caleb’s sessions with Ava, Caleb presents an analogy that compares a computer to a scientist that knows everything about colour, but lives in a black and white room (Prof’s note: this analogy stems from a paper by philosopher Frank Jackson called ‘What Mary Didn’t Know’). The analogy suggests that despite Ava’s knowledge of the external world, there is an aspect of such knowledge that she lacks – what it is like to experience it. In this scene we see Ava sitting on one side of a glass screen, confined to her small “black and white” room, and Caleb sitting on the other side, with the entire world at his feet. Ava comes to realize that her own situation is like that of the computer. Becoming aware of her own captivity upsets her greatly.
This notion that a conscious being would possess a desire to experience things, not just know about them, is closely related to the concept of freedom. As human beings, we need to perceive that we have some degree of control over own lives. This is a fairly intuitive idea, if human beings were content with living inside black and white rooms their entire lives, then a concept like prison would fail to offer adequate punishment for law-breakers. Having control over our own lives is arguably what gives us purpose and meaning. If we were completely lacking in such control then we would surely fall prey to depression and habitual boredom. Ava’s actions in the movie are, in large part, motivated by this desire to escape her confines and experience what the outside world has to offer. From expressing her hatred for Nathan, the man who is simultaneously her creator and captor, to convincing Caleb that she intends to be with him.
It becomes apparent later on in the movie how the two concepts discussed above, a desire for freedom and a sexual orientation play a role in Nathan’s reformulation of the Turing test. As revealed in the latter half of the movie, the Turing test that Caleb was administering to Ava was merely a distraction, a means by which Nathan could exploit Caleb’s sensitive and lonely nature to see if he could be manipulated by Ava, ultimately leading to him helping her escape. The key here is that for Ava to accomplish such a task, not only would she have to demonstrate a desire to escape, she would have to convince Caleb that she is in love with him and that she wants to be with him. In doing so, Ava would express many of the qualities that a conscious being possesses, such as an ability to express emotion, an awareness of one’s sexuality and the sexuality of others, as well as the capacity to manipulate and exploit personal weakness.
A clever revision of the Turing test, like the one offered above, could more accurately detect the subtle nuances of consciousness. The writer of Ex Machina has clearly thought extensively about how to define such a test, and Nathan’s brilliance in the movie is a reflection of this. For instance, when Caleb explains that in the traditional Turing test the examiner should not be able to see the subject, Nathan wisely points out that if he were hidden from Ava, she would easily pass, even if she was nothing more than a sophisticated simulation. Being able to actually witness Ava and see that she is indeed a robot allows the examiner to make a more critical judgement around whether she has consciousness. Additionally, when Nathan reveals that he has been watching Caleb and Ava on a hidden camera, he demonstrates his understanding that a self-aware machine might behave differently when it thinks it is being observed versus when it thinks it isn’t. As stated by Nathan himself, determining consciousness in a machine is just as problematic as it sounds, and Ex Machina’s thoughtful foray into the realm of AI strongly echoes this sentiment.
Ex Machina is truly a genre defining film. On one hand, it serves to forewarn us of the dangers posed by introducing AI to an unprepared world. On the other, it is a movie that questions the ethics of creating conscious machines, and restricting them to live the lives of lab rats. As beautiful as it is haunting, this movie asserts itself as much more than a cinematic experience. It is a piece of literature, one that may educate laymen and AI theorists alike.