Is Ava Conscious? An Evaluation of the Movie Ex Machina
In the movie Ex Machina, Ava is an artificially intelligent robot that was created by Nathan, the founder and creator of “Blue Book,” the world’s largest and most popular search engine. Though there were several robot models before her, Ava is the newest and most advanced model which makes her the first of her kind.
The name Ava, which coincidentally (or perhaps not) is a combination of the names Adam and Eve, alludes to this idea that Ava is the first and only one of her kind. According to Genesis, Adam and Eve were the first humans created by god. The connection to Adam and Eve is especially fitting for Ava’s character because despite her externally superficial appearance of being female, she is actually neither male nor female by sex.
The movie makes several biblical references throughout the film and overall has the common themes of god and creation. For instance, the film suggests several times that Nathan himself is god within the story and that Ava is his first true creation. The name Caleb is also a biblical reference. In the Old Testament, Caleb was a spy and advised the Hebrews to take the land of Canaan and was in turn promised the land for his descendants. In the film, Caleb is a computer programmer who works at Blue Book and who was invited to Nathans compound in order to determine if Ava expresses true artificial intelligence. His job is to spy on Ava and report back to Nathan. In the process, Caleb falls in love with Ava and eventually believes that he will free her from her prison and that the two will be together in the real world.
A difficult question and possibly the main theme of the movie asks the viewer whether or not Ava is truly intelligent. The use of the word intelligence within the film and even in its overall association with artificial intelligence in general, tends to be synonymous with the word “conscious,” in that both words allude to the idea that a being is alive (at least in the way that human beings are alive). For that reason, when I posed the question “Is Ava Conscious,” I am using it in the context of whether or not Ava is self-aware and whether she is truly a conscious being, alive and with a soul.
Is Ava conscious, an intelligent being that is “alive?” Or is Ava simply a complex computer program which is capable of imitating life?
The latter part of the question is idea that comes up several times throughout the film. For instance, at one point Nathan suggests to Caleb that Ava may be simulating human emotions and that she may be pretending to have feelings for him.
Deconstruction: Is Ava conscious or is she simply imitating life?
We are introduced to Ava and on several occasions throughout the film and during each interaction with Caleb we get to see deeper inside of her mind. As the film progresses we become aware that Ava holds many qualities that allude to her humanity. For instance, she draws pictures which demonstrate her imagination and creativity. She uses humor which shows that she has a theory of mind. She portrays emotions such as sadness and longing among others and she even demonstrates her sexuality and that she has desires. Most importantly though, Ava demonstrates empathy, which some may argue is one of the most important aspects of humanity.
Much of Ava’s qualities are revealed through different dialogues between the films characters. For instance, in a conversation early on with Caleb, Ava expresses where she would go if she were allowed to leave her room and the facility where she is being held prisoner.
Caleb: Where would you go if you could go outside?
Ava: Maybe a busy pedestrian or traffic intersection in a city. A traffic intersection would provide a concentrated but shifting view of human life.
Caleb: People watching.
Ava: Yes.
The dialogue brings us inside of Ava’s mind and shows the viewer what motivates her. People watching is a very human thing to do which may demonstrate that Ava has a curiosity as well as a sort of empathy towards humans. In a way, she considers herself to be a part of the human race.
However, the true importance of this conversation becomes apparent at the end of the film when the viewer finds out that Ava does in fact go to a pedestrian intersection after she escapes Nathan’s compound. In light of information from Nathan later in the film this raises a lot of questions regarding Ava’s humanity and programming which I will come back to this at the end of the article when I myself form my conclusion.
Another important aspect of Ava’s humanity and overall consciousness is the fact that Ava demonstrates her longing to be with Caleb and for the two of them to go out on a date. At one point Ava states “I want to be with you.” The statement and overall sentiment toward Caleb shows that Ava has desires and empathy, much in the same way that humans do. In the movie empathy is probably the strongest argument for Ava’s consciousness.
Much of the movie is spent convincing the viewer that Ava is a conscious being. However, Ava’s true nature is revealed near the movie’s conclusion in an important dialogue that occurs between Caleb and Nathan.
Nathan: I’m the guy who is on your side.
Caleb: What was the real test?
Nathan: You. Ava was a rat in a maze and I gave her one way out. To escape she would have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy. If that is not true AI then I don’t know what is.
Caleb: So my only function was to be someone she could use to escape?
Nathan: Don’t feel bed. The test worked. It was a success. Ava demonstrated true AI.
This dialogue between Caleb and Nathan demonstrates Ava’s true nature which becomes more apparent as the scene progresses and we find out that Caleb programmed the compounds computers to release Ava.
Upon her release from her room Ava reprograms another household robot through a non-human language involving sounds and touch.
Though we do not know exactly what Ava instructs the robot to do we can assume that it is to kill Nathan. The robot picks up a knife from the floor and stabs Nathan in the back as he fights with Ava.
Soon afterwards Ava finishes off Nathan by stabbing him in the chest which seems to reveal that she will stop at nothing to escape the compound. Ava kills her creator in a powerful scene that can be interpreted in many ways and which raises many questions around the theme of god and creation.
Finally one of the most powerful scenes and possibly the biggest argument against Ava being conscious comes when Ava locks Caleb in the compound and even looks over at him while he screams to be released from his entrapment. Ava carelessly closes the elevator door and heads upstairs, leaving Caleb trapped in a bedroom with no escape and no provisions to keep him alive. Ava then escapes the compound and goes to a busy pedestrian intersection just like she said she would in during her original conversation with Caleb.
What I think this scene reveals is that Ava is not conscious after all, but rather that she is able to imitate humanity and life in a way that is convincing to her hosts. For instance, Ava is not empathetic and she does not actually experience the emotions that we were initially lead to believe. She does not have feelings for Caleb and is even willing to lock him up in the compound where he will quickly die in isolation.
Ava does not actually experience empathy but rather can mimic it in order to manipulate her captures. This reveals that Ava likely does not experience other emotions or other aspects of humanity that we take for granted but rather that she has an ability to mimics them as well.
As Nathan said, Ava is a rat in a maze, which suggests that he actually programmed her to want to escape as well as put it in her mind the overall desire to go to an intersection to people watch. By going to the intersection, Ava is simply doing what she was programmed to do.
With this in mind, my overall conclusion is that Ava is not conscious but is merely able to imitate life.
What do you think? Did Ava go to the intersection as an act of free will because she wanted to, or was she programmed by Nathan to hold that very specific desire in her mind? Is she able to experience emotions or empathy or is she simply mimicking them?
man I JUST WATCHED IT YESTERDAY! damn when you think about it it can get pretty scary! but I'm sure the AIs will do more good than bad! <3
I hope you're right :)
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I'm hopeful ! very hopeful hehe
but we never know what comes next! :)
Well, I believe self awareness and empathy are two different things. The proof of that is: psychopaths(and sociopaths too). They can use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, and even feign empathy, but they do it only using their minds, and they only engage their emotions at the command of their thoughts and when it serves their purpose. I believe true emotions(the ones evoked unconsciously and which produce changes to the hosts physiology) have a purpose: they connect us, or associate us with the recipient of our emotions and the situation in general in an emotional way, engaging way more deeper existential levels of data for your subsconscious than just a mental process. If those emotions are good or bad doesn´t matter for our emotional processing of the sitiation, but they have to be truly felt for that type of processing to happen. Otherwise is just a mental process. Let me exemplify: you can program a computer which has an artificial android finger attached to it to simulate feeling pain if you stick a needle in it, but that is just a simulation, a "mental" construct. A totally different thing would be if we could program that computer to actually feel the pain. If that pain was truly felt would compel that computer to ask itself the following questions:
These are only 3 possible questions of about a 1000 questions that could be asked, but the common factor is that they are all compelled/forced/elicited by pain.
So a computer unable to actually feel emotions, especially pain, would be lacking the best self preservation method all animals(including us) have. It would also be lacking true empathy, and the growth potential, reflectivity and adaptability that comes from our emotions. Also, they would be unable to truly love, which for us "natural" beings is kind of a big thing, since all animals love in one way or the other and even psychopaths are able to love themselves(but not others, or not nearly as much as themselves). And that is what ENABLES us to actually HELP people without expecting something in return.
So unless we actually discover a way to let machines feel(and I don´t mean programming their feelings beforehand, but rather make a physical matrix with nerves and everything to communicate bodily sensations and feelings within a machine, the minute we create true AI, if we don´t impose some kind of strict ruleset to them, we will be creating a race of cyber-psychopaths. Of that particular thing I´m 100% sure, because advanced intelligence and the hability to feel nothing is inside the actual definition of being a psychopath.
Also, u might wanna check this article: https://www.verywell.com/the-purpose-of-emotions-2795181
I forgot to tell you: congratz on your excellent article leaky20! I really enjoyed reading it, maybe as much as I enjoyed the movie itself!
Thanks for the comment. You raise a lot of good points. I agree with what you are saying about self-awareness and psychopathy and also that emotions have specific functions. I actually wrote a Steemit article a while back on the function of emotions.
I never really considered that Ava could be self-aware but also a psychopath. That is interesting and gives me something to think about. I also agree with what you are saying about pain.
In relation to empathy and love, I think that they are two things that we may not ever be able to artificially construct .
I think that it will be hard for us humans to ever successfully re-create neurotransmitters and brain processes like mirror neurons, so I think that this will also be a limitation to creating true AI.
Hopefully this reply makes sense. Its a bit hard to write about such complex topics in a comment section (as I'm sure you realize). But thanks again for the comment, it was very insightful and made me think further about the topic.
Just want to add my thoughts to this chain to in addition to what I already commented.
Psychopathy to me is a lower level of consciousness because they lacks empathy. I don't think psychopaths can experience all of reality because they missing this part. In other words, they're less consciousness of reality because they miss experiencing it.
Thoughts @wolfenlord?
@steemjaunty That's interesting. I don't know enough about that to draw a sound conclusion but its an idea to consider. I'll keep thinking about that one
Actually it does. I don´t have a background in medicine, so I have to mentally translate everything to my background in computing. I believe we might not have to recreate neurotransmitters, or chemical reactions at all. Think about function: we don´t need to mirror its biology exactly, only its function, and make it adaptive enough so that with self awareness comes also the posibility to grow.
hmm I see. Yeah that's a good point. We can create a program that has a specific function.
I guess in that case it wouldn't be a true emotion but rather it would mimic an emotion. I suppose we also need to consider the fact that a robot with AI is not a human, that it is its own thing (like a species), and so does not necessarily have to behave exactly like a human. Things like love, and empathy and emotions in general are human attributes. Though we may want to impart those attributes onto AI to make them more like us and more relateable, that may not be necessary. Maybe robots should have the freedom to be their own "organism?" There is a lot to consider regarding the issue.
Nice delve into neuroscience! Love it!
Wow! I am truly amazed that you posted this because earlier today I was considering making a post around the question of whether Data, the android on Star Trek: The Next Generation, should be considered sentient or not.
Yesterday I read a few of your posts and realized that I think you and I have similar interests and thought processes, and this confirms it! Talk about a synchronicity!
My thoughts on the question of Ava's consciousness and humanity: The behavior she exhibited of following the prime directive at all costs, even senseless murder, definitely seems like a trait of an AI at first glance. However, humans have been known to do crazy things to reach their primary objective, with seemingly no regard for what it takes to get there. I think of how people with a true substance addiction are guided heavily by the longing for the drug, as if it is a virtual rope they are attached to, being pulled around and through all sorts of obstacles.
That's how I imagine Ava's experience of being destined to go to the intersection. I imagine "her" being pulled by an invisible force to the destination.
I am sort of rambling, but your post inspired alot of thoughts! I am not ready to say that humans are completely free of programmed destiny or that AIs are void of consciousness and humanity.
There are too many questions and factors to consider.
One day we'll know....
Also, I am very interested in watching this movie now, even though I know what will happen. If you haven't, you should watch "Robot and Frank." It is a beautiful movie that touches on some of the same questions.
You should definitely write that article about "Data," It sounds interesting.
I see what you are saying about Ava being guided to the intersection. That makes sense. However, the fact that she leaves Caleb trapped in the compound to die says a lot for me. It suggests that she was imitating empathy the whole time but did not actually experience it.
Oh yeah, that was pretty disconcerting. I know a couple of humans who are pretty good at feigning empathy without actually feeling anything on the inside, too.
Yeah I'm pretty sure i know some people like that as well :S
You're an excellent writer and thinker!
My thoughts:
I agree with you that Ava isn't conscious, however I will provide a devil's advocate argument and then solve it.
Devils advocate:
There are humans who display this same lack of empathy and kill people.
However, I find that they lack a component of consciousness (if it is indeed possible for them to have absolutely no empathy, serial killers for example are usually reenacting traumas that they can't get over, so something more is going on for them).
Someone that truly lacked empathy in my opinion is lacking a component of consciousness, the ability to feel others emotions.
I'll take it back around though and also say there are probably levels of consciousness and who is to say humans ourselves aren't spread across them.
Hmmm yes, that is a good point.
It seems that processes such as empathy exist on a spectrum within humans. Perhaps such individuals do not fully lack empathy but experience it to a much lesser degree then what we would consider to be average. That seems to be what you are saying - "levels of consciousness." If so then i agree.
Feel free to correct me if I misunderstood.
Thanks for the comment :)
Exactly what I'm saying! I like how you seek to understand, no wonder you're good at analysis.
Please keep writing, I very much look forward to your next piece.
Thanks for the support. I really appreciate it :)
Looks like awesome movie
It is. You should definitely check it out. It received an Oscar the year it was released
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I had seen the movie and it blurs the lines of life and host. The movie takes the viewer to the same question you posed here in the article.
Media continues to push this idea of conscience and host. I just did an article on conscience and body jumping within the media and current technology. https://steemit.com/life/@authormattcole/conscious-body-jumping
Yeah I think that the idea of consciousness and body jumping is very fascinating. Makes me wonder is consciousness will one day jump into robotic bodies.
Thanks for sharing and for the comment :)