What Happens When Machines Become Conscious?
Ex Machina
One sentence review: Ava _is_ an anti-theist
Good graphics – check
Good story – check
Good action – not an action flick
Good sex – depends on your definition, does mind fuck count as sex?
Would Nietzsche have enjoyed it? Once he got over the fact that we have 1080i resolution televisions with 4k screens, he’d have loved it.
Should you watch it? Only if you like cerebral stories about consciousness and what it actually means to be a conscious machine (hint: humans are)
Favorite scene: When Ava goes shopping for body parts like any woman browsing through a clothing store after killing her god
What can you expect to see:
- A visceral demonstration of the law of reciprocity
- How important empathy is, also see the first item (then think about this one carefully)
- Why a 15 million acre ranch is a bad idea
- Why people watching is addictive
- How to be a bad parent
- Why you can’t rescue everyone that seems like they need it
- How to tell a scifi story while avoiding all the technical details
What you won’t see:
- How religious people will feel about strong AI or consciousness in any species other than humans
- The answer to created consciousness and fears about the singularity
- Why robotic FWB is a bad idea
- How human psychology is the epitome of evolution in consciousness
Do watch it, I totally enjoyed it. I also recommend
myatheistlife 
I’ve been really wanting to watch Ex Machina after listening to an interview with Alex Garland on the Point of Inquiry Podcast!
I don’t think that it brought up new problems, nor did it address all the old ones… I think it highlights the ones we know about by showing that such machines will act just like us – that we are just like them, as we envision they might be.
Check out this article written by Alex Garland, the director of Ex Machina. He brings up some very interesting points about artificial intelligence. I do hope I’m not intruding by posting an article on your blog, if you don’t like it you can certainly delete it. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/movies/alex-garland-of-ex-machina-talks-about-artificial-intelligence.html?src=xps
Links that are appropriate are always welcome. The final paragraph is the gripper in that article.
I don’t think we’ll see any HAL9000 issues, sentience and human experience (the only thing we know) is not what such a conscious being will understand. Our emotions will not be theirs and being mechanical rather than biological they will probably have much better control of their emotions.
I loved it. Smart sexy sci-fi.
I couldn’t get out of my chair or press pause. I really liked it.
I’ll have to check these out. They look good.
Thanks for commenting. I plan on watching both of them several times
This looks interesting. I’ll have to check it out. I remember being all uptight at the idea of A.I. when I was a Christian, and now I find the idea interesting and a little terrifying.
P.s. I think a good mind fuck can count as sex.
Given that allowance, someone in the film got laid! I think we fear strong AI most because we fear it will be like us and be stronger than us. We know what we’ve done to the planet and other species and assume that any other intelligence would do the same. I don’t think so.
All good sex is mind fucking. Mind fucking is hotter than body fucking.
Mhm. 🙂
I will look for it
I hadn’t eve heard of it, now I need to find it to watch it.
Is it mainly based on the relationship’s between A.I. and human’s or is the main plot to do with extended our knowledge of everything we already know about A.I.?
it’s a story about humans, how humans and AI are not really different at least as we imagine strong AI to be
I’ll be seeing this. Heard nothing but good things about it.
The thing that terrifies me most about AI systems becoming truly sentient isn’t a fear of them turning on us or fraking up the planet even more. It’s the fear that the majority of us will, as a species, see them as so “other” that we’ll essentially have mass slavery again…and all the crap that came with it.
Doing harm to/abusing them because they “don’t have real emotions or pain”. Treating them as inferior, especially if they aren’t bipedal or have a distinctly nonhuman appearance. Creating laws that say, even after the singularity, sentient androids and robots are still considered property. And of course, those with the Frankenstein Complex (thank you, Issac Asimov) who deliberately will go out and attempt to destroy androids/robots our of a perverted sense of “morality”. Think of the scene involving the Flesh Fair in A.I..
By the time technobeings gain sentience and consciousness, will we have evolved enough to not treat them in shitty ways? The answer is likely no, since we haven’t even learned to do so with other biobeings yet.
I’m looking forward to seeing this. Good mind fucks are few and far between.
Hey, did you like Stones of Significance?
Star trek answered that. They become “people” and have rights just as we do. Besides we are just living machines where cells rather than wires make up our electrical systems and muscle rather than motors.. Our brains are our storage and CPU complete with advance AI that can learn.
I completely agree but there is a certain amount of xenophobia to get rid of on the way there
Very intriguing….
It’s a question we’ll have to answer soon enough I think.