Original link: https://limboy.me/posts/ex-machina/
The story tells that the founder of the technology company Blue Book developed an artificial intelligence robot. In order to know whether she is conscious and how intelligent she is, she “invited” an employee of the company to test her by means of a lottery. The story takes place in a large villa like a paradise. There are only three main characters, and the plot is not complicated, but the director’s rhythm is well grasped, advancing slowly without procrastination.
Watching this movie after experiencing the power of GPT-4, it doesn’t feel so sci-fi. In the words of the director, if 10 minutes later a technology company like Google or Apple announced that they had created Ava, we would be shocked, but not so shocked. Modern technology may already have the ability to build Ava.
The tone of this movie is sci-fi suspense, and if you peel off the suspense, there are some points that can be explored:
- How far can AI evolve?
- What would it be like if AI were conscious?
- Will AI have a sense of morality?
Judging from the results, the director’s position should be pessimistic. In the play, Caleb asks Nathan why he wants to be Ava? Nathan replied, if you could do it, would you choose not to do it? The emergence of highly intelligent AI in the next few decades is almost inevitable, and the variable is “when”, not “if”.
I have to say that the test plan designed by Nathan is very clever, and it is much more effective than a simple question-and-answer test. But from the perspective of system design, two very important links are missing, rehearsal and worst-case scenario. Taking Double Eleven as an example, before the real Double Eleven starts, one or even several rounds of stress testing will be carried out to see if the current design has any dead ends and whether it can handle the instantaneous traffic. At the same time, when Double Eleven really starts, if a certain service is suddenly unavailable, how to deal with it, and whether to limit the flow. Judging from this play, Nathan should not have considered these two links. If there is a rehearsal, such as a round of simulation tests, you can roughly know the level of Ava’s intelligence. At the same time, considering the worst case, there should be a button to terminate or read a password to put Ava to sleep and other similar emergency mechanisms. There is also a big slot, which is the use of badges as passes.
From Caleb’s point of view, he went from being happy when he first won the lottery to finding out that he was a specially chosen person, and then thinking of the charm of the beautiful assistant next to the magician. Feeling slowly sliding somewhere, but unable to resist the force.
And Ava used her intelligence to the fullest throughout the escape plan. Step by step to provoke the relationship between Caleb and Nathan, and use Caleb as a tool for his escape, and let the latter think that he is actively making this happen. This is no longer something ordinary people can do.
PS: The dance between Nathan and Kyoko is really funny…
Some small details:
- The location of the film is a hotel in Norway, you can watch the VLog recorded by this tourist.
- Ava’s name comes from the first generation of female programmer Ada .
- When Caleb sat in front of Nathan’s computer and started coding, the code he entered was the algorithm of “finding prime numbers by sieve method”, and the prime number
9780199226559was also the ISBN number of the book “Embodiment and the Inner Life”. The book discusses cognition and consciousness and should be one of the inspirations for this film. - The knife used by Kyoko is the Japanese Senzo Knife, which is very sharp. This video introduces how the Senzo Knife is made from the initial iron blade to the final product. Every link is checked by experienced swordsmiths.
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