Dualism In Ex Machina

Ex Machina is a movie based on the present where a CEO of an internet company named Nathan creates an A.I. in which he begins to run multiple exams. Nathan the CEO run many tests until he believes the A.I. Ava has passed his test which leads onto the final exam the Turing Test. Nathan chooses one of his workers who fit the criteria to be a component in the Turing Test to learn the capabilities and consciousness of the A.I. Ava. Before he begins the test the worker Nathan has chosen to name Caleb is told that the A.I. has the brain which is a gel substance that stores memories. As the test comes close the end, both Nathan and Caleb find out that Eva is far more aware, conscious and deceptive than either one could imagine. Ava brings up the …show more content…
Caleb began to doubt Ava being an A.I. because she was answering the question as if she was truly thinking without a mind you wouldn’t be able to give those answers. Could Ava be thinking in order to give this answer or is she programmed to give just the same answer whenever she is asked a question? Ava performs human-like functions do this, push toward the side that she has a mind because according to functionalism you must have a mind in order to have the ability to perform certain functions (taken from Doing Philosophy An Introduction Through Thought Experiments, Lewis Vaughn). Ava was programmed to know what Caleb liked and who he was as a person but she wasn’t programmed to fall in love which is a function that is part of the mind. Ava falling in love with Caleb is the function that happens in the mind, making her more of a person because she shows she has a mind unless there was an error in the programming Ava to be deceiving. The Turing Test proved that Ava is intelligent, but Nathan also learned that she was beyond what he believed intelligent. “ The difficulty of passing the Turing Test should not be underestimated. To pass it, a computer would apparently have to lie”, (taken from Doing Philosophy An Introduction Through Thought Experiments, Lewis Vaughn). Ava was programmed to lie or else she would have never acted the way she did with Caleb being deceiving made her more of a person but she programmed to this certain way. The mind is what makes us a person and Ava only shows to follow programming in order to pass the task, therefore, showing us she isn’t a person. A mind could survive without a body, but the body can’t survive without the mind taking