Ex-Machina
Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina explores the difficulty of determining consciousness within artificial intelligence. Nathan, a genius, constructs a machine that can be conscious. He recruits Caleb, one of his many employees, to proctor it. This test seems to constantly go through modifications. It goes from whether Caleb feels she is conscious, through a Turing test, to what Ava actually feels about Caleb. Nathan infers that her emotions are the key to proving her consciousness. Ava demonstrates human qualities of mind to escape, but this fails to indicate true feelings as she is most likely pretending to have interest in Caleb to gain freedom from her oppressor.
A Turing test is done to ascertain the existence of consciousness within …show more content…
It is also argued that even though she lacks empathy and morality, that does not make her unconscious as sociopaths also lack those characteristics. However, it can’t be proven that she is conscious, nor can it be proven that she is not. There is a major difference between her and human sociopaths. She is a machine. Therefore, there can’t be an absolute answer to whether she is conscious. David L. Anderson in “What is a Person” says, “It is possible that a machine might be conscious, but at this point, given that we have no clue what it is about humans that make us conscious, we have no idea what we would have to build into an android to make it conscious.” Humanity still does not understand what makes humans conscious so it is not ideal to believe that anything that demonstrates intelligence is conscious as well. Many people often are amazed to see intelligence in things other than humans and they instantly make this assumption. Searle explains, “Since appropriately programmed computers can have input-output patterns similar to those human beings, we are tempted to postulate mental states in the computer similar to human mental states. But once we see that it is both conceptually and empirically possible for a system to have human capacities in some realm without having any intentionality at all, we …show more content…
According to Nathan, it is sexuality, imagination, manipulation, empathy, and self-awareness. He gives Ava all of these characteristics along with the desire to escape, due to her hatred towards him, and sees whether she can demonstrate genuine feelings for Caleb. Although Ava does utilize all of these qualities to earn her freedom, this does not really reveal whether she has any feelings at all, which would allow Nathan to prove her consciousness. She obviously can think, but her emotions can’t be proven. Her actions, bring into question whether she understands what she is doing, like in the chess example brought up by Caleb. The chess computer will make good moves, but it doesn’t understand why. It is very difficult to figure out whether something is conscious. Nathan attempts to create an A.I. that would possess imagination, sexuality, self-awareness, and empathy and Ava does pass his test. As she uses these “good moves” to pretend to have feelings towards Caleb and seems to be aware that her feelings are pretend. The test fails to respond to whether Ava is conscious, but it does not remove the idea that she might be. The test Nathan created was based off on whether Ava could pretend to have feelings in order to find her way out as he built her to hate him, but humanity is not yet aware of what makes people conscious. This demonstrates that proving consciousness is very complex, requiring plenty
Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina explores the difficulty of determining consciousness within artificial intelligence. Nathan, a genius, constructs a machine that can be conscious. He recruits Caleb, one of his many employees, to proctor it. This test seems to constantly go through modifications. It goes from whether Caleb feels she is conscious, through a Turing test, to what Ava actually feels about Caleb. Nathan infers that her emotions are the key to proving her consciousness. Ava demonstrates human qualities of mind to escape, but this fails to indicate true feelings as she is most likely pretending to have interest in Caleb to gain freedom from her oppressor.
A Turing test is done to ascertain the existence of consciousness within …show more content…
It is also argued that even though she lacks empathy and morality, that does not make her unconscious as sociopaths also lack those characteristics. However, it can’t be proven that she is conscious, nor can it be proven that she is not. There is a major difference between her and human sociopaths. She is a machine. Therefore, there can’t be an absolute answer to whether she is conscious. David L. Anderson in “What is a Person” says, “It is possible that a machine might be conscious, but at this point, given that we have no clue what it is about humans that make us conscious, we have no idea what we would have to build into an android to make it conscious.” Humanity still does not understand what makes humans conscious so it is not ideal to believe that anything that demonstrates intelligence is conscious as well. Many people often are amazed to see intelligence in things other than humans and they instantly make this assumption. Searle explains, “Since appropriately programmed computers can have input-output patterns similar to those human beings, we are tempted to postulate mental states in the computer similar to human mental states. But once we see that it is both conceptually and empirically possible for a system to have human capacities in some realm without having any intentionality at all, we …show more content…
According to Nathan, it is sexuality, imagination, manipulation, empathy, and self-awareness. He gives Ava all of these characteristics along with the desire to escape, due to her hatred towards him, and sees whether she can demonstrate genuine feelings for Caleb. Although Ava does utilize all of these qualities to earn her freedom, this does not really reveal whether she has any feelings at all, which would allow Nathan to prove her consciousness. She obviously can think, but her emotions can’t be proven. Her actions, bring into question whether she understands what she is doing, like in the chess example brought up by Caleb. The chess computer will make good moves, but it doesn’t understand why. It is very difficult to figure out whether something is conscious. Nathan attempts to create an A.I. that would possess imagination, sexuality, self-awareness, and empathy and Ava does pass his test. As she uses these “good moves” to pretend to have feelings towards Caleb and seems to be aware that her feelings are pretend. The test fails to respond to whether Ava is conscious, but it does not remove the idea that she might be. The test Nathan created was based off on whether Ava could pretend to have feelings in order to find her way out as he built her to hate him, but humanity is not yet aware of what makes people conscious. This demonstrates that proving consciousness is very complex, requiring plenty