Ex-Machina (2014)

How I Found It

I got interested in the genre of sci-fi romance off late. Started with About Time, and then a Reddit post gave me a list of next movies. Ex-Machina was the top on Rotten-Tomatoes. AI for the win.

A Glimpse

The movie starts with a Software Engineer (or a tech guy in general), working with headphones on. He gets a notification that he stood first in a competition across the company. He receives tons of congratulations. The prize is that he gets to visit CEO’s house and island. Next scene, he’s on a helicopter hovering over an expanse of trees. That’s all the spoilers you get.

Ex-Machina is a sci-fi thriller, with a tinge of romance. It’s main focus is on emotions in machines. It presents the writer’s view of how would an AI (“AGI” as we know it) behave with new people, with its creator, and in different circumstances. Added to it, how would a human behave with an AI. The plot keeps us on toes, and the movie has a fair section of times where you can give variety of interpretations to thoughts and actions of characters. I love fiction.

Interpretation

On paper, we haven’t seen such AI in life. But we all know we are much closer to it than in 2017. This movie is ahead of its times. The thought of a machine with consciousness is scary. If it comes up, what edge will humans have is a trillion-trillion dollar question. In fact, it’s a question on existence of the smartest species known to us.