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EX MACHINA

Ex Machina

Alex Garland

Drama • 2014 • 1h 48m

Reviewed by Beatrice 27. June 2023

There are only four characters in this story of human technology, intelligence, "human" men and artificial women.

Caleb is a programmer working for the world's most widely used search engine and is singled out to test the prototype woman created by the company's founder-Nathan.

Far from the stereotypical researcher-scientist, Nathan is an eccentric alcoholic who leads a lonely life in the mountains in a claustrophobic as well as magnificent hypertechnological and scenic home/lab.

Caleb must spend seven days in this facility to subject Ava to the Turing test and to confirm whether that artificial intelligence can think.

From here begins the mysterious coexistence among the intelligences, including the attractive waitress Kioko, with oriental features, programmed to understand the bare minimum.

One will surprisingly come into contact with a conscious machine, which claims to have always known how to speak, despite the fact that language is acquired through a latent structure.

Nathan confesses that the system is stochastic and nondeterministic, and between Pollock paintings, blackouts, languages, Wittgenstein's blue book and simulations against reality, Ava draws without knowing what....

But she warns Caleb not to trust Nathan and expresses her desire to be in the busy intersection of a big city.

She deploys her seductive weapons as she declares that Caleb's microexpressions make her uncomfortable.

The programmer asks the A.I. creator why he gave her a sexuality, and he replies by saying that there is no consciousness without sexuality, and informs him that he also provided her with a slit between her legs.

Man creating a female artificial intelligence: the result is Promethean! And consciousness is not known in whom it really resides.... In reality, we are all programmed to be who we are, and so what is the line between artificial and non-artificial intelligences?

A series of endless questions provokes Garland's work, which maintains a deeply intimate and quiet character that does not hesitate to disturb any dormant ethical concerns.

An artificial woman between two all too human, fragile, insecure and haughty men.

A psychological agon without respite; it is not the ending that matters but the ambiguity, the dichotomy, the question mark about the meaning of being human now tested by a search engine.

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