Alex Garland’s 2015 directional debut Ex Machina explores ideas that are parallel to the themes theorized in Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay titled Cyborg Manifesto. Furthermore, both pieces of work explore the relationship between humans and the machines that we create, in this case, a humanoid robot believed to containing Artificial Intelligence. Since most modern human experience is constructed, there is almost nothing to separate us form the machines we create. The film also represents the borderlands in which cyborgs live in. The borderlands are the productive spaces that are intended for research and the building of knowledge. In Ex Machina, Nathan’s compound is the borderland. To be more specific, the borderland is the room that he confines his robot experiments to. As Caleb was watching the security footage of Nathan’s past experiments, he comes across a clip of one of the robots banging on the glass and asking why can’t she be released. Ava grew to hate Nathan because of the way he treated her and because she was confined to the one room in the house. During the Ava Sessions, Caleb goes down to the room and talks with Ava as part of the Turing test. Caleb and Ava talk through a translucent wall and never come into physical contact throughout the entire film. Caleb is conducting his research inside of Ava’s borderland. Ava’s permanent confinement and her realization that Nathan can and will switch her off whenever he sees fit, acts as the catalyst of her desire to escape. At one point in the film, Caleb is talking with Ava about Frank Jackson’s thought experiment titled Mary’s Room. Mary is a brilliant scientist, who specializes in color. She knows everything that there is to know about colors, except what it feels like to actually see color. Like Mary, Ava has never left her room. She is not allowed access throughout the inside of the compound or outside. Even though she has a lot of information about what the world is like, can she ever actually know about the world if she has never seen it? There is an extra piece of knowledge gained through experience and Ava is searching for this experience. A cyborg would have elements that would qualify it it as an “alive being” and will also feature elements that
Using ethos, pathos, logos, and other rhetorical techniques in non-fiction and science fiction, help the author carry different and similar claims regarding artificial intelligence making the author’s message change between the two genres. In Robopocalypse, a science fiction novel written by Daniel H. Wilson, the protagonist Cormac Wallace narrates the story with first and secondhand testimonies, information accumulated from interviews, and camera footage. At the opening of the book, Cormac gathers the stories from a black box of the robot uprising, beginning the story of how ordinary technology turned into an automated war. The sci-fi novel informs the audience that artificial intelligence can effortlessly turn against their human creator to deliberately achieve the annihilation of the human race implicating “technology changes, but people stay the same” (Wilson 261).
In this book, Fahrenheit 451, the author talks about the future American society and how there was a firefighter named Guy Montag that got isolated from the society. One theme that was found in this book was humans vs. machines. Machines dominate humans, so that humans were not able to think independently or act without the help of machines. Without a doubt, humans began to lose their freedom and their ability if they don’t stop being so occupied with technology and entertainment.
The increased development of artificial intelligence and the everyday use of technology can lead to a future full of robots, claims Eastlyn Koons in Robots are Better than Humans. Koons lives in the modern day where advancements are being made every day in the field of technology and artificial intelligence machines have started to replace the jobs of some people. People fear the uprising of robot rebellion and an inevitable Doomsday because of it. Through appeals to fear and pride, Koons asks the world to consider the use of technology in their lives and the role it may play in the future.
When you think of new technologies such as robots, or peculiar man-made beings like monsters, what feeling comes to mind? Fear? Excitement? Uncertainty? In ‘The Rebellious Robot’ the mood is happy and exciting, very different from ‘Frankenstein’ where the mood and overall feeling is dark, gloomy, and suspenseful.
Therefore human creation is machine-like and comparable to the end product of Ford’s assembly line. There is no
Her and Ex-Machina are both eye-opening and fascinating looks at our future. They seek to define what it means to be human rather than exploiting cultural anxieties about artificial intelligence. The underlying message they give is consciousness denotes humanity. Both the movies pose questions and thoughts about what it would be like to accept and co-exist with ‘the other’ in the future
Being a human is a digital reality in the Matrix; in the real world, everyone is just a power/heat source for the artificial intelligent machines that
The setting of Ex Machina is utilized to create a distinct parallel of male territory being on the first floor of the house and of female-AI domain belonging to the subterranean levels of the house. This binary suggests that males are supreme over females by having their province in the house literally above the females which suggests their dominance in the “trophic levels” of life. Likewise, the first conversation Nathan, the creator, and Caleb, the tester, partake discussing the AI’s takes place on the first floor. Caleb retorts that Nathan has made deity-like history: “If you’ve created a conscious machine, it’s not the history of man. That’s the history of gods” (00:11:23). Male dominance further exudes from their dialect as Nathan exerts his divine authority over the AI’s by altering Caleb’s words to refer to himself as a
Ex Machina is a film about a scientist named Nathan who has selected an employee of his, Caleb Smith, to be flown out to his estate for a week. When Caleb arrives Nathan tells him that he has been selected to be part of a Turing test. A Turing Test is when you have a human and a computer interact with each other and if the human doesn’t know that they are interacting with a computer, then the test is passed. But Nathan has already completed that part of the test so now he wants Caleb to actually see her and have a one on one conversation with her see if Caleb still feels that the robot has consciousness. So, it turns out that Nathan has created a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence and her name is Ava. Ava appears with a robotic body but
To elaborate the Cyborg discussion around limits requires it to be placed inside wider, existing discussion. There are two fundamental perspectives to the debate. The Bioconservatists (social, eithical, cultural, economic) and the Transhumanists (biological science, technology). With very different worldviews.
As the end of Ex Machina nears, Ava manipulates all other main characters to conform to her plan of escaping, including Kyoko, another one of Nathans bots, designed as a maid. Ava then completely ignores all laws of robotics and murders a human, while also leaving another human locked in an office to die. In ways, this scene can be watched from a subconscious viewpoint, to show women standing up against the male, to fight for themselves, and how females can be more powerful than males. This future, as shown by Ex Machina, shows how humanity is on the brink of mass AI, and the lead brain behind this is a sex-crazed billionaire. Every bot Nathan had made up to the point in the film had been made with an intention of sex, and this shows the male mind and the portrayal of females.
In a world that is overruled by power, love, and technology, both the book The Circle, by David Eggers, and the film Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland, expand upon this idea. Filled with strange moments and unpredictable behavior, both the book and film put the audience into shock. The Circle is based on a young woman named Mae who has recently been hired to work for the company the Circle; One of the most powerful technological company’s in the world. Mae is brain washed by the company and goes to extreme measures to show her worth, which leads to shocking moments. The film Ex Machina is based on a human created AI (Artificial Intelligence) named Ava that is put under trial by interacting with another person to see how it interacts in one-on-one situations. Nathan, the creator of Ava, has invited Caleb to interact with Ava in hopes of her being the perfect robot after multiple sessions. Everything seems to be going normal, but things go in a different direction and leave the audience with their jaws hanging. Although they have completely different story lines, both the book and film share various themes.
Cyborgs are a very complex creation of the future. The general concept is that they cannot be recognized as non-humans. Although it has a programmed mission, this unit thinks and reacts on its own. The understructure is made of a very
The following essay will concern itself with the INTERNAL aspect, attaching it to the phenomenon of the cyborg which will be seen as a likely trajectory of the development of the central object of architectural study – the user - who is fast becoming harder to pinpoint in a posthumanist landscape.
The global industrialization in twentieth century rapidly shaped the human society in political, economical, cultural and other aspect. The idea of machine replacing human beings has been concerned by many scholars and scientists themselves. The definition of human being and the definition of machine ha s been challenged as they gradually become into a non-separated integration. We now have artificial limbs, man-made blood vessels and even micro-chips in our brains. In A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, a well-known essay published in the late twentieth century, Donna Haraway developed the notion of Cyborg. She states that there is no actual boundary among “human”, “animal”, and