Ex Machina

This scene from the 2014 film Ex Machina by writer and director Alex Garland describes an encounter between Caleb and Ava. Caleb is a young programmer who has been brought to the home of Nathan, a wealthy software developer, to test the capacity of a new robot with artificial intelligence named Ava. In an early meeting, Caleb asks Ava a series of questions that recall the parameters of a Turing Test. Ava later turns the tables on Caleb by asking a series of penetrating questions that reveal a compelling intelligence on its part. The larger narrative of the film is also introduced in this scene when Ava warns Caleb that the developer is a dangerous liar.

The conventional narrative of a dangerous artificial intelligence is here played in reverse; Nathan, and not the robot, is the threatening and unpredictable consciousness that seeks to control the world. But in his representation of artificial intelligence, Garland seems unable to move beyond the conventions of overt sexualization and gendered stereotyping used in the depiction of robots, and, apparently, software developers.

Alex Garland, Ex Machina (excerpts), 2014, film transferred to digital video, Universal Pictures