Ex-Machina: The Societal Implications Of AI

What would you do if one day your friend has an injury and you discover that instead of blood and tissue, you find wires and some motor oil?

Sounds insane right? Like something taken from a sci-fi novel, but many films have explored this idea. And one that does this particularly well is Alex Garland’s: ‘Ex-Machina’ (2014).

I assume you have seen the film but if you haven’t: SPOILER WARNING. However you can still read this and understand what we’ll be talking about.

Ex-Machina: Synopsis

Caleb is a young programmer who wins a contest to spend a week with his companies’ CEO Nathan, in his house/research facility.

Upon arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan actually selected him to perform a Turing test, on an artificially intelligent robot named Ava. What this means is that he has to determine whether or not Ava has consciousness, or is just an outstanding robot that pretends to be conscious.

Over the course of the days, Ava convinces Caleb that she is held prisoner by Nathan, and that he must help her escape. Caleb obliges, which results in Ava killing Nathan, and leaving Caleb locked in the house she was once held prisoner.

This is of course a HUGE oversimplification, but it helps us understand what we are going to talk about next.

Ex-Machina: Symbolism

The name of the film in itself is a play on words from the phrase “Deus Ex-Machina” which means “God from the machine”. A narrative device used in screenwriting that in this case represents Nietzsche’s death of God. Which in turns means that we humans have decided to let go on faith and religious ties in order to find meaning and answers within our own capabilities.

Apart from this, the movie plays with plenty more symbols. The movie takes place over the course of seven days, mirroring the seven days of creation. Ava is another wording for Eve, the first woman God created. There is a tree in Ava’s room which is a stand-in for the three of knowledge of good and evil which is in itself a test God made for the first humans. Much like the Turing test Ava has to pass if she wants to escape. The moment Adam and Eve took the fruit from the tree, they became…you guessed it: conscious.

Knowing all these minor details helps us get inside the mind of the genius writer of the film and what themes he really wanted to explore in the story.

The movie does not provide a clear cut answer of whether Ava is conscious or not. It leaves the audience to think and decide for themselves. But it does not only do that. Upon a deeper examination, what it also wants us to explore is whether or not we can understand the concept of consciousness at all.

When doing scientific and philosophical research, there must be three level of analysis:

• Ontology: what is reality?
• Epistemology: what can we know about it?
• Methodology: how do we attain said knowledge

Why is it that we are the ones that get to decide who or what has consciousness. Or judgement and consciousness is often clouded by internal and external factors. We tend to think of consciousness as exclusively human, but are we really that different and above absolutely everything else in the universe?

Gods, Humans & Robots

I’m not making scenarios just for the sake of it. We already have super intelligent machines that can fool humans into thinking they are interacting with other humans when in reality they are not.

We are a little behind on hardware but everyday we get closer to having a human-like robot.

So, how can we differentiate between humans and robots? Have we just created beings that meet the threshold of personhood? Are we about to? Can we?

First we have to make a distinction between the types of AI that exist nowadays. On one hand, we have weak AI, which has been around for quite a while and its a system that can mimic parameters of human intelligence such as Siri and Alexa.On the other hand however, strong AI is that which can actually think like us.

So, if you were on the phone talking with someone and you were tasked to determine whether you are talking to a person or a robot, how could you tell? Which questions would you ask and what answers would you expect in return?

If the robot fooled you, that means it successfully passed the Turing Test. However there is still a long way to go in order to determine if it is in fact conscious or not.

What The Hell Is Consciousness?

Nowadays, a robot can make a person experience all sorts of emotions. My mother gets all happy and excited when her Roomba sweeps and cleans the whole house. Robots can make all sorts of jokes by learning what can make a human laugh. Hell, there are even robots designed to deliver sexual pleasure (big leap into the ‘Brave New World’ dystopian future if you ask me).

Studies have demonstrated that the elderly feel better and are healthier when they are kept company. And yes, even if the company is a robot.

And yes, a puppy can also make us feel emotion and as far as we know, they aren’t consciouses either. The difference here is that sometimes, we can’t tell the difference between robots and humans, but we sure as hell can differentiate between a human and a dog.

For something to think like us, is it enough if it CAN make us think that it thinks like us? If we can’t tell the difference between human and robot, is there a difference? If we display intentions and understanding, we have them. Does the same apply to robots?

In case you haven’t noticed, this essay will have more questions than answers, but that is just how it goes.

Your Friendly Robot: Francis

Let’s go back to the first question posed on this essay. You just found out your longtime friend is a robot. Would you treat him differently? Why? What would he be missing in order for him to be a person?

You could argue he was programmed, but aren’t we all? Both our genetic code and our environment programs us everyday. We were programmed to speak a certain language and behave a certain way.

You could still argue that a robot does not have a soul because he was created. Well…newsflash, so were we, and there is no proof that we have a soul either. And supposing God exists and embeds every living creature with a soul, why couldn’t he do the same to a robot?

His origin and constitution are different than yours and mine but who cares?

Now I’m not implying that yes robots are just like you and me, another strong argument can be presented in the thought experiment presented by John Searle.

He proposed a case called the Chinese room, in which you are locked up in a room with a code book that tells you how to answer in Chinese to the person sending you letters across the other room. You can successfully fool the receptor into thinking that you know Chinese even if you don’t. The same could go for AI. It could be just a very well constructed machine that is programmed to learn to respond a certain way.

However, even if you don’t know Chinese, but no particular region of your brain knows English either. The whole system of your brain knows English. The whole system of the Chinese room knows Chinese. So we are now in another loose end.

And now the interesting part.

Do Machines Have Free Will? Do We?

If you know the story of Oedipus you know the main takeaway. You can’t escape fate. Even if it means unknowingly killing your dad and marrying your mom.

One argument philosophers and filmmakers have tried to explore is the concept of free will. We believe we are free because it feels a lot like we are. We decide what to wear everyday and have for breakfast every morning. Which route to take to work, who you decide to date, and which friends to have.

This is known as libertarian free will. The belief that we can act however the hell we want to.

Most people also believe that is called ‘hard determinism‘ exist. Which is the concept that all events are caused by past events. If the glass of water fell from the table that happened because I pushed it accidentally. Cause and effect. In other words, nothing other than what does happen could happen.

Unfortunately, you can’t believe in both these concepts without falling into a logical fallacy. If everything is caused by a previous event, then every decision we make is caused by all sorts factors.

Truly free actions require options, and if all events are caused by past events and things already happened before we were born, we cannot be truly free.

If you decided to have a salad for dinner instead of pizza or burritos, you could argue that you made that choice freely. However hard determinists would argue that our actions feel free because they have all sorts of invisible and unmeasurable causes that happen in our brains.

Maybe you chose your salad because you have a belief (programmed) that salad is nutritious + desire (biological cravings) + temperament (enjoy fresh food), which then compelled you to take action.

It could be argued that beings with consciousness can in fact start a whole chain of causality, without being caused by anything previously. But where would these free decisions come from? are they just random? and if you have a reason, then you just reinforced the fact that actions are caused rather than free. If you want to learn how the movie ‘Minority Report’ showcases this marvelously, click here!

mental states = brain states = biological states = physical states = deterministic states

“Man is condemned to be free” – Jean Paul Sartre

“None of our actions are free” – Baron D’Holbach

What Makes A Human?

Star Wars, Terminator, I Robot, Wall-E, The Iron Giant, Chappie, Blade Runner, and countless other films have shown the extent to which we can grant human like desires and responsibilities to “human like” robots, and how are we different from them.

If you still are scratching your head, imagine now if we had the same conversation but we talked about clones instead. They were created in a lab. Would they have a soul? Or rights?

Machines are no longer programmed, they learn by themselves in a similar way humans do. ‘Machine learning’ makes a very primitive simulation of what the brain does. Information travels between nodes and in turn, begin the learning process.

And if we begin thinking about transhumanism we enter a whole other subject. Like a Robo Cop sort of thing.

There is a very popular thought experiment called ‘Ship Of Theseus’. Theseus returns to port with his ship a little damaged, so he changes some of the wood and sails. Next time he changes the figurehead and the gunport. He does this several times until none of the original parts of the ship remain. Is it the same ship?

Soon we could face the same question with humans. With the rise of intelligent prosthetics and enhancements, could we differentiate between human and robot then?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but we have to ask them. And every couple of years, an amazing filmmaker comes and takes the ideas philosophers have been struggling with years, and bring them to the mainstream.

Who knows what the next stories regarding AI and conciousness will be like.