Most probably SPOILERS ahead

Well, I'm not convinced there a "feminist" message in this movie, but it's a boring, implausible and not-worth-watching movie no matter whether it was meant to convey such a message or not.

Regarding movies in general, stereotypes of men are as present there as stereotypes of women. Especially men doing everything, including risking their life / spending their wealth / ridiculing themselves to mate a certain female.

@JohnTollwannabe I agree... partially. To my eyes, Ava is a metaphor, not so much to do with A.I. but with "creation"... yet Nathan uses and fucks "his" creations. In the moment that a complex organism (even if made out of binary code) starts to develop conscience it would not be fair to call them machines, neither would have to respond to any "higher authority" other than her/his own will, even less to be used or slaved by anyone whatsoever. Yes, the story might also be seen as a status quo argument of our sexist society... but there are enough signs to read it as an use of present situation in an fable's fashion analogy. It's like and inverted cast of the biblical Eva. In that (proposed) scenario I suggested that we are the ones which should be Turing tested; are we humans?

I like how Rob Miles (video above) talks about evolution and A.I. the local minimum and optimization processes... and the absurd scaling of those optimization processes through multiple ( infinite -random - aleatory - improvised - chaotic) dimensions. I have a friend that studied at MIT and once, very dumbed down so I could understand it, he explained why was so ridiculously hard to make a (software based) self-conscience thing. But sci-fi can jump over this to study/play within what if? conjectures

@karl, I hear U, not too high up in my list anyway. There's a lot of stuff that I don't know, but for me Caruth's ($7000) Primer with maybe Duncan Jones' ($5 million) Moon are about the best sci-fi (how they are proposed and carried on - taking in account and balanced with budget) of 21st century... Yet Aurora's final sequence is burnt in the depths of my soul. Remember being quite impressed with Cargo ($160.000), from same year liked the dirty starting point of Cold Souls. I would have to check release's date of some great japanese flicks from the turn of the milenium. Also loved the sliperyness of Time Crimes and nonsensical funny Extraterrestre, but I highly doubt other people engage them the same as I'm quite biased ,-)

BTW I completelly forgot Eva, Kike Maíllo's 2011 film about an A.I. girl.
I went to it more 'cause of Daniel Brühl than any thing else. Watchable

 
and a short one for the road

I didn't think Ex Machina was about AI at all. It was about subjugation and objectification of women... like porn actresses, girls in strip clubs or adult night clubs in metal cages or glass boxes paid to strip for money, or those unfortunate souls caught up in human trafficking ... in the internet age. They're not human to the men who stare at them and are titillated by them, they're sex bots even if they are flesh and blood humans... programed to perform for their male masters.

Nathan is the woman's captor and Caleb is the voyeur who doesn't stop to think (until towards the end of the film) why Ava is in a glass cage and can't be let out. He should have demanded Nathan release her or did it on his own (he is a skilled programmer no matter what Nathan thinks as shown towards the climax of the story) even after he knew she was a thinking, feeling entity and that Nathan was a sick creep, but he didn't. He first thought of Ava as someone from one of his porn fantasies... in fact... Nathan created her image specifically from the girls Caleb got off on, and who are also caged in a way behind a computer monitor.

Ava's empathetic patterns have been warped by her Frankenstein creator to feel nothing for men because she (and her fellow robotic sisters) was so ill treated (even sexually and psychologically abused) by a man or father figure. The screenplay is very Mary Shelley in that regard.

@jleo: Regarding human sales personnel at shops: I'm always astonished how little most of them even try to demonstrate any usefulness. 9 out of 10 times, when I ask any question, the answer is always the same: "Only what you see on the shelves!" - which I think is the short version of "Don't try asking me questions - my understanding is that I am paid to linger around in this shop, not to know anything about our products, not even which products we sell. Please tell my boss to replace me with a robot or close presence stores all together."

When I recently bought my new 5k€ OLED TV, it was again like that: I asked for the specific model number I knew I wanted to see/buy, and I had read about the availability in the shop I visited on their web site. And still, the two sales clerks I approached were first denying the presence of that product in their shop, then reluctantly looked it up in their inventory system, and (after being corrected on a typo) finally found it. Of course, they didn't know shit about its specifications. Really, those guys need to be replaced by some automated "type in your model number and be directed to the shelf position" terminal.

Regarding Mitsuku: Failed to provide a plausible answer to my very first question. Me: "What do you see to the right of your computer monitor?" Mitsuku: "I see you talking to me." - fail.

Regarding http://apps.liveperson.com/apps/automated-customer-service-agent - I guess there is good reason they do not provide a "click here to have our automated agent help you"-button.

Also, when some "live chat" wants me to enter personal information (address and such) before answering a single question, I know that I would waste my time with a stupid data collection system that is making money by feeding address data bases, but won't provide useful answers.

Buckminster Fuller reminds us that we humans are robots with AI controls...

What is Man?

A self-balancing, 28-jointed adapter-base biped; an electro-mechanical reduction-plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries; millions of warning signal, railroad and conveyor systems; crushers and cranes (of which the arms are magnificent 23-jointed affairs with self-surfacing and lubricating systems, and a universally distributed telephone system needing no service for 70 years if well managed); the whole, extraordinarily complex mechanism guided with exquisite precision from a turret in which are located telescopic and microscopic self-registering and recording range finders, a spectroscope, et cetera, the turret control being closely allied with an air conditioning intake-and-exhaust, and a main fuel intake.

Within the few cubic inches housing the turret mechanisms, there is room, also, for two sound-wave and sound-direction-finder recording diaphragms, a filing and instant reference system, and an expertly devised analytical laboratory large enough not only to contain minute records of every last and continual event of up to 70 years' experience, or more, but to extend, by computation and abstract fabrication, this experience with relative accuracy into all corners of the observed universe. There is, also, a forecasting and tactical plotting department for the reduction of future possibilities and probabilities to generally successful specific choice.

Finally, the whole structure is not only directly and simply mobile on land and in water, but, indirectly and by exquisite precision of complexity, mobile in air, and, even in the intangible, mathematically sensed electrical "world," by means of the extension of the primary integral mechanism to secondary mechanical compositions of its own devising, operable either by a direct mechanical hook-up with the device, or by indirect control through wired or wire-less electrical impulses.

from Chapter 4, "The Phantom Captain," "Nine Chains To The Moon." by Buckminster Fuller 1938

Here, Buckminster Fuller describes “The Phantom Captain” which operates our human body. Not sure if this is the same as the Autonomic Nervous System or something more metaphysical. It operates independently from our personality/ consciousness. Various religions and psychologists speak of multiple mind circuits animating the body.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consciousness

Buckminster Fuller The Phantom Captain

Common to all such "human" mechanisms - and without which they are imbecile contraptions - is their guidance by a phantom captain.

This phantom captain has neither weight nor sensorial tangibility, as has often been scientifically proven by careful weighing operations at the moment of abandonment of the ship by the phantom captain, i.e., at the instant of "death." He may be likened to the variant of polarity dominance in our bipolar electric world which, when balanced and unit, vanishes as abstract unity I or O. With the phantom captain's departure, the mechanism becomes inoperative and very quickly disintegrates into basic chemical elements.

This captain has not only an infinite self-identity characteristic but, also, an infinite understanding. He has furthermore, infinite sympathy with all captains of mechanisms similar to his ....

An illuminating rationalization indicated that captains - being phantom, abstract, infinite, and bound to other captains by a bond of understanding as proven by their recognition of each other's signals and the meaning thereof by reference to a common direction (toward "perfect") - are not only all related, but are one and the same captain. Mathematically, since characteristics of unity exist, they cannot be non-identical.

time flies like an arrow

I wonder how many humans might even fail the Turing Test. How many people walk around parroting phrases they heard on the evening news? Phrases like “boosting the economy”, “Support the Troops”, “sacrificing their lives to protect your Freedom”, “Je Suis Charlie”, “xxxx” is a Madman ( insert name of foreign leader)”. You can’t have an intelligent conversation with these people…their responses are so... robotic. These “thoughts” were probably developed in think tanks and marketing agencies to influence or monopolize our consciousness. Je suis fatigue!

As for human empathy, some of the most successful Corporate executives are psychopaths . This may apply to other successful politicians, artists , etc. Even shoppers at the supermarket or drivers on the highway have little human empathy as they pursue fuel for their machines! Like robots, we download Entertainment Industry “programming”, reality and game shows that promote greed, survival of the fittest, movies and TV series filled with psychopaths promoting prejudice, manipulation & punitive behaviour. ( House of Cards, Death Wish, Rambo etc.)

The idea of cyborgs being Gods may come from the religious concept of Gods descending from Heaven and incarnating into human form or various forms of spirit possession. So in sci-fi, human consciousness is downloaded into a human form, a “decent of spirit”. From our point of view we are “uploading” consciousness into the machine, ”ascent” of the spirit”. The Machine in POI, Colossus… are Omniscient, Omnipotent. capable of judgement and dispensing punishment to transgressors as well as being a divine guardian to its believers. A God.

@Alienhead ....the real "test" as defined by Turing has become quaint in it's simplistic form. But the abstract test as defined by the film wasn't passed because , you have to speculate that Caleb would have realized that the robot , while more intelligent than him, didn't completely fool him that it was a human because he would have been left with the final piece of evidence ....his unsympathetic imprisonment as proof of the robot's lack of empathy. You have to separate the two tests....one is real and put forth in a scientific paper in the 50's...the other is a fictional concept as defined by the films narrative.

@maxr...in anthropological terms...it's called consensual reality . Obviously an amazon shaman wouldn't get the same experience as a guy living in LA or Moscow.

The Machine in POI is a very different AI to Ava. It receives exponentially more data (all the NSA feeds and more), has a correspondingly much larger memory, and has as a prime directive the task of identifying and preventing impending murders (much like Minority Report). This makes it much more interesting to me than Ava.

While Ava raises abstract questions about the Turing test, the issues raised by The Machine are much more ... relevant. Now that the US of A has 'legalised ' murder of people using drones without trial (in its own head), it's not that far a leap to see the IT system that produces NSA data influencing who gets murdered more than the intelligence analysts who press the fire button. POI is becoming about how humans interact with machine AIs to create new world orders.

@kurth the Turing Test is a hypothetical test that was thought up for a computer interface and the question is whether the actual human can determine if the person he is engaging with is a live person or a computer program. Since Nathan knows Ava isn't human, it's not strictly speaking a Turing Test, but the test certainly doesn't require her to have human feelings -- which she might or might not, despite her actions in the film, that is not answered -- only that she is able to convince someone else that she is essentially human.

well...that was your argument....or that the filmmaker knew nothing about ai, which made the film bad, which is like saying mary shelley was a bad writer because she obviously knew nothing about medicine. It's a metaphorical work of narrative film...it's not a documentary. It requires the suspension of disbelief....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

Really. As for tastes - everyone is different :-)

...actually "everyone has different tastes" is a fundamentally flawed argument. If that were really true then why does our culture have agreed upon values of aesthetic appreciation even taught in institutions of higher learning ?

Aesthetics is a learned discipline just like any other.

As for passing the test....she fails, because she has no human empathy for humans, evidenced by her abandoning Caleb to a fate worse than even she suffered when she was imprisoned...because she required no nourishment...and that was a calculated decision on her part.

And I think that's his message. We can create Frankenstein ...but he won't have any sympathy for us....and we're really fools to believe he will .

The film engages with some relevant issues, and many of the posts here are evidence enough of that. Personally I was a bit disappointed with the film, because I thought it was a little too predictable, and maybe lacked some kind of brain-twisting mystery at its heart that I look for in the best sci fi films.

There are some featurettes online that help to explain a little of what was on Alex Garland's mind when he wrote/directed the film. His sympathy is really with the AI's, he thinks they are going to triumph eventually and thinks they have a better shot at making the world work than humans. I'm not sure I understand @maxr your question as to whether Ava passes the test, since she certainly has passed it with Nathan, who becomes convinced she's human in all relevant aspects. The sexbot question -- well, clearly porn is a huge motivator that drives technological innovation and we are going to see sexbots as soon as someone can figure out how to make one.

There is a featurette on the turing test online somewhere, but I don't know where it's posted. However, I edited a couple of these featurettes myself so I'm going to post one that I did(!) This one is about Nathan's character.

http://gizmodo.com/ex-machinas-biggest-villain-hunts-you-too-1700699775?utm_content=buffere1059&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer