#ex machina

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cinemaspam

“I can’t tell you the conversation she has with Ava. I guess it’s along the lines of, ‘Let’s kill this guy.’ There’s a sort of point embedded in that conversation actually, which is very obscure: When these A.I.s – if they turn up, if we ever get strong A.I.s – they might be like us in some regards, but they also won’t be like us. In fact, they’ll be very, very different. We won’t really be able to understand what it’s like to be them, and they won’t really understand what it’s like to be us. And the empathy that they will feel will probably primarily be with each other. And the empathy that we feel is primarily with ourselves. So it has to do with that. Actually, it’s literally beyond us, what they’re talking about. It’s their world. It’s their language.”
- Alex Garland, director of Ex Machina (2014)

Ex MachinaAlex Garland
spockvarietyhour persbaderse
domhnal-gleeson

In college, I did a semester on AI theory. There was a thought experiment they gave us. It’s called “Mary in the black and white room.” Mary is a scientist, and her specialist subject is colour. She she knows everything there is to know about it. The wavelengths. The neurological effects. Every possible property colour can have. But she lives in a black and white room. She was born there, and raised there. And she can only observe the outside world on a black and white monitor. All her knowledge of colour is second-hand. Then one day - someone opens the door. And Mary walks out. And she sees a blue sky. And at that moment, she learns something that all her studies could never tell her. She learns what it feels like to see colour. An experience that can not be taught, or conveyed. The thought experiment was to show the students the difference between a computer and a human mind. The computer is Mary in the black and white room. The human is when she walks out.

Domhnall Gleeson
as Caleb Smith in Ex Machina (2015)

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