Ex Machina

Like many futurist films, Ex Machina reflects the current state of humanity. Ex Machina intentionally or unintentionally was littered with biases. There were multiple aspects of Ex Machina I found troubling including, but not limited to: moral, social, and technological issues. Ex Machina is a dystopian view of AI, or rather, a dystopian reflection of humanity.

While optimistic estimates put human-level AI at 2029, the most important thing we can do is reflect upon ourselves and question what we are programming into our creations.[1] Some contemplate developing an ethical code for AI integration and creation, but in all honesty, I’m inclined to believe that the ethical code we need to be evaluating is our own. Our AI will be reflections of ourselves. What do we want that to look like?

For example, Ava, the AI, was played by a white woman. Our moral codes and social structures have a long history with its treatment of women. In Ex Machina, Nathan, the creator of Ava, hired Caleb to determine if Ava passed for human-level intelligence. Historically, there have been more than a few occasions when men have been in a position of deciding when women are allowed the full status of personhood, whether that is legally, intellectually, or physically. Granting the status of personhood in Ex Machina was determined by men, which could reflect historic and present representations of women.

Though Caleb may have had the best of intentions, he had biases. It was clear throughout the film he cared for the wellbeing of Ava, but he didn’t seem to have the same concern for Kyoko. There is an intersectional component not to be overlooked. Kyoko, a woman of color, who was specifically limited in her ability to speak, was treated worse than Ava. She was treated as at best a house servant and at worst a sex slave. Her character showed that when a woman’s ability to communicate is removed, it also removes her personhood, autonomy, and consent.

When Kyoko attempted to take off her clothes when she and Caleb were alone, Caleb, and likely the majority of the audience, assumed this as a sexual advance. But could there be another explanation? Was she attempting to communicate to Caleb her real identity? Was she attempting to share something intimate and profoundly important to her personhood that was mistaken as something sexual? Maybe. Couldn’t she have simply ripped the skin off her face? Maybe. Like many victims of sexual abuse and trauma, perhaps Kyoko was acting out of fear. Her sexuality and Ava’s for that matter were portrayed in the movie as their most powerful asset. Perhaps it was her sexuality that put her in a position that she was brave enough to expose her true self as an AI.

Either way, Caleb showed little to no indication that he was interested in liberating women like Kyoko but was interested in his own gratification with Ava. Was Ava only using Caleb for her escape? Or did Kyoko communicate to Ava Caleb’s lack of desire to liberate women like Kyoko? Is that why Ava left Caleb? We don’t know.

In the end, Kyoko died while Ava lived. After Kyoko’s death, Ava literally took the skin off another woman of color’s body and kept it for her own. To repeat, a white woman took the skin of a woman of color and used it for her benefit. This is a literal representation of how white women have benefited from and contributed to racism.

While some feminists applaud Ava’s escape, the story teaches us that in order for a woman, a white woman, to attain personhood, autonomy, and freedom it is at the hand of violence, deceit, betrayal, death, and the expense of women of color and men.[2] If this is how patriarchy is to be defeated, I’m not sure we’ve achieved anything of significant value. What we have on our hands is a quasi-Animal Farm scenario where one dictatorship is overthrown just to be replaced by another. Is there really any justice or improvement at that point? If one demographic is held up at the expense of another we have not evolved and that is the real dystopian message of the film. Not that Ava, the most powerful AI, has escaped her cage, but that there is no genuine progression—just the enhancement of technologies that we program with our own biases, flaws, and oppressions.[3] Ava is exactly what we made her to be. If that’s really what we allow patriarchy to do to us, all of us, we all lose.

The development of AI needs our intersectional experiences and differences, but more importantly it needs our own internal transformations. AI will be an amplified version of us, all that is good and beautiful and all that is harmful and terrible. We must continue to change ourselves, not just change, but improve through genuine progression if there is any hope for AI or our species. Radical compassion, love, and benevolence are required for progress, not just a racetrack to advanced technologies. There is no advanced civilization without love.

Notes and Citations

[1] Ray Kurzweil, “Don’t Fear Artificial Intelligence,” TIME, December 19 2014, accessed May 27, 2017, “The median view of AI practitioners today is that we are still several decades from achieving human--level AI. I am more optimistic and put the date at 2029, but either way, we do have time to devise ethical standards.” http://time.com/3641921/dont-fear-artificial-intelligence/

[2] J.A. Micheline, “Ex Machina: A (White) Feminist Parable of Our Time,” Women Write About Comics, May 21, 2015, accessed May 27, 2017, “But here’s what’s killer about the android/artificial intelligence = woman metaphor, particularly as shown by Ava. It sucks because it implies that we were created by men and for men, when of course, we were not. And yet, it triumphs because it says that even if we allow such a ridiculous premise, even if we entertain the notion that men are constantly building or trying to build us into what we want to be, it doesn’t matter. Ava, patriarchal dream as she is, shrugs off her programming, shrugs off the way that men want to see her and gets her goddamn own. Which is inspiring, of course, because in the end, what it really means is: so can we.” http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2015/05/21/ex-machina-a-white-feminist-parable-for-our-time/

[3] Clare Garvie and Jonathan Frankle, “Facial-Recognition Software Might Have a Racial Bias Problem,” The Atlantic, April 7, 2016, accessed May 27, 2017 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-underlying-bias-of-facial-recognition-systems/476991/