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Why Ex Machina’s beautiful Artificial Intelligence is scarier than Avengers’ Ultron

By Alvin Soon - on 08 Dec 2015, 8:59am

My colleague recently recommended the movie Ex Machina, and I couldn’t agree more. There are two movies I’ve watched this year that have AI (artificial intelligence) leads, Ex Machina, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ex Machina definitely has the more provocative ghost in the shell.

Mild spoiler warning: I’ve done my best to avoid specific plot points for both Ex Machina and Avengers: Age of Ultron, but if you want to watch either movie completely fresh, I suggest you skip the rest of this post and just catch Ex Machina. Avengers: Age of Ultron is, sadly, mostly skippable.

In Ex Machina, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a contest to visit his eccentric billionaire genius boss Nathan (Oscar Issac) in his remote, country house.

Once there, Nathan reveals the real reason Caleb is there; not for an employee get-together, but to meet Ava (Alicia Vikander), an AI (artificial intelligence) housed inside a beautiful, female robot body.

Ava, like the Avengers’ Ultron, is what scientists call an AGI — an Artificial General Intelligence. Instead of an AI that’s only good at doing one thing, like playing chess, Ava is intelligent generally, which means she can learn, adapt, form goals and solve problems.

Ava also shows signs of ASI — Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines ASI as, “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”

Basically, ASI is to humanity is like what humans are to ants. A superintelligence that’s several times more powerful than the smartest humans combined would outwit us as easily as we outwit an ant crawling on the kitchen table.

It’s also what makes Ava a more convincing case of AI than Ultron. <Mild spoiler alert> Because Ava can see and process faster than humans, she can tell when anyone is lying or telling the truth. Imagine the unfair advantage you’d have if you had this superpower. Now imagine that superpower paired with a genius higher than Einstein’s. An ASI like that can practically play humans like an instrument.</mild spoiler alert>

On the other hand, for all his supposed hyper-smarts, Ultron can’t outwit a bunch of humans in spandex, and their ultimate battle devolves into a bare-knuckle brawl. If Ultron had been a real ASI, he would have outwitted the Avengers like how adults outwit babies.

AI is a fascinating subject, and it will soon no longer be science fiction. Our best scientists and thinkers believe that AGI and ASI is no longer a matter of if, but when. The scary part is that, as Ex Machina’s Nathan and Avengers’ Tony Stark show us, AI is as likely to be invented by crazy billionaire geniuses as much as by a group of cautious scientists.

So, when this AGI/ASI comes into being, will it turn out to be like Ava, Ultron, or Vision (the good guy AI from Avengers)? Will it use its superintelligence to help us solve our world’s problems, or will it ust its superintelligence to destroy us?

Nobody knows for sure, which is what makes movies like Ex Machina so compelling. It invites us in to see what AI might look like, and how it might look back at us.

P.S. I first learned about AI, AGI and ASI from the deep and always funny Wait But Why. Check out their two posts to learn everything you ever wanted to know and fear/anticipate about AI.

Alvin Soon

Alvin Soon / Former Deputy Editor

I like coffee and cameras, but not together.

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