Ex Machina, Black Mirror and other AI horrors

It's been 6 years since I blundered into blogging more to find out what it was for work experience than because I had anything to say. As with lots of blogs this one sort of ran out of steam after a while, but with the world changing so fast the context has changed a lot since I last posted and that seemed worth talking about. Now there's a misogynist-reality-TV-star-6-time bankruptee in the White House, the liberal media are on the back foot and the UK is leaving the EU under false pretenses, but what I'm focusing on are changes in technology and more precisely AI.

As scientific short-hand AI is on a par with 'space-time-continuum' and 'quantum mechanics' for terms used wrongly in sci-fi. Immediate connotations are of Skynet's 'living tissue over metal endo-skeleton' Arnie cyborgs, but the more mundane manifestations are being used to solve problems from lonely single men in Japan, to customer service chat bots. AI is here.

True we've not got autonomous seemingly sentient AI yet, as I know, but there have been some movies and TV programmes that have explored the hypothetical in interesting ways.

Two fairly terrifying ones that I'm going to focus on are an episode of Black Mirror called Metal-Heads and the thought provoking sci-fi psycho-drama Ex Machina, with SPOILERS.

In this Black Mirror episode, we're treated to a mini survival movie staring Maxine Peak. It was presented just in black and white, perhaps to reflect the pared back nature of the story, perhaps to create an old horror movie vibe or perhaps just because the gore would have been too extreme in full colour.

Maxine wounded and on the run

In summary, three friends are driving through desolate countryside to find something for someone at great personal risk. It all goes wrong in a warehouse where they find what they're looking for but also discover a robotic dog that is hell-bent on killing them all. The two blokes die and Maxine is left with only her wits to save her running through the countryside. It doesn't end well.

'Dog' with improvised stabber

At the end where after Maxine has been defeated there is a montage showing different shots of the world covered with these robotic dogs, illustrating how futile human struggle is. The final shot is in the warehouse where the item they were originally searching for is revealed as a teddy-bear. They were trying to retrieve this item for a terminally ill child and as a result they all died.

In Ex Machina, a software engineer played by Donald Gleason wins a competition to go and hang out with the CEO of the company he works for (essentially Google by another name). The CEO is an unstable inventor (a bit like Elon Musk) played by Oscar Isaac of Star Wars and Llewyn Davis fame and lives in complete isolation in the middle of a pristine wilderness. In a visually stunning intro, the audience and this weedy programmer are dropped into this setting via helicopter with no context.

First glimpse of Ava

Gleason finds his way to Isaac's cool futuristic house where he's greeted by his boss and finds out that he's secretly building an AI. While Isaac's vibe is of a cool informal colleague, his relentless drinking and training with punch bag and weights combined with a streak of unpredictability make him an intimidating presence.

Ava facing her origins

Through a series of meetings with the AI in question, a female robot called Ava, Gleason falls in love with her and plans to help her escape. She convinces him and (honestly... she convinced me) that she was a helpless victim and a conscious being. While her consciousness is difficult to dispute, she is far from helpless. In a violent and bloody conclusion Ava kills her maker, locks a heart-broken Gleason in the prison she has always lived in and leaves him for dead having manipulated him to facilitate her escape. 

The common theme between these two stories is this question: are our emotions, our weakness?
Are the things that make us 'human' the things that will ultimately be our undoing in a conflict with machines (see also the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica)?

To start I'd ask, what is the point of emotions from an evolutionary perspective? This is fairly easy to answer. You only have to look at people without emotions to understand this, they are called sociopaths or psychopaths. Emotions allow us to bond with other humans, and take action to respond to life events eg this relationship hurt me and was not good for me, my emotional response may be to avoid a similar situation (I know it's more complicated than that).

Now imagine a situation where you don't need emotions to navigate relationships with others. Imagine if you could instantly and accurately transfer information about your status and intentions. Imagine if you were a machine. Would emotions still serve the same function? Probably not.

I've heard the argument made that technology exceeds human potential in terms of intelligence, but it's much more limited in terms of consciousness. Partially because consciousness is harder to define. Machine learning allows AI to develop its ability to complete complex tasks exponentially, but the ability to add meaning to things still seems to be a human trait.

When Ava walks out into the rich greenery outside her prison, what impact does the environment have on her? To most machines, organic life only presents a hostile environment where electric components are easily compromised, but to humans the natural world represents our origins.

The whole idea of 'meaning' might be a flimsy film humans drape over life to cope with a finite existence, but it might be all we have. Meaning may be a human quirk. Smoke and mirrors projected by our over sized frontal lobes, but it's still everything.

For this reason the true value of nature will always be something that can only truly be understood by a conscious, emotional being (regardless whether it's organic or not). Not as a carbon sink, or potential green energy, or other eco-system service, but as somewhere that matters to us in a way that can't and shouldn't be quantified. 

Into Stella

As an enjoyee of the new Batman movies and basically of all of Christopher Nolan's films I was well excited when I heard he was directing a space movie about using a wormhole to visit another galaxy.

Fish tank

There's been a long drought on this blog so here's a short shower to moisten the dying roots.

Watched one of them arty house films t'other day called 'fish tank'. It was about a surly, lonely teenage girl living in a high rise block of flats in a poor bit of London.

Watership Down trauma and the refugees of Farthing Wood

Talk about about a blinding omission! How did I get this far down the line before blogging about our domestic children's TV detailing the savagery of the natural world and the destructive influence of man?

Norwegian Wood and Murakami's made up places

Back to Japan to talk about Haruki Murakami, a phenomenally talented and internationally successful author of strange fiction. You've probably read Norwegian Wood, a novel I would summarily describe as Catcher in the Rye but not rubbish, if not go and do so then come back.

Finland and Trolls

A recent lack of posts has been caused by the sunshine. All sun and no rain means no time spent watching or reading things inside, therefore no fodder for the blog!

One thing I have managed to read - in the sunshine - is a children’s book I grew up with: Finn Family Moomintroll.

In the pejorative and non-derogatory sense I hear many of you shout "moomins? Pff... gay!"

What is James Bond's environmental footprint?

I know this question appears to have been created with the sole purpose of enraging Jeremy Clarkson, but watching the glitz and the beautiful locations in Skyfall I wondered if all this excess is even vaguely quantifiable. I decided no, and just went after the carbon emissions as a proxy.