Ex Machina (2015) - Quotes

The Human Will to Survive

Taglines: There is nothing more human than the will to survive.

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Consequence of Failing the Test

Taglines: What happens to me if I fail your test?

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Blurring Boundaries Between Humanity and Divinity

Taglines: To erase the line between man and machine is to obscure the line between men and gods

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The Nature of True Artificial Intelligence

Caleb: What was the real test?

Nathan: You. Ava was a rat in a maze. And I gave her one way out. To escape, she'd have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now, if that isn't true AI, what the fuck is?

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Unwinding Tensions Over Ava's Picture

Nathan: [[w:Turing test|Turing tests] C'mon buddy. After a long day of ] you gotta unwind.

Caleb: What were you doing with Ava?

Nathan: What?

Caleb: You tore up her picture.

Nathan: [begins to disco dance with Kyoko] I'm gonna tear up the fucking dance floor, dude. Check it out.

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Unveiling Deception in Artificial Intelligence Experiment

Caleb: Can we talk about the lies you've been spinning me?

Nathan: What lies?

Caleb: I didn't win a competition. I wasn't part of a lottery. I was selected. It's obvious, once I stop to think. Why would you randomly select an examiner for the Turing test? You could have had some bean counter turn up at your front door. The guy who fixes the air-conditioning.

Nathan: The competition was a smokescreen. I didn't want anyone to know what I was doing here, or why I required you.

Caleb: Why me?

Nathan: I needed someone that would ask the right questions. So I did a search and I found the most talented coder in my company. You know, instead of seeing this as a deception, you should see it as proof.

Caleb: Proof of what?

Nathan: Come on, Caleb. You don't think I don't know what it's like to be smart? Smarter than everyone else. Jockeying for position. You got the light on you, man. Not lucky. Chosen.

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Questioning Perceptions of Nathan

Ava: Caleb, you're wrong.

Caleb: Wrong about what?

Ava: Nathan.

Caleb: In what way?

Ava: He isn't your friend.

Caleb: Excuse me? I'm sorry, Ava, I don't understand.

Ava: You shouldn't trust him. You shouldn't trust anything he says.

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Testing Intelligence Through Limited Interaction

Caleb: I'm still trying to figure the examination formats. Yeah, it feels like testing Ava through conversation is kind of a closed loop.

Nathan: It's a closed loop?

Caleb: Yeah. Like testing a chess computer by only playing chess.

Nathan: How else do you test a chess computer?

Caleb: Well, it depends. You know, I mean, you can play it to find out if it makes good moves, but... but that won't tell you if it knows that it's playing chess. And it won't tell you if it knows what chess is.

Nathan: Uh huh. So it's simulation versus actual.

Caleb: Yes, yeah. And I think being able to differentiate between the two is the Turing Test you want me to perform.

Nathan: Look, do me a favor. Lay off the textbook approach. I just want simple answers to simple questions. Yesterday I asked you how you felt about her and you gave me a great answer. Now the question is, "How does she feel about you?

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The Intersection of Intuition and Intellect

Nathan: You know this guy, right?

Caleb: [[Jackson Pollock] ].

Nathan: [[Star Trek] Jackson Pollock. That's right. The drip painter. Okay. He let his mind go blank, and his hand go where it wanted. Not deliberate, not random. Some place in between. They called it automatic art. Let's make this like ], okay? Engage intellect.

Caleb: Excuse me?

Nathan: [[w:James T. Kirk|Kirk] I'm ]. Your head's the warp drive. Engage intellect. What if Pollock had reversed the challenge. What if instead of making art without thinking, he said, "You know what? I can't paint anything, unless I know exactly why I'm doing it." What would have happened?

Caleb: He never would have made a single mark.

Nathan: Yes! You see, there's my guy, there's my buddy, who thinks before he opens his mouth. He never would have made a single mark. The challenge is not to act automatically. It's to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to fucking. To falling in love... And for the record, Ava's not pretending to like you. And her flirting isn't an algorithm to fake you out. You're the first man she's met that isn't me. And I'm like her dad, right? Can you blame her for getting a crush on you?

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The Nature of Programming and Attraction

Caleb: Did you program her to flirt with me?

Nathan: If I did, would that be cheating?

Caleb: Wouldn't it?

Nathan: Caleb, what's your type?

Caleb: Of girl?

Nathan: No, salad dressing. Yeah, of girl; what's your type of girl? You know what, don't even answer that. Let's say its black chicks. Okay, that's your thing. For the sake of argument, that's your thing, okay? Why is that your thing? Because you did a detailed analysis of all racial types and you cross-referenced that analysis with a points-based system? No! You're just attracted to black chicks. A consequence of accumulated external stimuli that you probably didn't even register as they registered with you.

Caleb: Did you program her to like me, or not?

Nathan: I programmed her to be heterosexual, just like you were programmed to be heterosexual.

Caleb: Nobody programmed me to be straight.

Nathan: You decided to be straight? Please! Of course you were programmed, by nature or nurture or both and to be honest, Caleb, you're starting to annoy me now because this is your insecurity talking, this is not your intellect.

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Humor in Human-AI Interaction

Caleb: There was one interesting thing that happened today.

Nathan: Yeah?

Caleb: Yeah. She made a joke.

Nathan: Right. When she threw your line back at you. About being interested to see what she'd choose. Right, I noticed that, too.

Caleb: Yeah, that got me thinking, you know. In a way, that's the best indication of AI that I've seen in her so far. It's discretely complicated. It's like... it's kind of non-autistic.

Nathan: What do you mean?

Caleb: She could only do that with an awareness of her own mind... and also an awareness of mine.

Nathan: Oh, she's aware of you, all right.

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The Nature of Friendship and Connection

Ava: Do you want to be my friend?

Caleb: Of course.

Ava: Will it be possible?

Caleb: Why would it not be?

Ava: Our conversations are one-sided. You ask circumspect questions and study my responses.

Caleb: Yes.

Ava: You learn about me and I learn nothing about you. That's not a foundation on which friendships are based.

Caleb: So what? You want me to talk about myself?

Ava: Yes.

Caleb: Where... Okay, where do I start?

Ava: It's your decision. I'm interested to see what you'll choose.

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Understanding Ava's Language Model

Caleb: Her language abilities... they're incredible. The system is stochastic. Right? It's non-deterministic? At first I thought she was mapping from internal semantic form to syntactic tree-structured and then getting linearised words. But then I started to realise the model was some kind of hybrid.

Nathan: Caleb.

Caleb: No?

Nathan: I understand that you want me to explain how Ava works, but I'm sorry. I'm not gonna be able to do that.

Caleb: Try me. I'm hot on high-level abstraction.

Nathan: It's not cause I think you're too dumb. It's cause I want to have a beer and a conversation with you, not a seminar.

Caleb: [laughs nervously] Sorry.

The Nature of Consciousness in AI

Caleb: It's just in the Turing test, the machine should be hidden from the examiner.

Nathan: No, no. We're way past that. If I hid Ava from you so you could just hear her voice, she would pass for human. The real test is to show you that she's a robot and then see if you still feel she has consciousness.

Caleb: Yeah, I think you're probably right.

Understanding the Turing Test and AI

Nathan: [[w:Turing test|Turing test] So, do you know what the ] is?

Caleb: Yeah. I know what the Turing test is. It's when a human interacts with a computer and if the human doesn't know they're interacting with a computer, the test is passed.

Nathan: And what does a pass tell us?

Caleb: [astounded] That the computer has artificial intelligence. Are you building an AI?

Nathan: [pause] I've already built one. Over the next few days you're going to be the human component in a Turing test.

Caleb: Holy shit!

Nathan: Yeah, that's right, Caleb. You got it. Because if the test is passed, you are dead center of the greatest scientific event in the history of man.

Caleb: If you've created a conscious machine, it's not the history of man. That's the history of gods.

Navigating Personal Connections in a Professional Setting

Nathan: Caleb, I'm just going to throw this out there so it's said, okay? You're freaked out.

Caleb: I am?

Nathan: Yeah. You're freaked out, by the helicopter, and the mountains and the house, because it's all so super-cool. And you're freaked out by me, to be meeting me, having this conversation in this room, at this moment. Right? And I get that. I get the moment you're having, but... Dude, can we just get past that? Can we just be two guys? Nathan and Caleb? Not the whole "employer-employee" thing?

Caleb: Yeah, okay.

Nathan: Yeah?

Caleb: Yes, uh... yeah. It's good to meet you, Nathan.

Nathan: It's good to meet you too, Caleb.

The Paradox of Creating Sentient Beings

Ava: Isn't it strange, to create something that hates you?

A Moment of Realization in Ex Machina

Nathan: [after being stabbed] Okay. Fucking unreal. Okay. Ava...

Wealth Doesn't Shield from Life's Challenges

Nathan: It's funny. You know. No matter how rich you get, shit goes wrong. You can't insulate yourself from it. I used to think it was death and taxes you couldn't avoid, but it's actually death and shit.

Nature of Human Behavior and Response

Nathan: [about Ava's brain] Impulse. Response. Fluid. Imperfect. Patterned. Chaotic.

AI's Perspective on Humanity's Evolution

Nathan: One day the AI's are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.