Ex Machina Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

Taglines What happens to me if I fail your test?

Nathan You know this guy, right?

Caleb ].

Nathan 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 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?

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 Sorry.

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.

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

Nathan Okay. Fucking unreal. Okay. Ava...

Nathan 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 I'm gonna tear up the fucking dance floor, dude. Check it out.

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

Nathan Impulse. Response. Fluid. Imperfect. Patterned. Chaotic.

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?

Nathan 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 That the computer has artificial intelligence. Are you building an AI?

Nathan 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.