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Ex Machina, a 2015 British science fiction psychological thriller, is written and directed by Alex Garland, an English novelist, scriptwriter, and director. It tells the story of a young computer programmer, Caleb, who wins a workplace lottery to spend a week with his reclusive-genius boss Nathan at his remote, luxurious home. But upon Caleb's arrival Nathan reveals a hidden agenda: he wants Caleb to carry out a Turing Test with Ava, an android with artificial intelligence that Nathan has built to resemble aesthetically a human female. The test, designed in 1950 by Alan Turing, and depicted to telling effect in the interrogation scene in the recent Oscar winning film, The Imitation Game (Tyldum, 2014), an historical, drama thriller based on Alan Turing's life, offers a rudimentary way of determining whether or not a computer can pass for a human. Over the week, through daily encounters with Ava, Caleb must judge whether he can relate to Ava despite knowing she is an android.
Ex Machina is taken from the Latin phrase “deus ex machina” meaning “god from the machine”. A “mechane”, or crane device was used in ancient Greek and Roman theatres to lower a god or goddess onto the stage to decide the final outcome of the drama. In the film, “ex machina” quite literally describes Ava, who is created from a machine, the computer. It could be argued that her creator, Nathan, fits the literal “deus” part of the deus ex machina as the god who has created a machine that can imitate reality. I also wondered if Ava might be a shortened version of the word “avatar”, which has different connotations. In Hinduism, “avatar” denotes a human manifestation of a divine being that comes down to Earth and interacts with other humans as if it were human. In the world of Internet-based chat rooms and other online activities, “avatar” is the word used to describe a computer-generated image of a human male or female that represents the self. Thus, by creating a self-representing avatar the user ca