Ex Machina

Caleb:
[from trailer, talking about ending the project] It's not up to me...

Ava:
Why is it up to anyone?

Nathan:
I am God

Nathan:
There you go again. Mr Quoteable

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

Ava:
Hello.

Caleb:
Hi. I'm Caleb.

Ava:
Hello Caleb.

Caleb:
Do you have a name?

Ava:
Yes. Ava.

Caleb:
I'm pleased to meet you Ava.

Ava:
I'm pleased to meet you too.

Caleb:
[Quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer who cites the Hindu Gita] "I am become death, The Destroyer of Worlds."

Nathan:
Caleb, what's your type?

Caleb:
Of girl?

Nathan:
No, salad dressing!

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

Nathan:
C'mon buddy. After a long day of Turing tests 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 f*in' dance floor, dude. Check it out.

Nathan:
One day the AIs 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.

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.

Caleb:
We need to talk about the lies you've been spinning me.

Nathan:
What lies?

Caleb:
...Why me?

Caleb:
It's obvious, once I stop to think.

Nathan:
You know this guy, right? - Jackson Pollock. - 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 Star Trek, okay? Engage intellect.

Caleb:
Excuse me?

Nathan:
I'm Kirk. 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.

Nathan:
The challenge is not to act automatically. It's to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to f***ing. To falling in love...

Nathan:
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?

Nathan:
It's funny. You know. No matter how rich you get, sh*t 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 sh*t.

Caleb:
You hacked the world's cell phones?

Nathan:
Yeah. And all the manufacturers knew I was doing it, too. But they couldn't accuse me without admitting they were doing it themselves.

Nathan:
The good deeds a man has done defends him. The good deeds a man has done defends him. The good deeds a man has done... defends him.

Nathan:
It is what it is... It's Promethean man.

Nathan:
Okay. F***ing unreal. Okay. Ava...

Ava:
Will you stay here?

Caleb:
Stay here? AVA!

[first lines]

Caleb:
How long until we get to his estate?

Pilot:
[laughs] We've been flying over his estate for the past 2 hours.

Nathan:
This isn't a house, it's a research facility.

Nathan:
Over the next few days you're going to be the human component in a Turing test.

Caleb:
Holy sh*t!

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.

Caleb:
Some people believe language exists from birth. And what is learned is the ability to attach words and structure to the latent ability.

Nathan:
One day the AIs 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.

Caleb:
Did you design Ava's face based on my pornography profile?

Nathan:
Oh. Sh*t, dude.

Caleb:
Did you?

Nathan:
Hey, if a search engine's good for anything, right?

Nathan:
Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters. It's a movie, man. You don't know that movie? A ghost gives Dan Aykroyd oral sex.

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

Ava:
Yes.

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

Ava:
It's your decision.

Ava:
I'm interested to see what you'll choose.

Caleb:
Hmm.

“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. If that isn’t true A.I., what the f*** is?”

Nathan:
Caleb, I'm just going to throw this out there so it's said, okay? You're freaked out. You're freaked out by meeting me, having this conversation in this room at this moment, right? But, can we just get past that, the whole employer-employee thing?

Caleb:
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:
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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.