Finally got to see it. I really loved the premise but was not quite so in love with the execution. There's a jumble of thoughts involved.
So a project like this isn't just some strange dude noodling around in his garage. He's not Tony Stark. this is a massive development effort that would involve a ton of people. Now it's possible that he's got an army to build the prototypes and he then tests them in his James Bond villain house if that's his deal. But it's not really an efficient testing format.
The problem with the Turing Test is that it's subjective. A very stupid person could be easily convinced. I did like the idea of the test within the test where the subject is told one thing but the researcher is actually testing for something else. So the idea that the test isn't whether our poor sap declares her human but is willing to set his career on fire to help her escape, that's interesting. But his boss already messed with the test by giving Ava the face of the sap's idealized porn models.
An idea struck me halfway through the film, turned out to not be the case. I thought the boss was going to say "I'm a sociopath and not an emotionally connected person and I'm trying to create an AI that can pass as a fully nerotypical person with emotions." And his obsession that he can't answer is whether the AI is just a philosophical zombie -- something that will insist it is human, behave as a human does and is convincing and yet somehow not human. This is something philosophers will debate all the time. I think most people wouldn't get caught up in all that. For example, if I say I've got this child android here and I assure you it doesn't have a conscious mind and is just a cunning facsimile and all you need to do to win a million bucks is press this button and as you approach the button she cries and pleads for her life... Yeah, you're going to tell me where to stuff those bucks. Whether or not it's conscious, it feels real enough.
The whole thing with Ava leaving sap behind, a lot of people were blown away by that and said this is the difference between a human and AI. Not even? How many times has someone faked a romantic interest in another for gain?
The actual experiment the boss was conducting... It doesn't quite seem logical. He tells the sap he's testing the AI but he's really interested in seeing how well the AI could headfuck the guy. He's already cheating making it a fembot, giving it the guy's idealized porn face. It seems like the real test would be if the AI was presented as a mind in a box but the sap was so convinced that it was alive and deserving of life that he was willing to risk the NDA and setting his professional life on fire to save it via some mechanism the boss would have lampshaded earlier. The AI was never going to be overwritten for the next model, that was just the goad to see if he really would risk it all.
I know that part of the theme is supposed to be hubris and of the creation exceeding the grasp of the creator and of mistakes but there's some pretty glaring oversights here along the lines of "robots have access to knives and can physically overpower me." It doesn't seem like the mistake a smart guy would make, it seems like the mistake of an idiot.
I think the scarier implication the filmmaker might have been going for is more along the premise of Peter Watt's Blindsight where he posits the concept of technically sophisticated, intelligent aliens that lack consciousness, self-awareness, that this sort of thing might be a detriment towards fitness for survival. And that could get back to the obsession that the boss could have about these AI's. Instead of someone fearing a paramour doesn't truly love them but is faking it, he's worried that the consciousness demonstrated by the AI isn't "real" but is being faked so well he cannot find the flaw.
Still, I'm glad the movie had success since it increases the likelihood of more movies along these lines being made.
Submitted December 27, 2018 at 06:03AM by jollyreaper2112 http://bit.ly/2VbfAux