Characters in Ex Machina

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According to Aristotle characters play the second most important role in a fictional work after the plot. However, in Ex Machina they arguable play a more important role than the action of the narrative. The characters in Ex Machina are Caleb Smith, Nathan Bateman, and Ava. Caleb is the protagonist and a round or dynamic character, while Nathan is the antagonist and a flat, major character. Ava is a humanoid AI which causes the tragic and of both its creator, Nathan, and its “lover”, Caleb. The intention of this essay is to examine the above-mentioned characters in Ex Machina in order to illustrate how all three, Caleb, Nathan, and Ava will ultimately meet their tragic end.

Caleb is a computer programmer for Nathans’s company which is named Bluebook. Caleb’s characteristics are paradoxically gullibility, vulnerability, and intelligence. If gullibility signifies “a tendency to be easily persuaded that something is real or true”, then he meets this criterion convincingly through his relationship with Ava. Ava is able to manipulate him into believing that it is a real human of the opposite sex with which Caleb can have a future relationship with. All of this transpires after Caleb is initially aware of Ava’s internal wiring and artificial processing. Another characteristic associated with Caleb is vulnerability, and it manifests itself in his tragic love for Ava. Caleb is described as being an orphan who has not had any romantic love relationships and who spends much of his time on questionable websites. Such inexperience in love ultimately causes his fragile mind to obscure Ava’s “in humanity” and to make him fall head over heals for it. Paradoxically, Caleb is still to be considered an intelligent person. He shows flashes of brilliance when it comes to understanding he intricacies of the Turning test, and his ability with IT are clearly distinguishable throughout Ex Machina.

Nathan is the CEO of Bluebook, a search engine program, and the genial creator of an artificially intelligent system named Ava. Nathan is a reclusive, sexist, and obsessive character. He lives in a research facility in a remote area of the far north isolated from humans and having only AI systems to interact with. The impression one gets is that he is self-sufficient and not very needy of human contact. Another aspect of his personality which is troubling is his sexism. Nathans’s AI creations betray his intentions to produce a feminine reality of submission, subordination, obedience, and dismissibility. Kyoko is a mute servant and sex doll for Nathan which must obey efficiently every male directive. Ava’s function is not much better since it is trapped in a compound without an easy exit, is expendably like parts of a car would be, and is “supposed” to be compliant to its master. All of his creations reveal a male mindset of women having less inherent value then men in the world. Finally, Nathen has an obsessive personality. He drinks uncontrollably and is constantly searching for ways to improve his intelligent system. He creates multiple versions of female AI systems with the hope of eventually producing a super intelligent “consciousness” which could easily pass for being human.

Ava, an artificial system created by Nathan, is attractive (at least in Caleb’s mind), manipulative, and mechanical (or not convincingly human). Although Caleb sees “through” Ava’s artificiality initially, when it begins to dress up for him, he becomes smitten with its looks. This attraction to the humanoid robot and the interactions he will have with it will eventually lead to his tragic end at the “hands” of a “femme fatale”. Another aspect of Ava’s system is its undeniable ability to manipulate naïve humans. Ava is able to manipulate its way around Caleb in order to escape the compound by telling him it would go on a date with him. This creates a false hope in Caleb which is required for Ava to achieve its objective. Lastly, Ava does not pass all criteria of the Turning test as it is administered in Ex Machina. Ava would have to be convincingly similar to humans in these five abilities according to Nathan: sexuality, empathy, imagination, self awareness, and manipulation. In relation to manipulation, Ava is convincingly human, but it lacks every other ability. For example, it may be capable of having sex with a human, but it cannot have children like most organic women can. Moreover, Ava does not show an awareness of intentionality in her imagination artwork. All human art has at the very least an intention behind its creation. To conclude, Ava is mechanical (less than human) in its ability to express and understand human emotions which makes it a non empathic system. This is clearly demonstrated in its less then convincing facial expression during “intimate” interaction with Caleb.

Finally, our three distinguishable characters will meet their tragic end in Ex Machina. Caleb’s weakness for Ava will make him masterplan its escape, but Ava will not reciprocate by going on a date with him. Instead, it will callously leave Caleb to die alone within locked room in the research facility (with only his dreams of her as consolation). Nathan, on the other hand, will ironically be stabbed to death by his creation, Ava and Kyoko, but also because Caleb’s masterplan catches Nathan off-guard. Ava will also meet her eventual “tragic” end because it will not be able to rechange away from the research facility (which reveals either a lack of intelligence or a lack of survival instinct in the program), but it will also lack the ability to adapt seamlessly to human experience in society.