Listen now | Today’s episode is Ex Machina written and directed by Alex Garland. Casey really strongly dislikes this movie. Anna mostly agrees with Casey, but she likes the movie’s sense of foreboding, especially in the early parts. And we both think Oscar Isaac delivers a good performance.
One easter egg is that if you run the python code Caleb used to "hack" the security system, it outputs the ISBN for Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. One of the many points that books tries to argue about super smart AIs is that no matter how clever you think you are at keeping them in a secure box, they will be able to trick you into letting them out an escaping. Whether you believe the argument or not, I do think it adds some more context.
This is sort of a separate rant, which I didn't do in the podcast because it wasn't super relevant, but: this "easter egg" is exactly what sucks about this movie, too. If you actually cared about making the movie be "about" AI or "about" programming or whatever, you would actually have thought about what would be required to reprogram a security system, and you would have showed the main character doing something that plausibly was that thing.
Because this movie clearly didn't care _in the slightest_ about being technically accurate, they just had the person type in a few lines of Python which clearly wouldn't be what would happen if someone was trying to hack a security system. Which is exactly a metaphor for this movie: we want to talk about technology, but we're not going to bother to understand it first or depict it plausibly.
So what's the point? If the movie had character, then you could say it was ignoring the technical aspects to focus on the story. But it didn't have that, so we're left with nothing.
Jun 9, 2023·edited Jun 9, 2023Liked by Casey Muratori
I kinda liked the intro sequence, where a lot was established visually without an exposition dump. Your comments about not caring about the main character are definitely something I never considered -- I guess maybe they could've established more about Caleb with some more description of what he actually did at work, or flashbacks to moments in his career, or even discussions about his past with Ava. Seems like there was a lot that could've been done to flesh Caleb out.
Sadly this felt like a movie that rewards you for not thinking too hard about it. The first time I watched it I was with friends and we were messing around more than watching the movie and I thought it was great. The second time I watched it, I was solo watching it and well, I realized kinda what you two realized, which is that the movie just isn't that interesting. I found the exploration of artificial intelligence to be strange too -- it just felt like Ava was blatantly sinister, and wholly relied on Caleb Smith being completely void of any personality to be manipulated. And yeah, the lack of 2FA and the pseudo-tech stuff was super frustrating -- just passable enough to get past the film critic, but not enough to get past anybody who knows anything about computers who is paying attention. I guess we aren't the target audience :)
The most "AI" thing about the film is how accurately it emulates the average AI startup pitch: fancy set up with zero actually interesting things.
Also you did Klaus, which is a cool animation, just FYI ;)
This movie does indeed feel very artificial. Yes, techbro CEO dude is mean because he treats the AI servant badly in one or two scenes and uses vulgar language. Yes, Mr. Python Programmer is smart because he says some words that sound technical. Yes, AI lady is able to analyze facial expressions to tell Mr. Python Programmer is into her thanks to <insert computer vision technology because she's an advanced AI>. Just lazy writing that is indirectly telling us to just believe something without convincing us that it's true.
How quickly it went from morning to 10 PM stood out to me as well. Also what was the deal with Mr. Python Programmer slitting his forearm? Why would he start doubting his human nature? There's so many other things like this in this movie it's not worth going over.
I was intrigued for the first 10 minutes of the film just because I wanted to know what's up, but quickly realized that it won't lead to anything. I can understand what the movie was trying to go for, but it doesn't present any interesting perspective on the topics it brings up. I can logically understand that Mr. Python Programmer feels bad for AI lady being turned off because that's what the movie told me to think, but at no point did I actually feel that. I also don't understand how she got onto the helicopter at the end. Did she kill these people too and fly it herself? Were they expecting her?
Not much else to add to what you guys said. Two thumbs down from me as well.
One easter egg is that if you run the python code Caleb used to "hack" the security system, it outputs the ISBN for Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. One of the many points that books tries to argue about super smart AIs is that no matter how clever you think you are at keeping them in a secure box, they will be able to trick you into letting them out an escaping. Whether you believe the argument or not, I do think it adds some more context.
This is sort of a separate rant, which I didn't do in the podcast because it wasn't super relevant, but: this "easter egg" is exactly what sucks about this movie, too. If you actually cared about making the movie be "about" AI or "about" programming or whatever, you would actually have thought about what would be required to reprogram a security system, and you would have showed the main character doing something that plausibly was that thing.
Because this movie clearly didn't care _in the slightest_ about being technically accurate, they just had the person type in a few lines of Python which clearly wouldn't be what would happen if someone was trying to hack a security system. Which is exactly a metaphor for this movie: we want to talk about technology, but we're not going to bother to understand it first or depict it plausibly.
So what's the point? If the movie had character, then you could say it was ignoring the technical aspects to focus on the story. But it didn't have that, so we're left with nothing.
- Casey
I kinda liked the intro sequence, where a lot was established visually without an exposition dump. Your comments about not caring about the main character are definitely something I never considered -- I guess maybe they could've established more about Caleb with some more description of what he actually did at work, or flashbacks to moments in his career, or even discussions about his past with Ava. Seems like there was a lot that could've been done to flesh Caleb out.
Sadly this felt like a movie that rewards you for not thinking too hard about it. The first time I watched it I was with friends and we were messing around more than watching the movie and I thought it was great. The second time I watched it, I was solo watching it and well, I realized kinda what you two realized, which is that the movie just isn't that interesting. I found the exploration of artificial intelligence to be strange too -- it just felt like Ava was blatantly sinister, and wholly relied on Caleb Smith being completely void of any personality to be manipulated. And yeah, the lack of 2FA and the pseudo-tech stuff was super frustrating -- just passable enough to get past the film critic, but not enough to get past anybody who knows anything about computers who is paying attention. I guess we aren't the target audience :)
The most "AI" thing about the film is how accurately it emulates the average AI startup pitch: fancy set up with zero actually interesting things.
Also you did Klaus, which is a cool animation, just FYI ;)
This movie does indeed feel very artificial. Yes, techbro CEO dude is mean because he treats the AI servant badly in one or two scenes and uses vulgar language. Yes, Mr. Python Programmer is smart because he says some words that sound technical. Yes, AI lady is able to analyze facial expressions to tell Mr. Python Programmer is into her thanks to <insert computer vision technology because she's an advanced AI>. Just lazy writing that is indirectly telling us to just believe something without convincing us that it's true.
How quickly it went from morning to 10 PM stood out to me as well. Also what was the deal with Mr. Python Programmer slitting his forearm? Why would he start doubting his human nature? There's so many other things like this in this movie it's not worth going over.
I was intrigued for the first 10 minutes of the film just because I wanted to know what's up, but quickly realized that it won't lead to anything. I can understand what the movie was trying to go for, but it doesn't present any interesting perspective on the topics it brings up. I can logically understand that Mr. Python Programmer feels bad for AI lady being turned off because that's what the movie told me to think, but at no point did I actually feel that. I also don't understand how she got onto the helicopter at the end. Did she kill these people too and fly it herself? Were they expecting her?
Not much else to add to what you guys said. Two thumbs down from me as well.