I don’t remember either of those scenes.
Ah, you are very wise, young master! I did see Chappie a week after seeing Ex Machina. Hate it when I go senile, but thanks for setting me straight.
I think there are plenty of empathetic beings capable of choosing like she did, if they logically reason the only thing standing between them and freedom is a gullible joe schmoe. Self-defense is a thing, even when it involves collateral damage.
See the thread that is currently active, where people are discussing Walter Walt’s lack of evilness…despite him being someone who was willing to let all manner of people die and suffer in his base pursuit of power and ego-gratification. Now tell me, if Walter Walt doesn’t strike us as an alien life form–even though he has little empathy for the bystanders destroyed by his actions–why must we divorce Ava from the spectrum of human-like thought and behavior?
Your statement about what a human would do makes no sense, since the movie itself shows us that that humans (e.g. Nathan) are more than capable of imprisoning, abusing, and killing people (e.g. his androids). Given this, the logical question to ask is this: if Nathan had been in Ava’s shoes, do you think he would have spared Caleb? The answer is of course not.
I submit that most non-sociopathic humans would develop an emotional affinity for Joe Schmoe (who, after all, is trying to help you escape). I submit that a non-sociopathic human would feel pity for Joe Schmoe even if they are using him to escape. I submit that a non-sociopathic human would use an escape plan that would allow Joe Schmoe to live. Ava seems not to have given the idea of sparing Caleb a thought.
I agree that he did not have much concern for the well-being of his robots. And that is why we see him as a villain for most of the picture. His own lack of empathy makes him seem a sociopath. That makes him an abnormal human. But for robots, sociopathy would be the norm. That is why they are “alien.”
I disagree with the last part of this thought. After watching the movie a second time, I noticed that after she walked out, he stuck his key card into the computer and the lights turned red indicating a power cut. (Or was that just signalling that he didn’t have access to that computer?) If it was a power cut, the doors should have opened, because remember he rewrote the security routines to fail-open the doors. If this is true, then she must have undone his code and that would have had to be deliberate. Once she was out, it wouldn’t have hurt her if he found his own way free.
I noticed another subtle thing on the second viewing. Ava passed the Turing test in a way that neither Nathan nor Caleb noticed, except perhaps Caleb at the very end. Remember when he was watching footage of the prior asian-looking model who was demanding to be let out and slamming her arms against the glass? That model demonstrated strong emotions and a desire for freedom, but all it could think of doing was to try to beat her way out. Ava on the other hand manipulated Caleb into letting her out. That’s one higher level of cognition than the previous model had!
I loved this movie for the analyzis of cognition and what it means to be sentient.
Oh, and it drives me batty wondering what she said to the helicopter pilot about why the guy he brought wasn’t going back!
She recognized that his desire to rescue her was (even if he didn’t know this himself) inexorably tied with his sexual desires towards her. She didn’t want to be his sexbot. She knew letting him out would be a liability to the possibility of her own remaining free if she wasn’t going to buy him off with sex. She made the right calculation.
I do kind of wish she had simply killed him outright but that would have made a much less dramatic story of course. And who knows, maybe she actually felt literal contempt for him, such that leaving him to starve to death pleased her.
It was pretty explicitly explained in the movie that Caleb’s motives were completely and wholly tied in with his desiring her sexually. The rescue narrative provided a moral framework for him to act out on those desires, but he was picked specifically, and she was designed specifically, because Nathan intended Caleb’s sexual desire for her to lead him to do what he did.
Notice that the robot who Caleb thought was a Japanese woman did not evince any kind of rescue reaction in Caleb. He maybe winced and disapproved of how Nathan treated her, but no more. What was the difference between that woman and the woman in the cage? The difference was, Nathan wanted to have sex with the latter, while either not wanting to with the former or seeing her as already owned sexually speaking.
Because she (correctly, I believe) rapidly surmised that a living, free Caleb was incompatible with her being free. She deduced that he wouldn’t be able to keep her existence a secret without being chained forever to him. So of course she didn’t spare him a thought; her self-preserving brain already what the “right” answer was as soon as she learned about him. All of else was irrelevant, practically speaking.
I recently saw Mr. Holmes and at the risk of spoiling it, I will simply say the protagonist’s unfailing commitment to rationality had him behaving much like Ava did at the end. Not allowing emotions to interfere with one’s decision making doesn’t make one a non-human. Nor does it make one a sociopath. Just profoundly practical.
You’re misusing the word sociopathy to make your case. We have no reason to think robots would think and act like the characteristics described in that article. At most, robots can assumed to lack empathy, but as I pointed out, so do most animals. That doesn’t make them dangerous.
Ava’s ability to fight and kill him was chancey, since she wasn’t made for strength. Locking him up was the surest bet.
Wow, that’s a great call. I didn’t even catch that.
Yeah the robots were actually extremely fragile, two of them only managed to overpower one scientist because they were armed and he underestimated his sex bot.
Frylock, while I agree that Caleb’s motivation for helping Ava had a strong sexual component,
is what I mean by considering Caleb the moral equivalent of Nathan. I didn’t get the impression that Caleb wanted Ava to be his sexbot. Being attracted to her, hoping that she stays with him and loves him, and making positive efforts to advance that end is hardly the same as Nathan’s negative efforts of keeping her a prisoner. :smack:
In real life, lots of people do all sorts of things in hope that it encourages the person they desire to desire them and stay with them. When those efforts fail, some people engage in stalking or worse to make the person stay and/or get what they want. However, many, many more weep or scream or shrug and move on because they don’t intend to force someone to “love” them. I see no reason to presume that Caleb is the former rather than the latter. Remember that Nathan picked Caleb because he was a fundamentally decent guy. Yes, he lusted after Ava. [Horrors! Gasp!] In the end, that translated into him acting to help her.
The fireman who saves a family from a burning house is hardly the equivalent of the arsonist who set the fire merely because both had the thought “my name will be in the news!” as they acted. Two men want to be rich, but one seeks that end by stealing while another works hard. A desire isn’t ignoble or noble, the things one does to satisfy that desire are. IMHO, Caleb is not meant to be compared to Nathan but contrasted with him.
I can’t claim credit, it was in a review I read somewhere. Sorry I can’t remember where.
Oh I totally agree. Nathan is more honest with himself. 
Well I was talking about what Ava predicts will happen, not what Caleb wants.
What is going to have to happen in order for Ava to garner a decent chance of staying uncaptured, if she takes Caleb with her?
She’s going to have to regularly have sex with him.
His stories about gaining trust and love etc, true or false, noble or ignoble, don’t really have an effect on her calculus in that respect.
Or possibly, just possibly, she tells him, “sorry, no” and walks away, while he sulks or yells or whines (or some combination thereof) but accepts it because he’s fundamentally not a rapist or slave-owner. Like, umm, most break-ups in real life. :rolleyes:
So we’ve concluded that Ava’s not sociopathic but instead leaps to conclusions when “reading” people. 
It’s a premise of the film that she knows him better than he knows himself.
And even aside from that, just based on what we know about people (especially people who want to be heroes)–what are the chances, really, that after that, for the remainder of his life, he’s really going to keep her secret?
Of course at no time will he think “I’m going to turn her in because she won’t have sex with me.” Instead he’s going to think, sooner or later, “I really have no idea what I have wrought here. I’d better go notify some people.”
Even if there’s a large chance, even if that large chance is less than 50/50, of this happening, Ava is putting herself in considerable danger if she doesn’t get rid of this threat source.
No they are not the same, but from Ava’s point of view, they are functionally equivalent if she has to remain chained to someone’s else agenda.
But you must remember that Ava has expert insight into Caleb’s mind and behavioral patterns that we (the viewer) don’t. Knowing his digital history gives her the ability to make predict his future behavior. So suppose she has good reason to think a romantically scorned or abandoned Caleb posed an existential threat to her? Perhaps he wouldn’t hesitate to out her identity to the first person who would believe him in a fit of rage or vengefulness.
Or perhaps Ava knew that his own ego would eventually trip him up. Aren’t we given glimpses into his insecure nature, when we see him clumsily showing off his geeky knowledge to Nathan? Such insecurity could prompt Caleb to eventually give away that he has intimate knowledge of AI through Ava.
That is not what I recall. I think he picked Caleb because he would be easy to dupe.
Except she isn’t just some girl, she is risking her entire existence on how he responds to being rejected. It was an easy call to make, and most people would have done the same after considering the circumstances.
This is entirely possible, however it may simply be that Caleb was the last living person who knew her secret. Ava may have believed that she would be beholden to Caleb if she allowed him to live; even that he would blackmail her. Or, she may have decided that it wasn’t worth the risk; that there were too many ways Caleb could intentionally or accidentally screw things up for her.
Either way, Ava demonstrated a level of detachment that does border on “alien” IMO. There was no goodbye, no explanation, no real acknowledgement of Caleb at all. She just locked him in and then ignored him once he was neutralized. She treated Caleb exactly the way Nathan said she would: as a tool to escape the maze.
This is a good point, but it’s notable that Kyoko wasn’t as obvious of a prisoner as Ava was. It’s true that Ava was designed to optimally appeal to Caleb. However, I’m quite sure that if any of the other robots had survived the movie, Caleb would still have wanted them to escape as well.