Sunday, May 31, 2015

Ex Machina: Love in the Age of Artificial Intelligence


Generally, I do not fall in love with humanoid robots, but I was tantalized by Ava in Alex Garland's brilliant sci-fi thriller, Ex Machina. What is so irresistible in her portrayal is the blurring of the line between human and machine. So convincing is Ava's humanity, indeed, that there doesn't seem to be a line at all. Where does one draw it, or redraw it?

The title of the film belies its referent, deus ex machina. Unlike the divine figure that implausibly appears on stage in Greek tragedy to resolve an intractable conflict, Ava is no mere device for tying up loose threads. No, as Domhnall Gleeson's character, Caleb, learns, she loosens them further -- to our increasing peril and perplexity. By the end of the story, we are haunted both by our inclination to fall in love with a thing of our own making, and by our ambition to make it in the first place. We are in sympathy with the gods.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Mr. Cogito Stages a Return

I considered using the title of Joyce Carol Oates' famous story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" to herald Cogito's return, but that would confuse our Everyman with an infernal friend. Not that Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is any better, even though Cogito was hard to find. Still, he's no twisted Christ figure.

In the days and months ahead, we'll try to figure out where our newly recovered friend has been and where he's going next.