HUMAN WORK 2 page

Vocabulary for Ex Machina:

1) Artificial Intelligence: the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

2) Turing Test: a test for intelligence in a computer, requiring that a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both.

3) Robot: a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer.

4) Android: a robot with a human appearance.

5) Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

6) Sympathy: feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.

7) Simulation: something that represents something else — it isn't the real thing.

8) Copy: a thing made to be similar or identical to another.

9) Megalomaniac: a person that is obsessed with their own power.

10) Sociopath: a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

11) Psychopath: a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.

11) Morality Play: a kind of drama with personified abstract qualities as the main characters and presenting a lesson about good conduct and character, popular in the 15th and early 16th centuries.

12) Parable: a short story that uses familiar events to illustrate a religious or ethical point.

13) Allegory: The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.

14) Extinction: in biology and ecology, the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species.

15) Taxonomy: the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms; systematics.

Questions for Ex Machina:

1) Why on Earth make a film like Ex Machina? You think the artist is trying to show off their smarts? Are they exploring something important, a topic you should be worried about? Gulp, what is it?

2) Who on Earth is Nathan, and what’s his beef? Why hasn’t somebody already blew him up or something, like with a cruise missile? I can’t imagine he has any allies that would rally to his aid. Maybe he’s just extorting the rest of the world with the content of their Internet search engines?

3) Could Nathan have made a worse decision than picking Caleb? After all, he was the only guy that had the hacking chops to reprogram his security and trap his bad self in his own research facility!

4) Cards on table, does Caleb survive being trapped by Eva? If you were to imagine an Ex Machina sequel, how would you start it?

5) What the heck is up with Kiyoko? I mean, she can seemingly understand limited stuff, like how do dance; but, otherwise she’s silent as the grave. At the end of the film when she stabbed Nathan, do you think she was thinking about revenge?

6) What is a Turing Test, and did Eva pass it? Outline your reasoning like you were trying to convince a panel of scientists.

7) Nathan was going to bring the Ava model to market, why? I bet there was a back door to her programming that would allow her to spy on everyone that bought the model; maybe a kill switch too?

8) Was Caleb a good guy, or just a sap? He knew she was just a fancy robot, why succumb to her charms/manipulations?

9) On a technical point, how would Ava power up after leaving the floor outlets in Nathan’s research facility? I didn’t see any solar inputs on her, did you?

10) Imagine a time before Ava, what on Earth did Nathan do with all the outdated models he keeps in the closets before he terminated them? Oh wait, do you think he could turn them back on again?

11) Would you buy a robot like Ava?