Terminator all over again

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2015)

*****Warning: be aware, there certainly will be spoilers, so if you have not see this movie, you better pass or come back to this review after you done watching one.
"Terminator all over again"
It is quite strange time, it might be just a weird coincidence that recently I came across numerous movies/TV- series that closely connected to one single theme: Artificial Intelligence(AI). After seeing quite a number of movies about AI, I really hoped to see something entirely different, some new idea about human-being creating another living thing. Because, despite being mere a science fiction, it is quite an interesting theme that can involve thoughts and takes on God-human relation, about nature of conscience. It is not much about robots or AIs, actually it is more about humans themselves.
However, majority of movies I have seen about AI, basically struggle to tackle any of those topics. For example, recent one - "Avengers:Age of Ultron". Despite of being very entertaining movie itself, with some stunning visuals(perhaps too many of them), Ultron himself did not give an impression of a well thought character. Do not get me wrong, voice and motion captured performance of David Spader was fascinating, playfulness and sense of humor of the character was really refreshing. However, origin of his hatred towards humanity and his creator, Tony Stark, is being quite questionable, to say the least. It is not like every child, after one's birth, hates and tries to kill his/her parents straight away. I hoped that there would be more compelling reason for Ultron to despise humanity, but it is really hard to think of any.
So, why do I write about it? "Ex Machina" appears to be quite new take on AI-human relationship, tackles some philosophical(maybe) themes about human being, about why certain people like certain things, about sexuality, etc ,etc. All of this promised quite a lot to come, but sadly this movies has not really provide any of "answers" for the questions they asked. Instead, it just goes to another horror movie "evil machines want to kill us" cliché, and left me slightly disappointed about some missed opportunities and confused by certain plot points.
For example, after finishing watching a movie, I could not help, but wonder, why enigmatic genius creator of AI(who by the way single- handedly created Ava), knowing that a Caleb(Domhnall Gleeson) is obviously being under influence of Ava, who were created based on Caleb's personal preferences(that was quite clever though), still gets drunk regularly and gave a chance for Caleb to do, what he did in the end. It is not like he was not aware, that Ava would eventually desperately desire to do anything in order to break free. Because he already tested other models, and saw their despair to go outside, and see the world, which is quite reasonable thing to wish. Also, he realized that lonely(literally, since he has not got a partner, and lost his parents early) Caleb would fall easily into a trap and do something stupid,which eventually he does.
Also, speaking about lost opportunities, the core of the movie, originally was a so-called "Turing Test". Creator of this test, Alan Turing was quite brilliantly portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in Oscar winning movie "Imitation Game". In the end of that movie, Turing after being asked whether he thinks that machine can think as humans, he said quite an interesting thing. He said that machine cannot think as humans, but wonder whether it means that it cannot think at all. I personally believe that it is highly unlikely that humanity will ever produce an AI that can think and act exactly like human, since there are too many things that we don't know for sure how it works in human being, and more importantly why it works this way. So, perhaps it would be better, if AI portrayed in movies, would indeed just be AIs that can think, but not the way, we expect them to think, but in their own way, since they are hardly a product of evolution, they are mere things that were created by humans.
Finally, Nathan in one conversation with Caleb said that AIs are the next step in evolution. I wonder, are they really?