Nathan is the epitome of a particular trope in society’s view of science and technology the idea that tremendous advances are driven by determined individual heroes rather than collaborative teams. When Caleb makes his comment about the history of ‘gods’, the CEO instinctively assumes the ‘god’ referred to is himself, where Ava is his Eve and his sprawling green estate is some sort of Garden of Eden. Nathan is the clearest study of ego in the film. I have an alternative theory, and while I’m not sure if it’s what Alex Garland (writer and director of the film) intended, it makes a lot more sense than the alternative. Neither do I, to be honest, and in fact I’ll go further: I don’t believe Nathan did it at all. “I don’t know how you did any of this,” Caleb remarks to the genius Nathan, when he first looks at the lab where Ava was built. “An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.” It’s the sort of comment that sounds humble, but really isn’t: why would they even give a crap? “One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa,” says Nathan.

The first sentient machine might be happy trolling chess computers all day, for all we know or seeking patterns in clouds. The very assumption that a human could create a god is arrogant, as is the assumption that such a ‘god’ would take a profound interest in human affairs, or be motivated by Western enlightenment values like technological progress. The exact same arrogance colours virtually everything I’ve seen written about the Singularity, fictional or otherwise, for decades. We prayed to Him and told ourselves that our prayers would be answered, and that if they weren’t then it was part of some divine plan for our lives, and all would work out in the end.įor all that it preaches humility, religion holds a core of extreme arrogance in its analysis of the world. We believed that He must be preoccupied with our daily lives and existence. We assumed that something as complicated as the world must be run by a human-like entity, albeit a super-powered one. When our species created God, we created Him in our image. There’s a funny symmetry in our attitudes to God and AIs. This recent cultural obsession – which deserves its own post - prompts a comment by the awestruck Caleb, after Nathan the Mad Scientist reveals his attempt to build a conscious machine and the two helpfully explain to the audience what a Turing Test is: “If you’ve created a conscious machine it’s not the history of man… that’s the history of Gods.”

Intersection symbol in word 2016