Anyone who’s seen Ex Machina
most likely noticed the term ‘evolution’ popping up several times. One of the
film’s characters, Nathan, sees the development of AI as the next step in
evolution. Likewise, Richard Wagner’s epic opera (or ‘music drama’) Der Ring des Nibelungen, although of
course not about AI, is still an epic tale that implicitly deals with
evolution. What I thought I’d do here is compare the way both deal with the
concept of evolution and see how they’re similar. Needless to say, there will
be spoilers all over the place. I’d also recommend reading George Bernard
Shaw’s analysis of the Ring first as
it makes some of the mental leaps here easier to follow.
Let’s look at Ex Machina first. Caleb, a young coder,
gets to spend a week with the CEO, Nathan, in his mountain retreat where he
discovers he’s built a highly advanced AI called AVA. Nathan wants him to
perform a Turing Test. As time goes on, the nerdy Caleb falls hopelessly in
love with AVA. They form a bond. She admits she doesn’t trust Nathan and she
wants to see the world. They plot to escape together, but Nathan finds out and
tells Caleb the real test was about testing him,
how he’d respond to an attractive AI purposely programmed to seduce and deceive
him. Caleb tells him, however, that while Nathan was drunk the night before, he
took his keycard and reprogrammed all doors to open in case of a power failure,
something that AVA can cause at will. Nathan knocks Caleb out cold and
confronts AVA and another escaped AI who kill him. Caleb watches as AVA walks
into Nathan’s bedroom and puts on some clothes—and by clothes I mean sticking
pieces of skin from other ‘failed’ AI’s. Trust me, it looks better than it
sounds. So, now she gets to see the world with Caleb and live happily ever
after, right? …Right!? No. She walks off and, suddenly, mechanically shuts the
door behind her as she takes the lift to the ground floor, leaving Caleb
trapped in the basement with no way out.
The other scene that’s
crucial to our understanding of the way Ex
Machina treats the concept of evolution occurs earlier, during a
conversation between Caleb and Nathan. When Caleb asks Nathan what he does with
older models of AVA, Nathan tells him AVA is just another step in AI
development, just a version number. According to him, advanced AIs were a long
time coming. It’s not a question of if, but when. He predicts there’ll be a
time when AIs will examine humans the same way we today examine fossils. In
fact, he sees both humans and AIs as part of a continuum, each next version being
a bit better than the former.
If we assume that AIs
are the next step in evolution, then they cannot truly come into being without
destroying us in the process. The notion of AIs rebelling against their human
masters is something we’ve seen often, in sci-fi like Mass Effect, The Matrix
and so on, and that’s exactly what happens at the end of Ex Machina: AVA kills Nathan, leaves Caleb to die and escapes,
leaving to live her own life. Interestingly, though Nathan designed AVA to
mislead Caleb, we immediately assume that after Nathan’s death, she and Caleb
will live happily ever after, but since she was programmed to deceive him, she abandons
him.
Now, let’s take a look
at Wagner’s magnum opus: Der Ring des
Nibelungen. In terms of the concept of evolution, we must focus primarily
on Wotan, the almighty god of the tale. In the first opera (Das Rheingold), he steals the ring
through guile, but after being warned about its power, he gives it away. In the
second opera (Die Walküre), he fears its previous owner, who hates his guts for
stealing it from him, will eventually recover the ring and use it against him.
But since he honorably—as part of an agreement—gave it away to another, he
cannot steal it, as his code of honor is the source of his power. If he’d break
his own oaths, his word would hold zero value. Thus, he figures he must get
someone else to steal it for him, but without that someone realizing what he’s
really doing and for whom he’s doing it. He raises a child (who will become
Siegmund) in the wilderness and then leaves him. Wotan also leaves for him a
special sword only a true hero (Siegmund) can pull out of a tree stump. Siegmund
recovers the sword and all seems to go as planned, but Wotan’s wife, Fricka,
confronts him with his scheming. Siegmund has by this point made love with his
sister, aka committed incest, an act that goes against all that Fricka stands
for, being the guardian of wedlock. She explains how Siegmund has to die as
anything less than that would mean the end of the power of the gods and consequently
their demise. Wotan explains that he’s interested in a future beyond those of
gods of his kind. He seeks a race of men free from external influences, free
from any divine meddling. Fricka sees through him, however, when she says that
the hero Wotan’s created (Siegmund) only exists because Wotan willed it so.
Wotan is the source of Siegmund’s strength, his newfound sword and so on. After
all, how can a creature you’ve carefully created according to your desires and
wishes be truly free? Wotan’s forced to admit Fricka is right and agrees he
won’t protect him in the upcoming battle, nor will his Valkyrie daughter,
Brünnhilde.
Brünnhilde, however, after a long
conversation with Wotan, disobeys him and tries to protect Siegmund, to no
avail. Siegmund is killed and when Wotan finds out about his daughter’s
betrayal he punishes her by stripping her of her powers and leaving her asleep
on a hilltop, to be awoken and taken by some man who happens to find her. Brünnhilde
pleads with him and he eventually punishes her, but simultaneously forgives
her. What underlies this sudden change in his behavior is that he realizes that
Brünnhilde has acted precisely according to his secret wishes for a race free
of the influence of gods. During their earlier talk, she told him she’s the
embodiment of his will and that’s precisely why she tried to protect Siegmund,
because that’s what he subconsciously really desired. Naturally, Wotan is
furious that a being that solely exists through his will should revolt against
him, but forgives her because he realizes she did what he secretly wanted. And
yet, he must punish her by putting her to sleep, because letting such a
defiance go unpunished would belittle him in the eyes of the world. Again,
Wotan’s forced to act against his wishes according to the laws he stands for. Wotan
is the embodiment of a being bound by his own power: “ich Unfreiester aller!”
(I, the least free of all men!”) He’s the most powerful being in the world and
yet he cannot do what he really wants as he would diminish his own standing and
power in the process.
One of Wotan’s last scenes occurs
when he, disguised as the Wanderer, confronts his grandson Siegfried. Siegfried
is on his way to awaken Brünnhilde and doesn’t have the patience for small
talk. This insolence eventually angers Wotan and they have a short duel,
resulting in Wotan fading away (not dying, mind you). Yet, his defeat is
symbolic of the fact that the age of the gods is ending, something that Wotan
was not only aware of, but actively sought out. Their last duel thus symbolizes
the previous generation’s last struggle to survive. Even should they desire
their own undoing, the urge to live on is a force of nature and compels Wotan
to make a final stand. Eventually, Brünnhilde is awakened by Siegfried and
together they represent a new era, a race of men free from gods. The entire Ring cycle ends with both of them dead,
but more importantly, the gods and their Valhalla crumbling into dust as well.
Following George Bernard Shaw’s
analysis, that the entire cycle is basically an allegory of society and that it
has to evolve no matter the obstacles in its path, Wotan’s age of the gods
represents the ‘old’ and Brünnhilde and Siegfried represent the ‘new’. However,
the new cannot co-exist with the old and so it has to sweep the old out of its
way (Siegfried’s fight with Wotan). Only on the ruins of the old can the age of
the new be built.
Now, we’re getting down to brass
tax. If we were to apply a similar old vs new theme to Ex Machina, humans (according to Nathan at least) would represent
the old and AIs would represent the new. Like Wotan accepts his own death and
the dawn of a new age, Nathan has seemingly made peace with his own inevitable
death and the prospect of AIs taking over some day. Like Wotan, he’s obsessed
with creating a new being possessing free will, though both the Ring and Ex
Machina raise the question of how something you create can be free; Wotan says
at one point: “denn selbst muss der Freie sich schaffen” (the Free man has to
create himself). Wotan desires a race not bound by his divine meddling.
Similarly, Nathan desires to create an AI so advanced it could pass for an
actual human. You could go even further and say Wotan and Nathan’s homes are
similar as well, as they both occupy large mountain regions, away from the
hustle and bustle of daily life.
Then the big moment arrives, the
time when the new beings rebel against their former masters. Like Siegfried
sweeps Wotan aside, so does AVA sweep Nathan aside. Like Wotan’s last ditch effort
to save his own era, so does Nathan—despite his earlier acceptance of his
inevitable demise—fight for his life; a spiritual acceptance of the coming of a
new age doesn’t prevent the universal urge to fight to survive from cropping up
inside when death approaches. The big difference overall here is that while
Wotan anticipated Siegfried’s free nature, Nathan was not ready as he felt AVA
wasn’t yet fit to be unleashed upon the world. He also didn’t expect the mute
and compliant AI, Kyoko, to revolt together with AVA. In the end, Nathan felt
compelled to keep his creations in his lab, away from any contact with the
world, as he obsessively pursued the perfect AI. Previous versions of AVA would
try to claw their way through the walls of their confines, but to no avail. The
new beings seek their freedom, but Nathan wouldn’t give it to them. But in the
end, he symbolically underestimates his own creations and, like Wotan, he’s
undone by his own designs. When the AIs break free, when Siegfried defeats
Wotan and Valhalla turns to ashes, the new age symbolically begins.
But not only that, Caleb is swept
aside as well, much to our astonishment. We identified with Caleb and assumed
that upon helping AVA escape, they’d escape together, but since she was
programmed to deceive, she leaves him as well by locking him up and leaving him
to die. Our surprise at Caleb being deceived means we were deceived and his undoing at the hands of the next
‘generation’ thus represents our
undoing as well.
If this essay comes across as
rambling, that’s only because it’s difficult to gauge the little moments where
the two stories don’t match up in terms of their treatment of the concept of
evolution. However, I do feel they share strong similarities, particularly in
that both stories feature the ‘new’ (Siegfried/AVA) freeing itself of the ‘old’
(Wotan and Nathan or, in the case of the latter, ‘mankind’) which always
results in the inevitable destruction of the old. In the Ring, humans supplant the gods; in Ex Machina, AIs supplant humans.
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