In the 2014 film Ex Machina Nathan, a brilliant scientist and entrepreneur, has created an android with artificial intelligence that he calls Ava. She has an artificial “brain” made of blue gel and her programming incorporates millions of interactions on the internet. Nathan invites Caleb, one of his employees, to investigate whether she can pass the so-called Turning test. According to the Turing test, if an interviewer cannot distinguish a human from an artificial device, then the artificial device is thinking and has a mind. However, Nathan makes no effort to disguise her metallic limbs, even though her face is indistinguishable from a human. After several days of “interviews” Caleb observes that she exhibits independent thinking, seems self-aware, and seems to exhibit emotional responses. In short she passes the Turing test.
Is Ava a person? Does she have a mind? Can Ava think?
Eva is a person because she passed the Turing test and displays all the necessary qualities of being a person. However, one could not state that Ava must be able to think because of her capability to be a person, and therefore, she must have a mind. These claims relate to a theory of the Mind called functionalism. Functionalism is essentially the embodiment of the idea that if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, and if it looks like a duck, then it is a duck. It states that the exact inner workings of a mechanism may differ from one object to another, but as long as those two objects have the same internal states and outputs, given specific inputs, they can be considered equivalent to each other. The previously enumerated conditions for equivalence can be summed up and expressed as functional states. Since Eva has the same functional state as a person. She, therefore, must be a person. Though Ava may or may not have a mind, because functionalism only equates the overall systems to each other, but not the individual mechanisms. The mind is believed to be the mechanism that controls our actions and thoughts. Although we are unsure of its exact shape, form, or existence, even if Nathan created a functionally equivalent mechanism to create a person, he may not have replicated the mind. The same can be said for Ava's capacity to think, because, although she is certainly a person, the exact inner workings of her mind may be different.
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