The film ex machina was released in 2015 by director Alex Garland and focused upon a futuristic and dystopian take on the advancements of AI, the main character Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) visits a research facility/ home of Nathan (Oscar Isaac) and Ava (Alicia Vikander), the AI, he believes his visit is a result of high dependability on his job in his company of which Nathan is the CEO. The trip was believed to be a tester of the AI’s development however by the end of the trip he works out amongst other things he is being used to test the AI in a far more cryptic way. By the end of the film Ava has escaped the facility and has fully integrated within our society.

The issue that this story presents are numerous and the themes have been thought about since the very first development of an AI and that is that if we have a machine that does everything we do but better will we eventually become the obsolete model of a newer generation of humanity that we create. The image shown shows Ava looking at a displayed model of her face on a wall in Nathans facility, what you can't see in this shot is that further along the display shows other mask dating back throughout history and Nathan has displayed them as if they’re representing the human evolution scale with Ava’s face being the last in the scale, this emphasizes the issues that this story revolves around and that is that if we are going to be replaced what will happen to us after AI can be allowed to fully catch up with out level of intelligence. At one point in the movie Nathan and Caleb are talking and Caleb poses the question why continue to develop this technology if we are so sure that it will eventually mean the demise of the human race and Nathan responds that he sees it as inevitable and not an optional thing to happen, this leads us to wonder more about the fate of the human race and whether we are predetermined to be replaced as all things in our material world are.  

The invisible touch in this movie would most likely be linked to the fact that we are blindly evolving ourselves to a point of obsolescence which even though we know it is happening we are continuing to pump money and funding towards even though we cant see where this development will go as a species as we won’t be alive to see it as a species. This is a conscious choice we have made as a society even though once an entirely conscious being is made that is designed to replace us is created,  what reason would it have for keeping us around.

In conclusion the theme presented by the image of the scene from Ex Machina illustrates the inevitable evolution that mankind has put upon itself ever since AI as a theory was created, this allowed a bit by bit progression towards what the film shows as the future of the AI industry which is an AI so advanced it can fit seamlessly into modern day life and is therefore finally ready to represent the next stage of humanities evolution as represented by the masks Ava is looking at on the wall on the image.

En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Ex Machina (Film). [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film)> [Accessed 16 November 2020].

IMDb. 2020. Ex Machina (2014) - Imdb. [online] Available at: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752> [Accessed 16 November 2020].