Summary
Ava: Session 5. Nathan watches the session on his computer. Ava wants to test Caleb about things, but warns him that she will know if he's lying. She asks his favorite color, and he says it's red, which she detects is a lie. He admits that now that he is no longer a child, he doesn't have a favorite color, an answer she accepts. She then asks him his earliest memory and he starts to tell her it's a memory from kindergarten, but she detects it as a lie. He admits that his earliest memory is the sound of his mother's voice.
Ava's third question is whether or not Caleb considers himself a good person. He hesitates, then says that he thinks he is. She then asks him what will happen to her if she fails his test, whether she will be shut off if she does not function as she is supposed to. When he tells her he does not know and that it's not up to him, she says, "Why is it up to anyone?" She holds up the picture that Nathan ripped up; it is a picture she drew of Caleb. Suddenly, there is a power cut. "I wanna be with you," she says to Caleb, before asking him if he feels the same way.
The scene shifts to Caleb sitting with Nathan. He asks Nathan why he made Ava. Nathan replies, "The arrival of strong artificial intelligence has been inevitable for decades. The variable was when, not if. I don't see Ava as a decision, just an evolution." He then says, "I think it's the next model that's gonna be the real breakthrough...the singularity."
"I didn't know there was gonna be another model after Ava," Caleb says, dismayed. Nathan says that she is constantly evolving, just like humans, and Caleb asks him what he will do with an outdated model. "Well I download the mind," Nathan says, "Unpack the data, add in the new routines I've been writing, and to do that you end up partially formatting, so the memories go, but the body survives and Ava's body is a good one."
Nathan suggests that the AIs will one day look back at human beings the same way that human beings look at Neanderthals: "An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction." Caleb compares the situation to the invention of the atomic bomb, then refills Nathan's glass with liquor. As Nathan gets progressively more drunk, he quotes something, repeating, "The good deeds that man has done before defend him." He passes out, drunk.
When he is asleep, Caleb steals Nathan's keycard and sneaks into his room, going on his computer. He codes his way into the system to watch old security footage. In different videos, he sees Nathan sexually abusing various robot women. In one video, an AI begs Nathan to let her out, scratching at the walls of the room until her arms fall off.
Caleb then looks over his shoulder at Kyoko, who is lying naked on Nathan's bed. In each of Nathan's closets, he finds different female AI models. Meanwhile, Nathan wakes up from his drunken nap.
Caleb looks to Kyoko, who peels back some of her skin to reveal computer parts, as Nathan wanders down the hall to his room, disturbed to find that his card is missing. Caleb pretends that the key card is on the floor and hands it to Nathan, pretending to be helpful. Nathan falls for it and takes the card back.
That night, Caleb examines his skin in the mirror, remembering Kyoko's alarming revelation. He pulls apart his razor, and cuts his wrist.
Ava: Session 6. Ava asks Caleb why he did not come to see her, and he signals for her to cut the power. When the power is out, he tells Ava that Nathan is going to basically kill her, and she begs him to help her. His plan is to get Nathan very drunk again, take his keycard, reprogram the security in the whole facility so that Nathan gets locked in. When he asks Ava to trigger a power failure at 10 that night, she agrees.
On Caleb's last day, Nathan informs him that a helicopter is coming for him the next day at 8 AM. "I'm gonna miss having you around," Nathan tells Caleb, and Caleb thanks him for having him there. When Caleb pours Nathan a glass of vodka, Nathan refuses and tells him that he's trying to do a detox, much to Caleb's disappointment.
Analysis
As the film progresses, Ava becomes more and more concerned for her safety within the confines of the tests she is being put through. In their fifth session, she asks Caleb if she will be shut off in the event of not performing well in the Turing test. When he says that it isn't up to him, she becomes angry, saying, "Why is it up to anyone?" In this, we see the inherent danger in Nathan's project of giving consciousness to a machine: once the machine has gained consciousness, it becomes aware of its enslavement, aware of its subjugation at the hands of its creator. Ava, in realizing that she is under Nathan and Caleb's thumb, is distressed to realize that they have the power to take away her life in the blink of an eye. This leads her to question their moral authority; when Caleb says that Ava's fate is not his decision, she fires back, "Why is it up to anyone?"
When Caleb tries to bring these concerns to Nathan, the tech king shrugs them off, having already shirked any moral responsibility in relation to his robotic creations. He suggests that artificial intelligence is an inevitability, not a decision, and therefore he is just following the inevitabilities of social and technological development. Caleb can see that Nathan, in fact, has all of the power in the world; as someone who can effectively create and destroy life, he is responsible for the consciousness of another being, Ava, but he shrugs off this responsibility as though it is irrelevant. Nathan's ethical carelessness only makes Caleb resent his boss more, and strips him of any respect he had for him to begin with.
Having lost all respect for Nathan, Caleb decides to get his boss drunk, so that he can perhaps intervene in Nathan's megalomaniacal and amoral plot. He watches disturbing footage on Nathan's computer of Nathan's treatment of former AI models, appalled at his sexual and ethical misconduct. Then, he opens Nathan's various closets to find AI models, all female. Here, Caleb learns that Nathan is essentially keeping AI models in sexual slavery in his home, an abuse of power that Caleb finds disturbing and alarming.
Having realized the truth about Nathan, Caleb aims to help Ava escape and take down Nathan once and for all. He devises a plan that they will execute that night. After such a slow burn of a plot, the film escalates the narrative and the stakes. Once Nathan is revealed to be an evil and heartless leader, Caleb finds the confidence to fight back against him and save Ava. The narrative promised to turn into a kind of hero's journey from the start, and in this section, Caleb fully inhabits his heroic identity, aiming to save the day and release Ava into the world.
The only problem is that Caleb's heroic plan is thwarted early. Having counted on Nathan to want to get blackout drunk again, Caleb is extremely dismayed on the eve of his departure when Nathan abstains from drinking, citing a detox. Caleb's plan is completely contingent on Nathan's overindulgence, so the news that Nathan is abstaining is disappointing to say the least. From Nathan's expression, it is unclear to the viewer how much he knows about Caleb's intentions, or whether he is suspicious of Caleb's desire to get him drunk.
