Carnegie Mellon, where so many people are preoccupied with robots, artificial intelligence and the nature of consciousness, will get an early screening of "Ex Machina,"a new sci-fi thriller that explores those themes.

The movie was written and directed by Alex Garland, writer of "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine." The School of Computer Science will host a screening at 6 p.m., Thursday, April 23, in McConomy Auditorium. A CMU ID is required for attendance.

Though already released in some markets, it won't be available in local theaters until April 24. Carnegie Mellon is one of several universities that producers are offering an advance look at the film.

The movie, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander,follows the experiences of a young programmer at a search company invited to the remote mountain retreat of the company's visionary owner. There is he is assigned to conduct a "living" Turing Test to determine if a ravishingly designed robot can pass herself off as human — through whatever means he chooses. But the experiment soon twists into a dark psychological battle. It's not just a question of where artificial intelligence is headed, but what the technology reveals about humanity.

"It's an ideas movie," Garland said in an interview. Though the robotic technology it depicts is far beyond today's capabilities, he consulted with scientists such as Murray Shanahan, a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London, in an attempt to keep the script honest. "If the ideas are either bad or badly expressed, then the film is failing," he said.

Still, it requires at least two leaps of faith, he acknowledged — that a machine can display sentience and that a robot's face can have the same range and ability to show nuance as a human's.

"Sci-fi audiences are very relaxed about these things — they want big ideas," Garland said. "You can have fun with it. That's why I've always liked watching sci-fi and I like working in it for that reason."