I thought the battery technology was part of Ex Machina's "20 minutes into the future" world. It didn't seem particularly advanced, as Ava needed daily rechargi

I thought the battery technology was part of Ex Machina's "20 minutes into the future" world. It didn't seem particularly advanced, as Ava needed daily recharging. So the only unbelievable thing is that Nathan –the story's equivalent of Larry Page– managed to do a ton of AI research on his own. I agree it's ridiculously implausible, but I'm fine with that in sci-fi as long as it's only done once per story. In fact, many of my favorite stories follow that pattern: Take a normal world and add one radical (or even impossible) piece of technology or magic. Then explore the implications. Vernor Vinge's bobble books (The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime) are an excellent example of this. The thing that annoys me is when authors don't see an implication of their invention. Or worse, they make their characters use the invention in implausibly limited ways. JJ Abrams is often guilty of both of these.