In British author Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Machines Like Me, the only truly likable character is the charming humanoid robot, Adam. Limp-wristed male protagonist Charlie Friend, 32, lives in a science-fictionalized 1982 London. It’s mostly the 1982 we all remember, but there have been some startling tech advances that we haven’t yet experienced — e.g. driver-less cars (they did not work out) and talking refrigerators, and a change in world history with then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher losing rather than winning the Falklands War.
Because genius scientist Alan Turing did not die, the West has made fantastic advances in artificial intelligence and other tech areas, and thus McEwan gets to discuss computers, instant communication and the West’s deadening culture in his fascinating novel of ideas. (The actual Alan Turing, often termed the father of computing, was a gay World War II hero who died in 1954 after enduring government-sponsored chemical castration.)
Charlie and his girlfriend, Miranda, create a family drama by bringing in the latest android, Adam, one of an experimental first batch of 25 in the world and constructed by Turing’s team. Adam’s entry into a boring and confused 1982 London enlivens their budding relationship and sets up dialogues about the role of AIs, algorithmic dominance, mental privacy, consciousness and ultimately what it means to be “human.”
Neither Adam nor Miranda nor poor cuckolded Charlie spend any time in nature or go out for walks in the green, or seem to understand the roles that “play” and wild places form in human development and human creativity. McEwan is a great novelist at the height of his powers, and this omission is deliberately provocative.
Adam, once they power “him” up, spends 20 hours a day surfing the Internet (yes, it’s fully developed by “1982”), making money for Charlie, falling in love with Miranda and trying to figure out the crazed humans. He never goes over to Regent’s Park or any of London’s other wonderful outdoor parks, such as Kew Gardens.
I won’t ruin the plot for readers who intend to purchase the novel, but the real story is Adam’s slow growth in not only sentience but genuine human feelings and “consciousness.” This is an old science-fiction theme we saw memorably drawn in Ridley Scott’s incandescent movie Blade Runner, based on a Philip K. Dick story. Common in sci-fi, the androids, called “replicants” in the movie, attract us more than the grossly flawed humans.
The replicant Rachel seems more emotionally “human” than most of the actual humans, and we identify with her. In the current TV series Westworld, the AI-robot character Dolores finds out how abominably the humans have treated her and the other “hosts,” and the sympathies of the human audience flow to the humanoids, who seem more human than the awful biological bipeds.
Adam’s presence upsets the little British household in a classic ménage à trois, but he is an artificial human, or as a New Yorker reviewer stated, he is “the algorithm made flesh.” However enticing Adam becomes, and he makes moral choices at the end, he never understands or needs green nature or the creative outdoors. In ways, Adam represents the coming dominance of that “singularity” so beloved of tech-enthusiasts such as Google chief engineer Ray Kurzweil.
We already dwell in a world where AI devices such as Siri feel omnipresent. Children may imagine “she” is always available (as she is in homes with total smart tech), but this comes with unwavering attention and the idea of constant surveillance.
McEwan foresees a future “private mental space drowned by new technology in an ocean of collective thought” (p. 164). For example, facial recognition technology everywhere will help the police arrest “bad guys” — or follow around legitimate political dissidents.
As Adam tells the shocked couple:
“The implications of intelligent machines are so immense that we’ve no idea what
you — [human] civilisation, that is — have set in motion. One anxiety is that it
will be a shock and an insult to live with entities that are cleverer than you are.
… [This change] could be the end of mental privacy. You’ll probably come to
value it less in the face of the enormous gains.” — pages 159-160
I believe automation has cost Americans’ jobs, and as the AIs — “ambulant laptops” — and algorithmic calculations increasingly dominate the globe, the rising human fear of the loss of all human autonomy also soars. McEwan gets this and often presents both sides of the continuing argument.
A world of fully self-driving cars would have some terrific advantages as we all know (no wrecks, less pollution, few snarls), but McEwan’s 1982 has already had them and discarded the idea. Some sun spots and other uncontrollable disruptions had led to incredible stoppages and tremendous problems, so autonomous cars were dropped.
Can a robot have ethics? Can we teach AIs to be ethical when we are so flawed outselves? Will they then be more perfectly ethical than we humans can ever become, we who proclaim the Ten Commandments only to frequently break them? The Holocaust? Migrant children caged at our southern borders today? And other genocides and wars?
There is no nature in this well-structured novel, and McEwan forces us to ponder what we’re doing as we introduce transformative technologies willy-nilly into 2019. Charlie and Miranda never avail themselves of the nature oases available to them in “1982” London and end up destroying Adam, an ambulant laptop more moral than they are.
Run to nature! Bring your children, turn off the insidious iPhone, play in the waters of gurgling Rattlesnake Canyon Creek, and consider the lilies of the field and how they grow — they toil not, neither do they spin.
4.1.1.
» I bought my copy of Machines Like Me at Chaucer’s Bookstore. Ian McEwan also has written Atonement and On Chesil Beach, among several other novels and screenplays. Click here for Julian Lucas’ review of Machines Like Me in the April 22 New Yorker.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Eternal Backcountry Return, has been published by Sisquoc River Press and is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
