Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
“There was vanity in these expectations.”
Ian McEwan in his 15th novel talks about Artificial Intelligence, Shakespeare and about composing Haikus- all set in an alternative history- set in 1980’s London. McEwan has a penchant for the random and somehow he weaves them all into one story that ends up making sense and eerily the readers relate to it, every time.
Seemingly with straight plots that could be summarized in a line or two, his books when delved into talks about the past, the (maybe) future and the contemporary times. What could be talked off as a pessimistic view of civilization often hides the author’s keen observations and critical insights (not necessarily solution)for those who can read in between the lines.
Machines Like Me and People Like You talks about conflicts, mainly (apart from the political and cultural situation of London.) It talks about identity and mid-life crisis, the conflict between human/machine, the conflict between justice/judgement and each character’s conflicted view about the idea of morality and Shakespeare. As ideas such as justice, truth and free will are contested the “android’s assumption of ethical authority” leads to a series of confrontation between the other two human characters. With McEwan’s human characters complicated enough with unsorted past and tumultuous present, the presence of an android discussing “Renaissance translation, metaphysical innuendo, and Shakespeare’s debt to Montaigne” alongside quoting poems and Schopenhauer and Kant does not make domestic monotony and human dilemma any easier.
McEwan explores the “moral ramifications of AI.” Each character’s relationship with the humanoid is fraught in more than one way. Often considered a work of speculative fiction the novel continues to unfold while oscillating between flexible and not so flexible notion of right and wrong between the human characters and the android.
As humans make judgement calls that often makes no sense to the humanoid, the text explores questions about what constitutes a person and what could (or could not) constitute a robot.
“There are some decisions, even moral ones, that are formed in regions below conscious thought.”
