“From a certain point of view, the only solution to suffering would be the complete extinction of humankind.” So observed Adam, a newly powered up artificial human, following an afternoon of quiet reflection while weeding his owner’s garden.
If you have read even one of Ian McEwan’s 17 books — perhaps the contemplative “Atonement” (2001, Jonathan Cape) that was adapted into an Oscar winning film in 2007 — you know the British novelist brings an insightful and eloquent style, often with a dark edge, to his storytelling.
“Machines Like Me” is a ruminative mix of science fiction, romance and alternate history set in 1980s London. The political backdrop is built around the loss of the Falklands War. Londoners are in shock after the military defeat, alarmed by high and growing unemployment, and conflicted about a proposed withdrawal from the European Union. This unsettled larger context frames a personal story marked by the tensions that come when wading into unknown territory.
“I’m always a little bored of sci-fi set in the future,” McEwan said in a telephone interview in mid-April. “I rather wanted Alan Turing to be alive, and also considered how the present could so easily have been otherwise. The Falklands War could’ve been a terrible failure. I wanted to conjure a world of politics and reality that is sort of familiar, but different.”
In this divergent timeline, self-driving cars transport people around a country where Margaret Thatcher’s embattled Tories and the rising Labour Party, led by a popular Tony Benn, are grappling over what to do, including the possibility of taxing robots based on the number of human workers displaced.
And so the stage is set for single, broke 32-year-old Charlie Friend, who impulsively uses his mother’s inheritance to purchase an Adam, one of 25 newly launched artificial humans quietly made available to private buyers around the world. Charlie had hoped for an Eve, but was nonetheless excited to see how one of the planet’s most advanced machines might improve his life.
Despite the branding of these pioneering creations named after the first man and woman depicted in the Bible, McEwan said the story is not meant to be an allegory.
“I suppose it overlaps with some religious themes but it wasn’t in the forefront of my mind,” McEwan said. “If we want to play God and make a humanoid creature so that we put ourselves in that Godlike position, it would be a big step for us. At the same time, we will be casting ourselves out no longer as the cleverest things on Earth.”
Even so, these modern-day Adams and Eves were designed to be decent and wise as well as our physical and mental superiors: “There was hope that our own creations would redeem us.”
Charlie and Adam’s relationship is soon strained by the complicating factor of Charlie’s budding romance with his upstairs neighbor. Miranda is a university student with a secretive past that Adam quickly uncovers through his access to online public records. From that moment forward, the three struggle with undefined rules of engagement and feelings of trust, loyalty, love, jealousy and how to view justice and morality.
Charlie and Miranda worked together in choosing the personality traits for Adam after his delivery as a sort of blank slate packaged within an attractive and lifelike mature caucasian male body. (Adams and Eves, like their namesakes, do not get to experience a childhood.)
Even as he is attempting to pass as human, Adam is constantly studying and assessing human behavior, and finding it lacking. Other people come into play, including Miranda’s ailing and once famous father, an abused boy, a violent ex-con, and the aforementioned Alan Turing. In our reality, the late mathematician is now widely considered to be the father of artificial intelligence who died by suicide in 1954.
In this story, Turing’s work with A.I. has largely contributed to the creation of this first iteration of Adams and Eves, and he is following their experiences with a keen, behind-the-scenes interest. These are not the monsters or machines of popular entertainment, but the most sophisticated of consumer electronics built to last 20 years before having their data transferred to fresh new devices for an immortal and ever-improving evolution.
McEwan believes it may be another 50 years before artificial humans of the type imagined in his novel are viable, but he believes the time is ripe to start deciding how we are going to adapt to their inevitable existence.
“We’re not thinking about it enough. They will start taking our jobs and we are really going to have to reorient ourselves away from work. Stop defining ourselves by work. This could be a great opportunity for mankind,” McEwan said.
And this is why McEwan chose to center his 18th book on the consequences of artificial intelligence for humankind, rather than leaving it up to the movies and popular television series like “Westworld” and “Humans.”
“There have been many robots in the arts, but I always feel they don’t examine closely enough what it’s like to be in an intimate relationship, or what it’s like to have a creature like Adam in your house. And what it means to be human as opposed to being a machine. This needs the close examination a novel can provide,” McEwan said.
This thought-provoking cautionary tale based on McEwan’s sharp observations of our flawed human nature is detailed with a vocabulary that will have you reaching for a dictionary at least half a dozen times.
The story ends on a note that leaves the reader thinking ahead and wondering what might come next. Of course, the possibilities are endless, and impossible to direct. As McEwan noted, “The one thing the internet has shown us is it might be us who devises the technology, but we’ve got no control over it as a human invention — it runs with a mind of its own. We really are hopeless at predicting our own future, and that’s the thing that really fascinates me.”
IF YOU GO
Ian McEwan will discuss “Machines Like Me” with author and journalist Helen Thorpe at New Hope Baptist Church in Denver, hosted by Tattered Cover bookstore, May 1 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available online and include a pre-signed book.
