A review by emleemay
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

3.0

Three days before, she had asked a mysterious question. We were mid-embrace, in the conventional position. She drew my face towards hers. Her look was serious.
She whispered, "Tell me something. Are you real?"
I didn’t reply.

A few days ago, my sister introduced me to the bizarre world of soap cutting on Instagram. For some reason I have been unable to fathom, we spent an unreasonable amount of time being mesmerized by these videos. "What are we doing?" I wondered, as I clicked to the next one. At one point I laughed and said aloud: "When the aliens arrive and study us, they'll decide we're out of our minds based on things like this."

Because humans are not particularly rational beings. Sure, we have certain capabilities that make us more able to rationalize than other animals, but we are deeply motivated by irrational emotions and impulses. We want things that are bad for us. We contradict ourselves. We love. Rationality has no place in the human heart.

In [b:Machines Like Me|42086795|Machines Like Me|Ian McEwan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1552757135s/42086795.jpg|65638827], this becomes the core dilemma: what happens when a humanoid artificial intelligence, built on logic, rationality and absolutes, lives among completely irrational, impulsive, contradictory humans? What does a logical machine do when faced with illogical problems like:

Millions dying of diseases we know how to cure. Millions living in poverty when there’s enough to go around. We degrade the biosphere when we know it’s our only home. We threaten each other with nuclear weapons when we know where it could lead. We love living things but we permit a mass extinction of species.

This aspect, like a few other aspects of the book, is interesting. McEwan has once more written a character-driven exploration of a people and culture. The problem is - and this does seem to be something McEwan indulges in often - the extensive amount of waffling and seemingly extraneous information.

I still feel unconvinced about the decision to set this book in an alternate Thatcher-era Britain. I cannot wrap my mind around why this seemed like a good choice, as opposed to our current time. It was almost gimmicky. In this alternate 1980s, Alan Turing is still very much alive and leading the developments in artificial intelligence, Thatcher is fighting a losing battle in the Falklands War, and Tony Benn is the leader of the opposition. Why any of this is the case remains a bit of a mystery to me.

In this world, citizens who can afford the hefty price tag can purchase an Adam or Eve, specify certain characteristics, and live with their very own humanoid robot. Charlie Friend does just that, bringing Adam into his home and introducing him to his younger girlfriend, Miranda. It doesn't take Adam long to fall in love with Miranda, have a brief physical affair with her, disable his shutdown switch, and then proceed to compose thousands of haiku for his beloved.

These are minor details in the exploration of the interactions between the characters. Some of the ethics of technology issues are fascinating, though hardly groundbreaking, but the book is at its strongest when looking at the clash of the rationality of machines with the irrational subjectivity of human nature. At times, it can be hard to know who is the human - Adam or Charlie - but Adam's inability to deviate from certain precepts is the ultimate tell.

But other parts are far less interesting, going into seemingly superfluous detail. The subplot of the secrets from Miranda's past, the couples' endeavours to adopt a young boy, the explanation of the P versus NP problem, and the eye-glazing textbook descriptions of the fictional history and technology in this world seem to add pages to the book, but little else.

I am not sure why McEwan decided to turn this speculative piece on artificial intelligence into a critique of the political landscape of 1980s Britain. The interactions between human and machine were compelling, but the sweeping overviews of years of fictional history were far less so.

Warning for graphic sexual violence.

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