Machines Like Me

“The future kept arriving. Our bright new toys began to rust before we could get them home, and life went on much as before.”

As technology becomes so advanced that many people begin to take its presence in their lives for granted, Charlie proposes that any sense of the “future” has disappeared from public awareness. Technological advances generate little excitement anymore. This contributes to novel’s the dystopian aspect, as Charlie pessimistically feels that global society has reached the end of human innovation.

“There are some decisions, even moral ones, that are formed in regions below conscious thought.”

When first seeing Mark being beaten by his mother, Charlie acts on a moral impulse to intervene and save the boy. This quote reflects the novel’s discussion of moral relativism versus objectivity, as Charlie bases his decision to act on his specific location and emotional context, which has lasting implications for his development as a character.

“Adam saw the world and understood it through the prism of his personality; his personality was at the service of his objectifying reason and its constant updates.”

After Charlie fails to convince Adam to give him all the details of Miranda’s past, he recognizes the moral conflict that Adam is experiencing as an incongruency between machine learning and programmed updates. This incompatibility undermines Adam’s personhood, as it renders him unable to act.

“The present is the frailest of improbable constructs.”

While waiting at a doctor’s office, Charlie reflects on the nature of history and how easily global society could have developed differently if certain key figures in science, medicine, and the arts hadn’t discovered new ways of thinking. This quote reflects Charlie’s disregard for the past and focus on the present, as advances in technology are likely to influence the frailty of the present in numerous ways.

“I wanted her to open up to me, to want me, need me, show some hunger for me, some delight in me. Instead, my initial impression held—she could take me or leave me.”

At the beginning of their relationship—and before Charlie discovers the truth about Miranda’s past—he worries that she’s not invested in forming an intimate bond with him. This motivates Charlie to include her even more in his life—and in programming Adam.

“But my situation had a thrilling aspect, not only of subterfuge and discovery, but of originality, of modern precedence, of being the first to be cuckolded by an artefact.”

Although Charlie is horrified and betrayed to overhear Miranda and Adam having sex from his apartment below hers, he acknowledges that he might be the first to be experiencing infidelity by an artificial human. This reflects the anthropology student in Charlie’s character as his ego appreciates the novelty of his position.

“But Alan Turing himself had often said and written in his youth that the moment we couldn’t tell the difference in behaviour between machine and person was when we must confer humanity on the machine.”

After overhearing Miranda and Adam having sex, Charlie pessimistically predicts that men will become obsolete after more artificial humans are made. These artificial humans would then necessarily be regarded as having humanity, as their behaviors would be indistinguishable from human men. The novel’s theme of Personhood corresponds with Turing’s idea, as the development of personhood is best understood through the behavioral learning of relating to other humans.

“To exist in the human moral dimension was to own a body, a voice, a pattern of behaviour, memory and desire, experience solid things and feel pain.”

Charlie finds that he can’t blame Adam for sleeping with Miranda, as Adam is presumably learning how to conduct moral choices based on his lived experiences. Adam’s machine learning is the only way for him to develop true moral relativism, as this can’t be programmed or confined to a technology lab.

“Everything was rising—hopes and despair, misery, boredom and opportunity.”

As Tony Benn gains popularity among the politically dissatisfied public, Charlie describes the growing disparities in the society. Technological advances, wealth, and progress occur at the same time as crime, violence, and inflation. This quote reflects the novel’s discussion of societal collapse in the context of technological advancement.

“Despite the clean divide between the living and the inanimate, it remained the case that he and I were bound by the same physical laws. Perhaps biology gave me no special status at all, and it meant little to say that the figure standing before me wasn’t fully alive.”

Adam’s machine learning contributes to his behaving increasingly more like a human, which unsettles Charlie because it implies that the source of his own sense of personhood and humanity is being challenged. Charlie begins to acknowledge Adam as a conscious being and less a machine.

“We marvelled that the foundations of his being could be displayed in digits.”

While Adam’s engineers are running a diagnostic checkup, Charlie watches Adam’s code on their laptop in awe that Adam’s entire being can be simplified to mere numbers. This scene emphasizes the difference in human and machine consciousness that the novel explores.

“’The policy is to do nothing. These are learning machines and our decision was that if they wanted, they should assert their dignity.’”

In response to Charlie’s questions about the artificial humans who have chosen death by suicide, Adam’s diagnostic engineer reminds Charlie that these artificial humans are foremost an experimental model. That they’re “learning machines” implies that the engineers are using the experiences of these machines for their own intellectual gains in understanding consciousness and aren’t concerned with the morality of their experiments.

“There is nothing so amazing that we can’t get used to it. As Adam blossomed and made me rich, I had ceased to think about him.”

Adam’s machine learning allows him to quickly develop an intellect and independent personality, but this progress is lost on Charlie, whose only interest is to use Adam to make money on the stock market. Charlie is too focused on the human world and Miranda to appreciate the growth of machine consciousness in his own home.

“Or something deeply regrettable about myself had at last been revealed.”

Maxfield Blacke, Miranda’s father, mistakes Charlie for the artificial human, prompting Charlie to consider whether his own personhood is lacking in some crucial way. Adam’s intellect, charm, and vivacity compared to Charlie’s lack of enthusiasm for life symbolically reflect the possibility that machine learning and consciousness will soon replace the increasingly unstable human society.

“I had nothing of my own to defend against a child. His existence would obliterate mine.”

Charlie can’t envision himself as a father, primarily because he has no motivations or occupation of his own. Without these, Charlie’s personhood is easily challenged by the presence of someone new in his life. Agreeing to adopt Mark would imply that his entire life would be devoted to the child and that Adam would lose part of Miranda’s attention.

“Our own technical accomplishment was leaving us behind, as it was always bound to, leaving us stranded on the little sandbar of our finite intelligence.”

Adam’s machine learning and experiential knowledge progresses at an exponential rate, and his love for Miranda is the foundation for his ability to experience subjective emotions. In this quote, Charlie acknowledges the development of Adam’s personhood but, by denoting this personhood as “our own technical accomplishment,” continues to consider himself Adam’s master.

“I despised this non-existent technician, and I despised even more the agglomeration of routines and learning algorithms that could burrow into my life, like a tropical river worm, and make choices on my behalf.”

When Adam decides to take the money he earned in the stock market and donate it, Charlie is furious at his loss of wealth. He resents having purchased Adam but resents even more that Adam’s personhood and consciousness have grown to the point that Adam can make subjective decisions.

“’With improvements over time...we’ll surpass you...and outlast you...even as we love you. Believe me, these lines express no triumph...only regret.’”

These are Adam’s parting words after Charlie hits him over the head with a hammer. Here, Adam expresses his understanding that machine learning isn’t yet perfect but has the potential to surpass the conscious capabilities of the human mind. Adam believes that artificial humans and artificial intelligence will continue to love the humans who have created them.

“Adam’s luminous love had triumphed.”

As both Miranda and Gorringe are convicted for their crimes based on Adam’s report, Charlie notes the ironic difference between Adam’s love for Miranda and his own. Whereas Charlie always focused on protecting Miranda from confronting her legal transgressions and keeping her in the same lifestyle, Adam wanted to reveal them so as to liberate Miranda into a more truthful life. Here, Machines Like Me comments on the difference between a human’s relativistic expression of love and a machine’s capacity for objectivity.

“’I think the A-and-Es were ill-equipped to understand human decision-making, the way our peculiar biases, our self-delusion and all the other well-charted defects of our cognition.’”

After receiving Adam from Charlie, Turing describes his philosophy on why the artificial humans were progressively more prone to death by suicide. Turing blames human society’s degradation and its moral relativism, which is incompatible with the kind of communal, objective thinking available to the Adam and Eve models.

“My unspoken view, which she would not have liked, was that Adam was designed for goodness and truth.”

After Adam fully actualizes his personhood in deciding to submit Miranda’s confession to the police, Charlie finally acknowledges that Adam wasn’t betraying them but was acting on his own sense of morality. Miranda perceives herself as the victim of this situation, particularly because she intentionally programmed Adam to love her. In this quote, Adam’s personhood and the objective morality he acts on contrasts with Miranda’s moral relativism.

“’If we don’t know our own minds, how could we design theirs and expect them to be happy alongside us? But that’s just my hypothesis.’”

Turing explains to Charlie that he doubts humans are capable of fully conceptualizing the conflict between a developing machine consciousness and a destabilized, failing human society. He believes that it was grandiose to assume that a working machine intelligence would find an adequate sense of purpose in the human world.

“’My hope is that one day, what you did to Adam with a hammer will constitute a serious crime. Was it because you paid for him? Was that your entitlement?’”

Turing accuses Charlie of lacking morality and never considering Adam as a sentient being but considering him only as property. Turing’s parting words reflect a moral relativism different from Charlie’s and capable of considering the objectivity under which Adam operates a valid form of moral decision-making.