Machines Like Me

by Ian McEwan

information comes in, we can measure relative changes in probability. But we can’t possess an absolute value. It may help us to define the weight of new evidence logarithmically, so that, assuming a base ten—” “Adam. Enough! Really. What nonsense!” Now it was Miranda who reached for the Médoc. I was relieved to be no longer the object of her irritation. I said, “But Miranda and I would ascribe completely different a priori values.”

This was quite a novel, probably among the best investigations of man and robot living together. Having grown up ascribing to Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotic, the greater questions of man/machine relationships in the age of artificial intelligence certainly needed addressing. McEwan has added a terrific chapter in our quest for meaning in this area. It isn't that Adam, the Android, goes rogue. Instead he becomes too thoughtful for his own good, too, yes, human. My real problem with the book, which turns on a steampunk/revisionist history of Great Britain in the late 1980s and the survival of Alan Turing, is that it's British to the core. The author's literary conceit, that Britain lost the Falklands War, etc., had me Googling the real history of the times and trying as a Yank to understand what the revisionist life meant to Brits who lived the real life. Had it not been for my chauvinist streak, I might have given it five stars. But do read it. You'll love Adam. Or perhaps, Adam will love you.