Machines Like Me

The dinner is successful both in romantically linking Charlie and Miranda and in that Miranda agrees to contribute to Adam’s personality. Charlie answers his half of Adam’s personality questions. He considers selling Adam when he makes a remark against Miranda. Instead, he uses Adam’s “kill switch” to power him down until Miranda completes her questions. Although Charlie is invested in his new relationship with Miranda, he doesn’t think Miranda has feelings for him.

Charlie describes the history of AI and its beginnings with Alan Turing in the late 1960s. Turing and his colleague Demis Hassabis developed a program that could beat a master in the game “Go,” a centuries-old game whose masters claim is ultimately won through intuition. Turing presents all his work through open-source publications and once tried to explain these complicated theorems to the general population; frustrated by the public’s lack of interest, Turing became a recluse. Charlie thinks that Turing’s work is currently being exploited by the British government as the Task Force attempts to reclaim the Falkland Island from Argentinian fascists. This attempt fails, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announces that the country has lost the war. Contrasting with Charlie and Miranda’s new love is “an ocean of national sorrow” (59), which public service strikes make worse. Although Charlie supports the vigils and marches held for the fallen Task Force soldiers, Miranda condemns them as inauthentic and self-serving.

While out on a walk, Charlie sees a young boy, Mark, being beaten by his mother. Acting on moral impulse, Charlie intervenes. The boy’s mother and father argue with him, and then Charlie ironically gives the father his card for when the parents decide to give up Mark.

Several weeks pass before Miranda can answer the programming questions, as her father, Maxfield Blacke—who lives in Salisbury and is a moderately successful author—is ill and she’s completing a paper for her degree. She asks Charlie to accompany her visit Maxfield soon, and they plan to bring Adam with them.

Again, Charlie attempts to make Adam reveal what he knows about Miranda, but Adam only tells him that she was involved in a court case and was potentially the victim of rape. He chooses not to say more because his personality, now in place through his programming, causes him to express conflict between the moral obligation of meeting Charlie’s wishes and keeping his discoveries private.

As Charlie waits in a doctor’s office to have an ingrown toenail treated, he reflects on the history of viruses and medicine, concluding that “The present is the frailest of improbably constructs. It could have been different” (70). Charlie begins taking Adam on walks to acclimate him to society and prepare him for meeting Maxfield. One morning, he takes Adam to his local newsstand and tests how Adam interacts with the clerk, Simon. Without prompting, Adam freezes, causing Simon to regard him with suspicion.

Charlie continues to struggle with his doubt that Miranda is as invested in their relationship as he is. Although they now have keys to each other’s apartments and spend most evenings together, Miranda isn’t open about her emotions or thoughts. To initiate a more personal discussion, Charlie speaks of politics during dinner one evening at Miranda’s apartment. They argue about the nature of war, and Miranda becomes angry that Charlie can’t see the necessity for a firm anti-fascist political policy. As Miranda speaks, Charlie notices Adam listening to her with admiration. They appeal to Adam to settle the dispute by providing his own view; Adam gives the neutral, logical answer that the future can take many paths. Miranda is annoyed at Charlie. She asks Adam to stay and charge in her kitchen as Charlie leaves for his apartment downstairs.

Later that night, Charlie hears Miranda and Adam’s footsteps and voices. They have sex, making Charlie “the first to be cuckolded by an artefact” (90). Charlie takes this as a warning that men may soon become “obsolete” and that Turing’s famous principle is true: If the behavioral differences between a man and a machine become negligible, then all notion of humanity should be given to the machine.

The next morning, Charlie tries to be composed when Miranda brings Adam back downstairs. He finds that he can’t blame either Adam or Miranda for their actions because the complexity of Adam’s AI making moral decisions supersedes Charlie’s emotions—and because being angry at Miranda would imply that he believes Adam has humanity according to Turing’s principle, which he’s unwilling to do. Miranda enters the apartment, has Adam sit at the kitchen table, and then presses his kill switch to power him down so that she and Charlie can speak alone.