“It was religious yearning granted hope, it was the holy grail of science,” begins Ian McEwan's latest novel, Machines Like Me. The book is set in an alternate version of the 1980s, where artificial intelligence research has far outstripped its current limits. As Britain loses the Falklands war and Tony Benn is elected prime minister, a 32-year-old Londoner called Charlie embarks on two new relationships. He falls in love with his upstairs neighbour Miranda, and spends an £86,000 inheritance on Adam, one of a new breed of humanoid robots “with plausible intelligence and looks, believable motion and shifts of expression”.
Adam is 170lb, looks Greek or possibly Turkish, and is “not a sex doll”, although he can have sex. (The 13 Eves in the original production run sell out before the Adams; seven go to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.) He has access to the entirety of human knowledge – this version of the 1980s has the internet – and he can do the dishes. He sounds like the perfect housemate. He isn't.
As Adam's battery slowly charges, there is a longueur familiar to anyone who has bought an Apple device. First, a heartbeat, faintly rhythmic below the realistic skin that nonetheless can't be left out in the rain. Then breath. Then movement. All these trappings of humanity leave Charlie unable to calibrate his relationship with his new… possession? Guest? Friend? Slave?
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