Imagining the Future: AI, History, and Story in 'Machines Like Me'

What Can Fiction Teach Us About AI: Part 2

Today, I am excited to continue my series on what fiction can teach us about AI. The focus text for today’s post is Ian McEwan’s 2019 Machines Like Me. In this book, McEwan tells an alternative history of the world as it might have turned out if the great Alan Turing had not been interrogated, persecuted, imprisoned, and tortured by the British government in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In the novel’s alternative timeline, Turing conquers the P vs. NP problem in the late 1950s, collaborates with biologists to create neural networks in the 1960s, develops humanoid AGI in the 1970s, and releases a limited series of “Adams” and “Eves” to the public in the year 1982, the narrative present of the novel. 

Before we get to the interpretation proper, I want to offer my reader a few more tools to assist in their own explorations of fiction. In the 1st part of this series, I presented the concept of “fictionality” as “the quality that all fiction shares,” and added that fictionality “provides for a double exposure of imagined and real.”

This dual aspect is especially prominent in works such as Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me, where the alternate history sometimes exhibits a reverse correlation with known historical events. For example, in the book, while Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister and initiates a war with Argentina, the narrative diverges from real history. Contrary to what truly happened, the novel depicts the British suffering a loss of 6000 soldiers in the Falkland War and concludes with their humiliating defeat.

I aim to provide my readers with supplementary tools that James Phelan and other rhetorical theorists term “readerly interests” in narrative, frequently abbreviated as the “components” of narrative. Rhetorical narratology identifies three main readerly interests: (1) mimetic, (2) thematic, and (3) synthetic. Every narrative encompasses these three types of interests. However, the varying proportions or interrelations among these interests in different narratives give rise to distinct “modes” or “genres” of writing.

According to Phelan, the mimetic component includes readers’ “interests in the characters as possible people and in the narrative world as like our own, that is, hypothetically or conceptually possible” (Somebody Telling Somebody Else: A Rhetorical Poetics of Narrative 11). Genres where the mimetic component dominates include realism and a great deal of autobiographies and memoirs. 

The thematic component includes readers’ “interests in the ideational function of the characters and in the cultural, ideological, philosophical, or ethical issues addressed in the narrative” (11). Genres where the thematic component dominate include allegorical works and some political polemics. 

The synthetic component includes readers’ “interests in and attention to characters and to the larger narrative artificial constructs” (11). Genres where the synthetic component dominate include nouveau roman and postmodernist metafiction. 

And yet, in literary practice, the relationship between individual readerly interests often shifts quite subtly or dramatically across a single paragraph of text–and this is very much the case for a novel like McEwan’s Machines Like Me. 

Take the second paragraph of the book as an example:

“But artificial humans were a cliche long before they arrived, so when they did, they seemed to some a disappointment. The imagination, fleeter than history, than technological advance, had already rehearsed this future in books, then films and TV dramas, as if human actors, walking with a certain glazed look, phony head movements, some stiffness in the lower back, could prepare us for life with our cousins from the future”

Here, McEwan activates readers’ interest in the synthetic component of the narrative through the introduction of a major advancement in technology: artificial humans. Yet, as this passage comes very early on in the narrative, the reader does not yet know precisely what McEwan means by “artificial human.” Perhaps he is referring to humanoid robots, or perhaps he is referring only to human consciousness in the form of some advanced large language model. 

While the reader attempts to process this ambiguity, McEwan is also skillfully cultivating readerly engagements with the mimetic and thematic components. McEwan’s readers, likely familiar with similar media as described by Charlie, the narrator, in the passage, can draw a strong connection between the world of the text and the extratextual world. 

Meanwhile, McEwan’s powerful thematic about the contrast between imagination and technology acts as a connector between passage’s divergent synthetic and mimetic trajectories, grounding the passage in larger ideas that will push forward the rhetorical project of the novel.  

Pretty cool, huh?

Discussion Questions:

Mimetic Component in Science Fiction: How does the mimetic component, which involves the portrayal of characters as possible people and the narrative world as conceptually possible, manifest in a science fiction novel of your choice? Discuss how this component affects your perception of the believability and relatability of the story and its characters.

Thematic Exploration Across Genres: Choose a work of science fiction and a work from another genre, such as a memoir or historical fiction. Compare and contrast how the thematic component, focusing on cultural, ideological, philosophical, or ethical issues, is developed in each. How do these genres use thematic elements differently to engage the reader?

Synthetic Component's Role in World-Building: In a selected science fiction novel, analyze how the synthetic component – which includes attention to artificial constructs within the narrative – contributes to the world-building. How does the creation of advanced technologies, alien species, or futuristic societies enhance your engagement with the story?

Balancing Components in Science Fiction: Choose a science fiction novel and discuss how the author balances the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components. Do you find one component more dominant than the others? How does this balance or imbalance shape your overall experience of the novel?

Readerly Interests in Dystopian Fiction: Many science fiction works present dystopian futures. Using a dystopian novel, analyze how the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components are utilized to portray a future world. How do these components help in conveying the novel's message or warning about future societal and technological trends?

I plan publishing my interpretation proper of Machines Like Me on Friday.

Be on the lookout!!! Thanks again for reading Educating AI!

Nick Potkalitsky, Ph.D.