He claimed that the reasons humans have rights is because we are prospective agents, able to choose what to do beyond natural impulse or reflex. Was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. And as technology develops and machines become more like us, then they may also need to be recognised as having rights like us. Conflict and consciousnessĪlthough the level of machine consciousness portrayed by McEwan is, for the time being, still fiction – many believe that it will be a reality by the end of the century. Maybe then what’s required is the ability to be open to a change in how we see the world and ourselves. Ultimately, all of these lines of argument have problems that only lead to deeper levels of abstraction. And this argument would mean that babies and late-stage dementia patients are in effect “less human” because they lack this feature – which is clearly not the case. But we are not alone in this ability – other animals can also engage in sophisticated planning and tool usage. But if this is true, where does this leave the eight million people who have been born as a result of IVF treatment?Ĭonsciousness may also be a place to look – as humans are able to act on reasons beyond natural impulse or programming. Some might highlight the importance of our births – the fact that we are naturally procreated, whereas machines are made by humans. Being humanīut before this can be dismissed as whimsical science fiction, we need to think more about why humans have rights and what it means to be human in the first place. Machines can’t have rights, because they’re machines. Slaves can’t have freedom, because they’re slaves. The same logic was used against women’s suffrage – they can’t have the vote, because they’re women. But if you think about this, it’s a circular argument. Robots aren’t human, so they can’t have the same rights as us. When the question comes up with friends in the pub (usually after a few drinks), a common response is that we have human rights because we’re human. It’s tempting to dismiss this as a ridiculous notion. With this device, McEwan questions what it means to be human – if these machines are just like me, does that mean they have rights, like me? Central to the plot are the world’s first synthetic humans, put on sale for the public to buy. The novel paints a picture of 1980s London that is at once familiar, but at the same time very different – and in doing so it raises some pressing questions. Ian McEwan’s latest book, Machines Like Me: A Novel offers an alternative history: Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher is waging an election campaign against Tony Benn and Alan Turing survived homophobic persecution to achieve breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
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