Rethinking Humanity in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: A Posthumanist Analysis of Moral Consciousness and Human Identity in Machines like Me

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to examine the posthumanist literary text of Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me which restates the conception of humanity in the age of artificial intelligence. The aim of the research is to analyze the novel as a reflection of moral consciousness in the novel through the character of Adam, how the novel challenges the traditional image of humans in the novel through the concept of human-machine relationship and how the novel blurs the line between human and artificial life in the novel. As AI becomes prevalent in the modern era and more of its capabilities are mimicking human ones, emotional, creative, decision making and ethical human tasks are becoming increasingly the domain of machines. The theoretical framework adopted is the posthumanist theory, in particular that of Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe and Francesca Ferrando. Qualitative text analysis is used as the data analysis tool in the study. Primary data is gathered from one novel – Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan – and secondary data is gathered from about 20 scholarly sources such as books, articles and AI ethics studies. Data collection technique used is purposive textual data collection with sampling technique purposive sampling which is taken 15-20 samples of textual data from the novel. The results reveal that Adam demonstrates an artificial moral consciousness, Charles an identity crisis and Miranda a moral ambiguity. The study ends with the following conclusion: humanity needs to be redefined in terms of ethical responsibility towards the artificial other.