Machines Like Me

As Machines Like Me discusses the prospects of personhood, the characters of Mark, Charlie, and Adam come to represent the different ways it can be achieved. Mark and Adam are both in the process of developing personhood, and their differences in learning abilities contribute to the personhoods they establish. Once Adam’s personhood is established, he’s contrasted with Charlie, whose own established, adult personhood is in a state of stagnation as he lacks the ambition to learn more.

By contrasting Mark and Adam, the novel compares machine learning to a human child’s ability to learn through play and inference. Mark can learn how to relate to other humans through accumulated experiences of play in a way that programmers’ codes have yet to replicate. Mark’s personhood is entirely determined by himself, whereas Adam receives a foundational personality from Miranda and Charlie through their personality question selections. Although this personality changes based on Adam’s machine learning and emotional experiences, he nevertheless begins his life with a specific personhood already attached to him, something a human child doesn’t experience. This difference contributes to Adam's inability to anticipate the emotional response Miranda and Charlie have to his turning Miranda in to the Salisbury police for perjury.