Machines Like Me

Machines Like Me is a 2019 novel by British author Ian McEwan. The novel is written ironically and at the same time deeply. It is set in London in the 1980s and offers an "alternative variant" of London. Charlie, a man in his 40s, tries to make ends meet through sporadic, impulse-driven businesses while trying to avoid permanent employment. He is in love with the much younger student Miranda, who lives in the house directly above him. When Charlie's mother dies, he buys "Adam" with the inheritance. Adam is the first man-made, synthetic human. Charlie installed along with Miranda Adam and his personality. A unique relationship develops between the "perfect" humanoid Adam, Charlie and Miranda. As time goes on, they are haunted by a terrible secret from the past. This presents the three with a massive moral dilemma.

I found four aspects of this novel particularly entertaining / interesting:

1. Time merging: In the novel, Alan Turing (British computer scientist, b. 1954) and Demis Hassabis (CEO of DeepMind, b. 1976) are friends, which in fact is not possible. Margaret Thatcher is in power and in London self-driving cars are driving, as well as mechanization and automation "taking away" people's jobs. The overlapping of times shows how similar intellectual, political and moral challenges are that different generations deal with. Which questions and problems outside of the natural sciences that already existed in the middle of the last century could be declared as solved today?

2. Ambiguity: The novel uses language as an element of deception, concealment and uncertainty, which is particularly evident in the ambiguity of the sentences. Already the title contains an ambiguity: Machines Like Me can be read as love (i.e. machines like me), comparison (i.e. machines are similar to me) or belonging (i.e. I am the same kind as machines).

3. Being human: what characterises a human being? Spontaneously, three areas came to mind that frame "being" human and at the same time have many grey areas worth discussing:

(a) in the case of the body as a genetically identifiable, phenotypic bio-mass, questions arise, for example, about the classification of cyborgs (= mixed beings made up of living organisms and machines) or about the general beginning of life (and thus of humans?);

(b) mind as a collective term for attention, perception, memory, logic and coordination raises questions about consciousness (as opposed to instinct?) and creativity (as opposed to mere reproduction?) as prerequisites for the existence of a mind;

(2) in emotional life, the question arises of how the outward expression of a feeling (e.g. a statement) relates to the inner life (e.g. a feeling).

To put it another way: What would a synthetic robotic human need to have for an affair with him to be seen as cheating? At what point is he or she no longer mere stimulation or would he or she no longer be considered a "sex doll"?

4. Benefit question: The idea of ​​creating synthetic humans according to individual needs sounds questionable and both utopian and dystopian. Who benefits from such a creation? At the end, it is also about the distribution or availability of resources: a) Who would have the financial resources to be able to afford it? b) Who has the intellectual resources to operate this potentially super-intelligent, synthetic human and thus use it to its full capacity? c) Who determines what needs are met (e.g., sex, conversation, love, or status needs).

Popular posts from this blog

Wiper Malware: Purposes, MITRE Techniques, and Attacker's Trade-Offs

Image
Following recent events in Ukraine, various cybersecurity agencies such as CISA or BSI have warned of potential data wiping attacks spillover to organisations in other countries. While destructive malware such as wipers are still rare and more targeted compared to malware focused on espionage and financial gains, there are reasons for believing that this wipers will become more prevalent: If hybrid warfare operations continue and/or intensify, it must be assumed that (destructive) cyber operations will increasingly be used alongside kinetic weapons despite the fact significant impact has not yet been observed in the current war. Sanctions and/or support for Ukraine by other countries may also increase the risk for Russian retaliatory cyber attacks against those countries. The increasing number of (sophisticated) hacktivists that support either Russia or Ukraine for ideological reasons (e.g., IT Army of Ukraine counts ~300,000 people in their Telegram group) may lead to more s
Read more

The Rise of LNK Files (T1547.009) and Ways To Detect Them

Image
Microsoft Office macros have historically posed a significant threat as the preferred method of delivering malicious payloads, accounting for almost half of all deliveries. The reason is simple: Microsoft Office products are highly prevalent and macros are mostly either enabled or easily enabled through a single mouse click. With Microsoft’s decision to block macros by default, threat actors have adapted their delivery techniques towards macro alternatives (e.g., Emotet ). One of those alternatives are Microsoft shortcuts , which have, in comparison to zero days or other fancy exploits, generally not received the attention they (sh|c)hould . In what follows, I will first provide a brief introduction to why and how macros were blocked as well as how to bypass the protections that were put in place. I will then give an overview of LNK files, one common alternative to macros, show how they are used in the wild, and finally discuss various ways for detection. Microsoft's decision to
Read more

Trust is good, testing is better: How to pentest Flutter apps

Image
Recently, during a weekend, Daniel and myself stumbled across Flutter-based apps that were not testable out-of-the-box due to Flutter-specific security decisions. Furthermore, we found that, despite the popularity of the framework, there is little information on how to best test such apps. We thus decided to dive deeper into the framework and came up with a blog post that first sheds some light on Flutter from a security perspective and then provides a step-by-step guide on how to test such apps. In total, it will provide four different approaches. With the increasing popularity of the framework and developers relying on Flutter-intrinsic security features, it is especially important to continue challenging them and equip more testers with the required skills to conduct tests. What is Flutter and what makes it important? Flutter is an open-source UI SDK created by Google. Like React Native, it is used to develop cross platform applications for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, Googl
Read more