Human Dilemmas In The Post-Human Era

Ian Russell Mc Ewan is one of the most popular contemporary British writers.His latest work,Machines Like Me,is published in 2019,and this novel marks a departure from his usual “Ian Macabre” style.Mc Ewan creates an alternative world in this novel and ventures into science fiction to explore the moral ramifications of artificial intelligence and the creation of machines that can outsmart human beings.This novel involves a man cuckolded by an artifact,which leads to all protagonists in a love triangle.Machines Like Me also discusses some ethical decisions.It manages to flesh out questions about what constitutes a person,and the troubling future of humans if the smart machines we create can overtake us.This thesis uses the concepts of electronic text and brain text in Professor Nie Zhenzhao’s literary ethics and combines posthumanism theory to analyze the contradictions faced by artificial beings in their interaction with humans in the novel.Firstly,this thesis focuses on the ethical dilemmas presented in the novel,analyzing the main ethical plotline as well as multiple ethical subplots.Secondly,this thesis pays attention to the machinery essence of artificial humans,which means that regardless of how closely Adam resembles a human in appearance,it cannot change the fact that he is a machine that requires electrical power to survive.Meanwhile,the differences between electronic text and brain text also determine the differences between artificial and human modes of thinking.Human values come from their understanding of the world,while machine values come from program inputs.The collision between human relativistic morality and machine absolute ethical values inevitably leads to the outbreak of human-machine conflicts.Finally,this thesis turns its attention to real society.The mode of human-machine interaction in the post-human era has always been a widely discussed topic.The image presented in the novel provides a possibility for our future.Through the research of this novel,in this thesis,it is found that Mc Ewan repeatedly expresses concerns about the future relationship between humans and machines.His purpose in setting the future coexistence model between humans and machines in the 1980 s is to alert humanity that the era of artificial intelligence has arrived and the relationship between humans and technology has changed.In the face of rapid technological development,it is essential for human beings to be adequately prepared.We must abandon the outdated and rigid human-machine binary opposition perspective and approach problems from a post-human perspective.With an optimistic attitude,we should move towards a future of diverse communities.