Page 31 - aruba-today-20190425

A31
PEOPLE & ARTS Thursday 25 april 2019
I robot? Ian McEwan tells android tale in ‘Machines Like Me’

By JILL LAWLESS thanks to Alan Turing, a
Associated Press real-life World War II code-
LONDON (AP) — Ian McE- breaker and computing
wan is fascinated by arti- pioneer.
ficial intelligence. His new After the war, Turing was
novel, “Machines Like Me,” prosecuted for having sex
features a lifelike android with a man, forcibly treat-
with access to all human ed with female hormones
knowledge who writes hai- and died aged 41 in 1954.
ku poetry. McEwan gives Turing the
In real life, the Booker life he deserved. In the
Prize-winning author is novel he lives into old age,
conflicted. He’d be wary honored and revered, and
of owning a driverless car his work has created tech-
— “I don’t even like cruise nological wonders.
control” — and he’s grown It has not cured society’s
suspicious of his household ills, though. The 250-mph
digital assistant since the (400-kph) bullet trains are
revelation that staff at Am- grubby and the streets lit-
azon listened to recordings tered with garbage. Mass
of people speaking to their unemployment fuels anti-
Alexa devices. immigrant anger, although
“Actual humans transcrib- automation is the bigger
ing, and some lady sing- In this photo taken on Thursday, April 18, 2019, Booker Prize award winning English novelist and culprit.
ing in the shower being screenwriter Ian Russell McEwan talks to Associated Press about his new novel “Machines Like McEwan said he has often
laughed at,” he shudders. Me” in London. been struck by how quickly
“I think we’re going to un- Associated Press new technology becomes
plug it.” tions? Is Adam a lodger, that.” McEwan describes That sounds a lot like the mundane. He recalled, a
The messy relationship be- a servant or a highly intel- the novel as a sort of anti- present, but it’s the past few years ago, seeing a line
tween human minds and ligent household appli- ”Frankenstein.” In Mary — an alternative version of of people snaking down a
artificial ones is the focus of ance? Does cheating on Shelley’s story, a scientist’s the 1980s. street in Manhattan.
“Machines Like Me,” pub- your partner with a robot creation becomes a killer. The novel opens as Prime “I thought it was maybe
lished in the U.S. on Tuesday count as adultery? “I’m writing somewhat Minister Margaret Thatcher some kind of rock concert,”
by Doubleday. “I wanted the reader to be against that grain, want- takes Britain to war against he said. “And they said no,
Narrator Charlie Friend, a in Charlie’s situation of half ing to think about, what if Argentina over the Falk- people are sleeping out on
smart but directionless thir- the time, at least at first, we gave our new cousins land Islands. In real life the pavement to be first
tysomething, spends his in- thinking he’s just playing our best selves, or we tried the U.K. won the war and with an iPhone 5.
heritance on Adam, one of a computer game — an to?” McEwan said during Thatcher spent a tumultu- “Where are those 5s now? I
the first “truly viable manu- elaborate, rather spooky an interview at his sun-filled ous decade in office. In think they’re in the nation’s
factured human(s) with computer game — but London mews house. McEwan’s version, the war sock drawers or they are
plausible intelligence and then feeling very upset In the novel, Adam is a mor- is lost and Thatcher faces a being used by grandchil-
looks.” when Adam goes and has al paragon. It’s the humans crisis that brings a left-wing dren. The speed with which
Adam, Charlie and Char- a night of shame with his who are compromised. Labor government to the something that people are
lie’s neighbor/girlfriend Mi- girlfriend,” McEwan said. McEwan’s ménage à trois verge of power. prepared and sleep out on
randa form an unorthodox “It’s really only a betrayal if unfolds in a divided Britain: In McEwan’s alternate ‘80s the pavement before be-
household. They soon con- we regard Adam as a kind roiled by protests, uncer- the internet is long-estab- comes two years later just
front profound questions: of human, and (Charlie) tain about its place in Eu- lished and work on artificial a piece of outmoded junk
Can a machine feel emo- can’t help himself but feel rope and the world. intelligence is advanced, — that interests me.”q

Renee Wahl digs deep on evocative Americana set

By SCOTT STROUD itself apart with an intensity a song set on a long drive
Associated Press all its own. across Texas as she day-
Renee Wahl and the Sworn For all that, though, her dreams about a man she
Secrets, “Cut to the Bone” voice has the same kind of knew in Ireland.
(Double R Records) let-me-tell-you-something “Me Before You” is a clev-
The first sound of Renee urgency that set Cash erly structured ballad with
Wahl’s voice on her fine apart. There’s the vivid an evocative melody. “In
new album is enough to writing, too, when she de- the Field” describes lying in
set off the comparisons to scribes “the smell of chick- a field where a soldier has
Rosanne Cash. en and gasoline” on “Cold died, set against an under-
The opener is “To the Day in Memphis.” stated but persistent mili-
Bone,” and the song’s first But Wahl, an Air Force vet- tary drum cadence.
line even includes a black eran and physicist who is Despite the similarities to
Cadillac, which of course also a teacher, demon- Cash, this is an ambitious,
was in the title of one of strates the capacity to dig fresh contribution to the
Cash’s best albums. deep. Americana canon.
Wahl’s “Cut to the Bone” There’s the edge of anger The songs are well thought
has more in common with mixed with warmth and out and finely crafted, and
Cash’s fiery, passionate regret, as on the title cut several of them seem likely This cover image released by Double R Records shows “Cut to
the Bone,” a release by Renee Wahl and the Sworn Secrets.
earlier work, and yet it sets and “From Here to There,” to endure.q Associated Press