Aufgabe NT 1 - Aufgabe 3.1 · Abitur NRW Englisch LK · Nachtermin 2022

Klausurteil A

Ian McEwan

Machines Like Me

The novel by McEwan takes place in an alternate version of the 1980s.

[A]rtificial humans were a cliché long before they arrived, so when they did, they seemed

to some a disappointment. The imagination, fleeter than history, than technological advance,

had already rehearsed this future in books, then films and TV dramas, as if human actors,

walking with a certain glazed look, phony head movements, some stiffness in the lower back,

5 could prepare us for life with our cousins from the future.

I was among the optimists, blessed by unexpected funds following my mother’s death and

the sale of the family home, which turned out to be on a valuable development site. The

first truly viable manufactured human with plausible intelligence and looks, believable

motion and shifts of expression went on sale the week before the Falklands Task Force set off

10 on its hopeless mission. Adam cost £86,000. I brought him home in a hired van to my

unpleasant flat in north Clapham. I’d made a reckless decision, but I was encouraged by

reports that Sir Alan Turing, war hero and presiding genius of the digital age, had taken

delivery of the same model. He probably wanted to have his lab take it apart to examine its

workings fully.

15 Twelve of this first edition were called Adam, thirteen were called Eve. Corny, everyone

agreed, but commercial. Notions of biological race being scientifically discredited, the

twenty-five were designed to cover a range of ethnicities. […] He weighed 170 pounds, so

I had to ask my upstairs neighbour, Miranda, to help me carry him in from the street on the

disposable stretcher that came with the purchase.

20 While his batteries began to charge, I made us coffee then scrolled through the 470-page

online handbook. Its language was mostly clear and precise. But Adam was created across

different agencies and in places the instructions had the charm of a nonsense poem. ‘Unreveal

upside of B 347k vest to gain carefree emoticon with motherboard output to attenuate mood-

swing penumbra.’

25 At last, with cardboard and polystyrene wrapping strewn around his ankles, he sat naked at

my tiny dining table, eyes closed, a black power line trailing from the entry point in his

umbilicus to a thirteen-amp socket in the wall. It would take sixteen hours to fire him up.

Then sessions of download updates and personal preferences. I wanted him now, and so did

Miranda. Like eager young parents, we were avid for his first words. There was no loudspeaker

30 cheaply buried in his chest. We knew from the excited publicity that he formed sounds with

breath, tongue, teeth and palate. Already, his lifelike skin was warm to the touch and as smooth

as a child’s. Miranda claimed to see his eyelashes flicker. I was certain she was seeing

vibrations from the Tube trains rolling a hundred feet below us, but I said nothing. […]

Before us sat the ultimate plaything, the dream of ages, the triumph of humanism – or its

35 angel of death. Exciting beyond measure, but frustrating too. Sixteen hours was a long time

to be waiting and watching. […]

Would Adam become a bore? It’s not easy, to dictate while trying to ward off a bout of buyer’s

remorse. Surely, other people, other minds, must continue to fascinate us. As artificial people

became more like us, then became us, then became more than us, we could never tire of them.

40 They were bound to surprise us. They might fail us in ways that were beyond our imagining.

Tragedy was a possibility, but not boredom.

What was tedious was the prospect of the user’s guide. Instructions. My prejudice was that

any machine that could not tell you by its very functioning how it should be used was not

worth its keep. On an old-fashioned impulse, I was printing out the manual, then looking

45 for a folder. All the while, I continued to dictate emails.

I couldn’t think of myself as Adam’s ‘user’. I’d assumed there was nothing to learn about

him that he could not teach me himself. But the manual in my hands had fallen open at Chapter

Fourteen. Here, the English was plain: preferences; personality parameters. Then a set of

headings – Agreeableness. Extraversion. Openness to experience. Conscientiousness. Emotional

50 stability. The list was familiar to me. The Five Factor model. Educated as I was in the

humanities, I was suspicious of such reductive categories, though I knew from a friend in

psychology that each item had many subgroups. Glancing at the next page I saw that I was

supposed to select various settings on a scale of one to ten.

I’d been expecting a friend. I was ready to treat Adam as a guest in my home, as an unknown I

55 would come to know. I’d thought he would arrive optimally adjusted. Factory settings – a

contemporary synonym for fate. My friends, family and acquaintance, all had appeared in

my life with fixed settings, with unalterable histories of genes and environment. I wanted

my expensive new friend to do the same. Why leave it to me? But of course, I knew the

answer. Not many of us are optimally adjusted. Gentle Jesus? Humble Darwin? One every

60 1,800 years. Even if it knew the best, the least harmful, parameters of personality, which it

couldn’t, a worldwide corporation with a precious reputation couldn’t risk a mishap. Caveat

emptor.

God had once delivered a fully formed companion for the benefit of the original Adam. I had

to devise one for myself. Here was Extraversion and a graded set of childish statements. He

65 loves to be the life and soul of the party and He knows how to entertain people and lead them.

And at the bottom, He feels uncomfortable around other people and He prefers his own

company. Here in the middle was, He likes a good party but he’s always happy to come home.

This was me. But should I be replicating myself?

Annotations:

9

Falklands Task Force – reference to the Falklands War of 1982; unlike in the novel Britain defeated Argentine

11

Clapham – part of London

12

Sir Alan Turing – English mathematician and computer scientist pioneering in the field of Artificial Intelligence

23 – 24

to attenuate mood-swing penumbra – here: to reduce the risk of emotional instability

50

The Five Factor Model – psychological model to describe personalities

59

Darwin – Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), English biologist who is known for the theory of evolution

61 – 62

Caveat emptor (Latin) – the legal principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality of the goods she or he buys

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

3.1

On its website, an independent group of academics at the University of Cambridge asserts that “the uncontrolled accumulation of power by technology companies poses major threats to democracy and the planet”. Evaluate this statement.

[Hinweis: Wahlaufgabe 3.1 oder 3.2]

(Evaluation: comment)

[14 Punkte]