Frankenstein and the AI novel
and recent AI novels ask the same question: what makes us human? Shelley's creature is intelligent and longs for love, and becomes violent only after everyone rejects him, which suggests our humanity is relational, made by how others treat us. In Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me the android Adam is morally rigid, while the humans around him lie, forgive and bend the rules, so the novel locates humanity in our very inconsistency. Reading a two-hundred-year-old novel beside a brand-new one shows that literature keeps testing the same boundary as the technology changes.
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and a modern AI novel like Machines Like Me both ask what makes us human, and they answer in opposite directions. Shelley's creature only turns monstrous after he is rejected, so being human looks relational, made by how others treat us. McEwan's android Adam is morally rigid while the people lie and forgive, so here our humanity sits in our inconsistency. I would use the pair to show that literature keeps probing the same line as technology moves.
The same question, what makes us human, gets opposite answers across two centuries.
The ethics AI already raises
Artificial intelligence already raises concrete ethical problems, not just future ones. AI hiring tools can copy past discrimination when they screen CVs; deepfakes are used for non-consensual images and election manipulation; translators, illustrators and copywriters are among the first jobs disrupted; and lawsuits such as The New York Times against OpenAI ask whether training on copyrighted work is theft. Picking one issue and arguing it in concrete terms is a much stronger answer than listing vague fears about robots taking over.
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Rather than worry about robots taking over, I would take one real problem AI already causes. Hiring algorithms can inherit past discrimination when they rank CVs, so a biased history gets baked into the decision and looks neutral. I would argue this matters because the harm is hard to see and hard to appeal, and I would back fixes like auditing the training data and keeping a human in the loop.
Argue one concrete AI harm, not a vague fear of robots.
How AI changes reading and writing
AI tools are also changing how we read, write and learn. Chatbots can draft an essay in seconds, which is useful for getting started but risks students losing the practice that writing is meant to give. Translation tools can weaken the motivation to learn a second language, and summarisers can shorten our patience for long texts. A balanced answer weighs the clear gains in speed and access against these quieter costs, instead of treating the technology as simply good or simply bad.
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I would give a balanced view. AI tools let me draft and translate in seconds, which lowers the barrier to getting started and to reaching texts in other languages. But if a chatbot writes my essay I lose the thinking that writing is supposed to train, and constant summaries can erode my patience for long reading. So I would use AI for first drafts and checking while still doing the hard parts myself.
Weigh speed and access against the practice you risk losing.
Technology has always been a subject for literature, and the same questions return as the machines change. From onward, writers use invented creatures and intelligences to ask what humanity actually is, and recent AI novels answer in strikingly different ways. Reading an old novel beside a new one shows that literature keeps testing the same boundary while the technology moves underneath it.
AI also raises concrete problems right now, not only in fiction. Bias in automated decisions, deepfakes, disrupted jobs and disputes over training data are live issues, and a strong answer argues one of them in concrete terms rather than listing vague fears. The technology is changing how we read, write and learn too, which calls for a balanced view that weighs real gains against quieter costs.