Our fascination with robots goes all the way back to antiquity
‘Gods and Robots’ explores how ancient people thought about artificial life
By
Bruce Bower
8:00am, January 20, 2019
MYTHIC AI Ancient myths wrestled with basic questions about artificial life long before the current explosion of artificial intelligence machines. Here, the cunning sorceress Medea destroys an android guardian named Talos in the culmination of a Greek myth.
Artificial intelligence and robotics are hot scientific fields today. But even in the brave new world of AI, there’s nothing new under the sun, writes classics and science history scholar Adrienne Mayor in Gods and Robots.
In a breezy and thought-provoking account, Mayor describes how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese myths expressed hopes and fears about human-made life long before conversational robots and computer chess champions flexed their algorithms. Mayor argues that myths influenced, and were influenced by, real animated machines invented by ancient engineers.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/our-fascination-robots-goes-all-way-back-antiquity
