Author: Bruce Bower / Source: Science News
Gods and Robots
Adrienne Mayor
Princeton Univ., $29.95
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.
Many Greek myths focused on what Mayor calls biotechne, or “life through craft.” Consider Talos, a giant bronze robot in the epic third century B.C. poem “Argonautica,” which tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Hephaestus, blacksmith for the gods, created the automaton Talos to guard a kingdom on the island of Crete. When Jason’s crew arrives, Talos…
The post Our fascination with robots goes all the way back to antiquity appeared first on FeedBox.