Dr Adrienne Mayor, a professor at Stanford University, in her new book 'Gods and Robots' has revealed that ancient Greek mythology had predicted the rise of several modern technologies including artificial intelligent robots and self-driving vehicles.
An example of these advanced creations is Talos. In Greek mythology, Talos is a machine made up of bronze and it was made to look like a human being. Greek mythology also reveals that Thalos was created by Hephaestus, the God of craftsmen.
Another creation of Hephaestus was Pandora. Adrienne Mayor described Pandora as a cruel artificial intelligence powered fembot which was put on the earth to release evil.
"The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life," wrote Adrienne Mayor.
However, the book admits that the Greek people were never capable of creating such mythical beings in real life. As per Adrienne, ancient Greeks were capable of thinking out of the box, and dream about weird creatures in an abstract manner.
"A groundbreaking account of the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, Gods and Robots reveal how some of today's most advanced innovations in robotics and AI were foreshadowed in ancient myth—and how science has always been driven by imagination. This is the mythology for the age of AI," says Adrienne.
Recently, Jim Khalil, the incoming president of British Science Association has warned that the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is posing more threat than terrorism in the world. Khalil argued that the world of artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly and until now, no regulations are implemented in this sector so far.
