Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology Audiobook (Free)

The fascinating untold story of the way the ancients imagined robots and other forms of artificial life-and even invented real automated devices

The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was made not really by MIT Robotics Laboratory, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before middle ages automata, and generations before technology made self-moving devices feasible, Greek mythology was exploring suggestions about creating about Gods and Robots: Myths, Devices, and Ancient Dreams of Technology artificial life-and grappling with still-unresolved moral problems about biotechne, “life through craft.” In this compelling, richly illustrated publication, Adrienne Mayor tells the exciting story of how ancient greek language, Roman, Indian, and Chinese misconceptions envisioned artificial existence, automata, self-moving devices, and individual enhancements-and how these visions relate with and reflect the ancient invention of actual animated machines.

As soon as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Cleverness, while in Indian legend, Buddha’s precious relics were defended by automatic robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for true automata. Mythic automata appear in stories about Jason as well as the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are referred to as being constructed with the same materials and strategies that individual artisans used to create tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were in fact built in antiquity, achieving a climax using the creation of a bunch of automata in the historic town of learning, Alexandria, the initial Silicon Valley.

A groundbreaking account of the earliest expressions from the timeless impulse to create artificial life, Gods and Robots reveals how a few of today’s most advanced innovations in robotics and AI were foreshadowed in ancient myth-and how technology has always been driven by imagination. That is mythology for age AI.