(ORDO NEWS) — For millennia, artificial servants, autonomous killing machines, surveillance systems, and sex robots have been part of human history.
The history of robots goes far into the past. Artificial servants, autonomous killing machines, surveillance systems, and sex robots have all found expression in works and historical texts since Ovid (43 BC – AD 17) and Pygmalion’s history in cultures Eurasia and North Africa.
This long history of human-machine relationships also reminds us that our aspirations, fears, and fantasies about emerging technologies are not new, even if the circumstances in which they arise vary widely.
Viewing these objects and the desires that give rise to them in a deeper and broader context of time and space reveals continuity and divergence, which in turn provides an opportunity to criticize and question current ideas and desires associated with robots and artificial intelligence (AI). ).
As early as 3,000 years ago, we meet interest in intelligent machines and AI, performing various forced functions.
In the writings of Homer (c. 8th century BC), we see Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmithing and crafts, using automatic bellows to perform simple, repetitive work.
Golden henchmen, endowed with the properties of movement, perception, judgment and speech, help him in his work.
In his Odyssey, Homer tells how the Phaeacian ships obey their human captains perfectly, detecting and avoiding obstacles and threats and moving “at the speed of thought”.
Several centuries later, around 400 BC, we meet Talos, a giant bronze sentinel created by Hephaestus, who patrolled the coast of Crete.
All these examples from the ancient world are united by their subordinate role; they exist to serve the desires of other, more powerful beings – gods or humans – and even if they have a mind, they lack autonomy.
Thousands of years before Karel Capek coined the term “robot” for artificial slaves, we find them in Homer.
Given the prevalence of intelligent man-made objects in Hellenic culture, it is not surprising that late Hellenistic engineers turned to the design and construction of such machines.
Mathematicians and engineers from Alexandria began writing treatises on the creation and construction of automata around the third century BC.
They included instructions for making complex moving-figure dioramas, jukeboxes, mechanical servants, and automata powered by steam, water, air, and mechanics.
Some of these devices were intended to illustrate the physical principles acting on them, while others grew in size and were used for public spectacles.
Regardless of size, they were meant to evoke a variety of emotional responses, including surprise and awe.
Thousands of years before Karel Capek coined the term “robot” for artificial slaves, we find them in Homer.
Robots were so common in the figurative and material culture of the Greek-speaking world that others considered them a symbol of Hellenistic culture.
Buddhist legends, centered in northeastern India in the fourth and third centuries BC, tell of an army of automata guarding the relics of the Buddha, created with knowledge smuggled from the Greek-speaking world.
In one version, where both killer robots and guard robots are present, a young man travels in disguise to the country of the Yavans (Greek speakers) to learn the art of making automata, the secret of which is carefully guarded by the local yantakars (automaton makers), knowledge, which he then steals to create artificial guards.
We find stories of automatic warriors guarding relics of the Buddha in Chinese, Sanskrit, Hindu and Tibetan texts.
In addition, mechanical automata appear in other places in Chinese history: for example, at the court of the Tang ruler Empress Wu Zhou (c. 624-705 AD).
The automaton/killer trope also ties in with stories of the ancient world from medieval Latin Christianity – where, unlike much of the rest of Eurasia, people lacked the knowledge of how to build complex machines.
In the Old French version of the Aeneid (c. 1160 AD), a golden robot archer stands guard over the tomb of a fallen warrior queen, while in the story of Alexander the Great (c. 1180 AD), the ruler faces golden killer robots guarding a bridge in India, and armed copper robots guarding the tomb of the “Babylonian emir”.
Hellenistic automaton manuals, translated into Arabic in the ninth century CE. at the Abbasid court in Baghdad also influenced the design and construction of automata in the Islamic world, which were commonly housed in palaces and mosques and included automaton musicians, programmable clocks and fountains, and mechanical animals.
These craftsmen in the Islamic State innovated in the designs of the Alexandrian school and created ever more complex machines, although some objects date back to much older forms.
For example, in the works of the courtier and engineer al-Jazari (1136-1206 AD), we find designs for wheeled cupbearers and servants – an echo of wheeled servants serving the gods on Mount Olympus.
Al-Jazari’s mechanical court servants and killer sentinels in fantasy literature share a common connection with surveillance, foreshadowing another target often addressed by AI and robots.
Sentinels and guards keep watch and distinguish friend from foe, while court servants work in a ritualized, hierarchical environment where people are under constant surveillance.
Objects like those created by al-Jazari were found throughout the Islamic State and the eastern part of the Roman Empire, but could not be built or reproduced in the Latin Christian West until the end of the thirteenth century.
However, in figurative texts, they appear earlier, as luxury items, in an elite setting, in fantasies of perfect surveillance and perfectly obedient servants.
The Roman poet Virgil is said to have designed a series of animated wooden statues, each representing one of the provinces of the Roman Empire and holding a bell that rang if the province threatened to revolt.
The bronze horseman indicated the direction of the threat. In the old French “Roman de Troie” (“History of Troy”) we find six golden automata, including four androids, who patrolled and monitored the entire Trojan court, detecting any irregularities in dress, manners, speech and even thoughts, and also provided entertainment.
Courtiers could relax knowing they wouldn’t make an accidental slip and no one else, and rulers could relax knowing none of their courtiers were spreading misinformation or plotting against them.
Philip II “The Good”, Duke of Burgundy (1396-1467; b. 1419-67) used part of his vast fortune to install numerous automata, fountains and other mechanical devices in his castle of Hesdin in Artois (now northern France).
The guests were tested in a long gallery filled with machine guns and other devices that wet people with water, smeared them with mud and flour, beat them with sticks and called names, while the duke or his confidants watched invisibly.
Fountains and jets designed to “wet the ladies from below” were installed at the Duke’s direction and were personally controlled under his supervision.
This combination of sex and surveillance was firmly established in medieval Latin culture by the 15th century.
In addition to the already mentioned imperial alarm system, Virgil is also credited with creating the “Mouth of Truth” (bocca della verità), a miracle that could determine a woman’s sexual history and bite off her fingers if she was not chaste.
The sexual observation of women, connected with the concern for preserving the distinctions of noble blood, is found throughout medieval literature, and there is at least one example of an artificial musician who announced to every visitor – through music – whether the woman who entered was a virgin.
Ultimately, these fantasy objects are indicative of a preoccupation with women’s sexual behavior, a belief that these behaviors matter and should be controlled, and an inability to treat women as autonomous, fully human beings.
Female sex robots, or artificial sexual partners, are equally common in the tales of many ancient cultures as robocops and ideal servants.
One of the most famous examples of this trope is the story of Pygmalion, although in this story his sculptural creation, Galatea, comes to life only through divine intervention – Venus grants Pygmalion’s wish while he carnally deals with his creation.
In medieval Latin culture, the story of Pygmalion was retold and retold, sometimes with surprising inversions.
In one version of the story of doomed lovers, when Tristan is separated from his beloved Iseult, he replaces her with a golden copy, which he uses as a confidant, trusting her and kissing her.
In one Buddhist tale, which exists in several versions, an automaton maker creates an artificial servant girl who tricks a visiting artist into thinking she is human, and he performs forced sexual intercourse on her, destroying her in the process.
Erotic arousal technologies appear in 10th and 11th century CE Sanskrit texts describing automatons in the courts of northwestern India, such as female maidservants whose nipples and navels oozed perfumed water.
In the stories of Pygmalion and Tristan, their insistence on mistaking the artificial for the natural is presented as evidence of their abnormality – how can a sane person mistake something made for something born?
In some cases, the extreme mimesis of biological characteristics emphasizes the desire for a perfect copy, indistinguishable from the born original.
The golden automaton that replaced Iseult mimicked human biology by exhaling fragrant air from the chest, reflecting modern physiological theory that the heart plays a central role in respiration and the production of spiritus, a substance vital to sustaining life.
This is an early example of the fascination with biological life in sex robots, and is conceptually similar to later inventions in 18th and 19th century Europe – sex automata, or “gladdeners”, which mimicked female genitalia and the ability to mimic natural secretions.
But at the same time, the emphasis on extreme mimesis emphasizes the artificiality of the robot, the fact that it is clearly not born.
That the robot stands for both points to its status as a boundary object: something that emphasizes boundaries by overcoming them.
Robots and artificial intelligence have long been used to both emphasize and question the conceptual boundary between born and created, and the related boundary between life and non-life.
However, the contexts in which these stories appear endow the same story with different meanings.
In the early Taoist text The Book of Liji (composed around the fourth century), the skill of an artisan is valued by the king and his court, but in other stories about learned men and their automaton children, such as those associated with Albertus Magnus in the 14th and 15th centuries and René Descartes in the 18th and 19th centuries, the robot is destroyed by ignorant people out of fear.
In E. T. A. Hoffmann’s version of this tale, The Sandman (1816), the inability to distinguish what is made from what is born drives the protagonist, Nathanael, into madness and eventually death.
These implacable sentinel, imperial and court robots and AIs are theoretically superior to the humans who would otherwise be tasked with these tasks.
These perfect servants never make mistakes and cannot be bribed (although sometimes they can be overcome).
They never get tired. They do not complain about mistreatment, they do not agitate for freedom or better conditions, and they have no ideas above their position.
They embody the fantasy of total control, perfect obedience, and absolute power.
The objects and hobbies discussed here have a long and complex history that reveals some striking similarities across culture, time and space.
Robots and AI in reality and fiction serve the interests of powerful elites, often forcibly controlling boundaries (of places and social groups) and watching over subject populations.
They act as liminal objects and are often used in figurative texts to comprehend and explore the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between the living and the inanimate.
Intelligent machines raise questions of autonomy and consent. They appear in the context of fantasies about subjectivity and creativity, raising philosophical questions about the ethics of creativity and what we owe to what we create.
Robots and AI have long been used or imagined as tools to serve a few powerful people, so it is worth challenging claims that automation and AI are innovations and will positively change human society.
These objects are not new, and no technology is revolutionary or transformative if it is used to consolidate and strengthen the interests of those already in power.
However, deeper engagement with historical material offers a different perspective on our robotic future, as similarities and oddities emerge in configurations that open up new perspectives.
Old AI stories allow us to re-imagine what these objects should look like, how they can interact with us, and how they can be used to liberate the disenfranchised.
A deeper understanding of these stories and contexts could offer new perspectives and possibilities for imagining and building robots and AI now and in the future.
E. R. Truitt teaches in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
She is the author of Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature and Art (University of Pennsylvania Press), which explores the rich history of artificial humans and animals between 800 and 1450. This article is an excerpt from The Love Makers (Goldsmiths Press).
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