Something to consider while everyone tries aggressively onboarding us onto the AI train. I want to say it because some of the ugliest technology haunting our steps at the moment is glorified by mythic notions—Mythos, Palantir—as though to justify their inevitability.
The Greeks had a lot to say about emerging-conscious robotics. Hephaestus, smith-god of the Greeks, made plenty of them. Amongst them was Talos, a giant robot charged with guarding the island of Crete. He was incredibly sadistic; the pleased expression he wore while crushing Sardinians between his fingers is where we get the expression "sardonic smile." Medea eventually destroys him by pulling a bolt out of his neck and letting his magical ochre bleed out. Hephaestus is married to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She can't bloody stand him. So he sits alone in his palace of robots, who, however pretty and lifelike they are, can't love him back. I just hold this in my mind as these grasping tech moguls shout in our faces. They don't just want us to adopt their insidious toys, which they're using toward the worst ends imaginable. They also want us to like them—the guys behind it all. But Hephaestus was MARRIED to Love and couldn't even get her to look at him. He sits in his palace still, with nothing but his accumulated playthings.
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