BY SCOTT RADNOR
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
Scott Radnor is a documentary filmmaker working in the fields of archeology, science and ecology. He is the founder of production company, Boundary Pictures.
BY SCOTT RADNOR
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
Scott Radnor is a documentary filmmaker working in the fields of archeology, science and ecology. He is the founder of production company, Boundary Pictures.
BY SCOTT RADNOR
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
Scott Radnor is a documentary filmmaker working in the fields of archeology, science and ecology. He is the founder of production company, Boundary Pictures.
BY SCOTT RADNOR
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
AI & The Magic in Technology - the gods in the machine
The desire to build ‘thinking machines’ stretches back millennia, and is rooted in magical and metaphysical traditions.
Science fiction author Arthur C Clarke famously proclaimed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Technology is imbued with magical properties and the desire to ‘create magic’ has long been a motivation for technological progress.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the famous pioneer of digital computing, published his seminal essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence and asked the rhetorical question “Can machines think?”. This though was not a new and unique question, but one people had been asking for millennia., and continue to do so.
Records and stories of thinking machines can be found going back over the past 3000 years across ancient civilisations. There are accounts from ancient Greece, India, China and Egypt of mechanical automata; created by both gods and men. This desire to create a non-human, thinking, conscious machine that is the equivalent, or in excess of, human intelligence has a history that goes back to the origins and understandings of technology. The current technological culture that is aiming to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) has many roots that reach into metaphysics, magic and the times of gods and monsters.
In Greek mythology, the writer Homer in the Iliad, tells us of the creations of Hephaestus; who was the god of artisans, blacksmiths, metalworking, craftsmen. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the gods, designing and forging the powerful and magical apparatus. He crafted the weapons and armour used by the Olympians - such as Hermes winged helmet and sandals, Eros’ bow and arrows and Achilles armour.
Hephaestus was god who created magical technology. He manufactured ancient robots, automata who were imbued with not only functionality but intelligence, such as golden handmaidens to assist him in his work. He also created Telos the bronze Cretan warrior, and tripod soldiers. Hephaestus ‘perfect’ handmaidens and soldiers would never tire and perform their duties well, making them ideal servants and slaves. In contrast to the physical prowess of his creations, Hephaestus himself was often presented as disabled and limited in the functionality of his body. Yet by creating technological apparatus though applying his skill and intellect he he could perform feats beyond his, and many others, physical bodily limitations. In Greek times magical technology was possessed by the gods, it served, augmented and empowered them.
The ancient Greek Hero of Alexandria’s book, Automata from the first century AD, described how not just gods, but mere human mortals could construct many advanced mechanical inventions, and human-like automata here on Earth. The technology Hero describes in detail was largely hidden, it performed ‘miracles’ and magical feats in temples; such as automatically opening doors, or causing statues to dispense wine. Early technology here is literally doing the work of the gods. Hero of Alexandria also describes the first vending machine - which on inserting coin would dispense holy water. This is an early example of technology allied with commerce to further metaphysical religious aims. A machine is used to automate access to a substance of supposed supernatural qualities. The automated machine provides spiritual currency, access to the magical, in return for financial currency, accessed not through a human priest but a machine, technology. Here money and the machine become a means to access the metaphysical realm.
The constellation of money, technology and the supernatural in the service of power (in earthly and heavenly realms) has carried through the ages. It’s present in our current culture, through the mythological stories of superheroes, our modern pantheon of gods, who include Iron Man and Batman. These men were not exposed to some sort of experiment gone wrong, they aren’t aliens, they don’t possess supernatural powers in themselves. But they are are endowed with incredible superpowers through their massive wealth and consequent development of secret technology. Iron Man even has Jarvis on his side, an ASI that extends his abilities, is more intelligent and able than Iron Man, but is still subservient to him like a butler. Thus money and technology, not magic or mutation, enable Ironman and Batmans god-like powers. This relationship between money, power and technology can be seen to be reflected in the claims by the owners and developers of AI that by creating superhuman god-like powers ASI will bring us all, or least their shareholders unimaginable power and wealth.
After the fall of ancient Greek civilisation the fascination with, and creation of automata continued in India and the Arab world, with ingenious and beautiful automata found in the form of clockwork birds, animals and people. From around the 16th century onwards automata became popular in the royal courts of Europe. One of the most famous is Kempelens Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player. This device wowed high society and royalty across Europe in the 18th and 19th century, playing and beating opponents such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin over a period of 84 years. ‘The Mechanical Turk’ was so successful and captivating as it appeared to place human ingenuity at the same level as the gods ancient gods. It exemplifies the long held belief and desire in the ability of men to use the magic of technology to creating a machine of human-level intelligence. In reality ‘The Turk’ was later revealed to be a fraud, as it had to contain a human operator. Technological devices and automata have long been used for the creation of spectacle and illusion, presenting what appear to be supernatural powers. However impressive they were, many relied on human operators, or were simple mechanical illusions, performing technical feats, but not thinking.
The power to build a true ‘thinking machine’ was something only gods and magicians used to possess, only these few could undertake the magical process to imbue matter with intelligence. We have now reached a stage where this desire over millennia to create a ‘thinking machine’ is see to finally be within the reach of humans. Computer engineers are developing AI at a rapid pace, that can then be used to further develop an ASI - an Artificial Super Intelligence. This desire to develop an ASI has metaphysics and magical thinking enfolded within it. We must investigate the roots and routes of the narratives and beliefs that have led people to dedicate their lives to creating ASI.
Nowadays technology can do much of what was seen as magical, it can enable access to other worlds, via phone calls, video calls, books, films, TV, virtual reality. Engineers inspired by the stories magical creations of the past can now make the magic happen. We now have access to a range of superhuman powers which previously existed only at the dispensation of the gods, such as flight and communication over great distance. Through technological apparatus it is possible to transcend the normal rules of time and space. This desire to ‘make the magic happen’, break and bend the laws of nature to serve our purposes, has always been a strong driver in the quest to make what was inanimate.
Ray Kurzweil the technologist and avowed transhumanist exemplifies, and contributed greatly to, the futurist mindset of Silicone Valley. (Transhumanist’s believe our destiny as as species is to upload ourselves, to become pure information, disembodied consciousnesses living forever on a computational substrate.) Kurzweil shows how magical thinking and stories guide his technological imagination when he writes that the Harry Potter stories “are not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist only few decades from now. Essentially all of the Potter “magic” will be realised through . . technologies”. He explains that while Potter uses magic spells and incantations, we now use to computer code and technology to create ‘miracles’. For Kurzweil technology as computation is able to perform the ultimate god-like act of magical creation, one that people have been attempting for millennia; which is to take unthinking matter and manipulate it through physical and informational methods so it can become endowed with intelligence, and consciousness. This will be achieved through creating HLMI, Human Level Machine Intelligence, and beyond that ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence. Kurzweil believes the power to enable this transubstantiation of matter to intelligent conscious being occurs through the ‘incantation’ of computer code.
In much the same way as Hero of Alexandria’s described how ‘magical’ automata in temples were hidden from view, in current times technological, computational infrastructure is mostly hidden and performs incredible feats. We inhabit a world of hidden computational infrastructure, signals, beams, and invisible fields, which regulate and enable our global communications network. Our physical interactions with technology, from smooth glass touchscreens, to automatic doors, are designed to be as frictionless as possible. Technology companies strive to make the material technology of the internet invisible; the ‘internet’ is often presented and visualised as consisting of pure data, an ‘information superhighway’ , uploaded and stored in ‘the cloud’.
‘The Could’ serves as a metaphor for something ephemeral, abstract and ‘up there’, that exists in the heavenly realm of the gods. Clouds are often seen as the realm of gods and angels, the Greek pantheon live atop mount Olympus, obscured by clouds, The Judeo-Christian God is perceived as ‘up there’ above the clouds. To inhabit ‘the cloud’, the realm above, is to be a god or have god-like power. The complex calculations required for AI are enabled by distributed processing power and computational infrastructure facilitated by data centres. AI is presented as something that exists in, and comes from data, it’s habitat pure information held within ‘the cloud’, a conceptually separate world that exists above us, beyond earthly distractions, pure and heavenly. AI dispenses knowledge from this omnipotent heavenly location.
Far from being ephemeral, clean and heavenly, the ‘cloud’ is actually enabled by a very material global technological infrastructure that uses huge amounts of energy and resources, creating massive amounts of toxic e-waste. Vast networks of fibre optic cables stretch around the world. In the Congo rare earth minerals are fought over by warlords, while children mine them. In Baotou, Mongolia, we find a giant manmade lake of toxic waste, resulting from the processing of rare earth minerals. These rare earth minerals are used in a lot of ostensibly ‘clean’ technology - everything from phones to electric cars to wind turbines.
Data centres were hidden in anonymous out-of-town industrial parks. Now as the technology moguls hunger for more and more powerful AI, and race to create ASI, the data centres are now getting bigger, too big to hide. Many people don’t want a data centre next door, and are questioning the increased use of water resources to cool them, or alternatively increased use of PFA’s (toxic forever chemicals) to build them. In much the same way as humans are indivisible from their environment, AI is also a very much the result of computation that takes place on, and physical interactions with, the environment of planet Earth. How AI fits into existing earthly ecology is an increasingly important and discussed topic.
‘Thinking machines’ and Artificial Intelligence are viewed as a modern phenomena, aligned with the development of computing. However the history of technologically enabled non-human machine intelligence stretches back millennia. Thinking machines were created by gods and magicians, then with the advent of modernity the task of making inanimate matter animate, come alive, was passed on to scientists and engineers. The rational and logical approach of engineers often denies the magical history of their endeavours, the underlying motivation and desire to perform a magical feat, do something supernatural, in excess of nature. The ultimate engineering challenge of our age is seen by the AI companies and developers as the quest to surpass nature. Through using human skill, they work to create from inanimate matter, an animate thinking being, that is an improvement on what they understand as human. Their final aim is to create an ASI that is god-like, which can itself become the ultimate engineer magician like Hephaestus, creating even more advanced technological marvels.
Scott Radnor is a documentary filmmaker working in the fields of archeology, science and ecology. He is the founder of production company, Boundary Pictures.