AI and the Divine Test

There were many wonders in the forge of the smith-god Hephaestus, but the strangest of all were the girls made of gold. Homer’s Iliad, a poem from around the 8th century B.C., probably contains the oldest surviving depiction of what we would call robots. When the crippled god of artifice sets out to design next-gen armor for the hero Achilles, he’s propped up by mechanical aides “that look like living girls.” Homer goes out of his way to mention that they “have thoughts within their minds” as well as voices and physical strength. He also specifies that they are amphipoloi — domestic servants or, in a word, slaves.