Technological Determinism and Human Freedom

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Jean Delville/Prométhée

We fear that artificial intelligence will escape our control, pursue purposes of its own, displace human judgment, and ultimately reduce its creators to servants of the systems they built. These anxieties are often presented as unprecedented responses to an unprecedented technology. They are not. Long before computers, industrial machinery, or even the modern concept of “technology,” human beings have told stories about inventions that rebelled against their makers, knowledge that brought catastrophe, and craftsmen destroyed by their own creations. Technological power has always appeared as both gift and danger. The waxen wings with which Icarus soars free from imprisonment fail him at his apex; the same Golem that safeguards the Jews of Prague almost proves the cause of their destruction. These stories, which are shockingly consistent across time and culture, cover technological themes like loss of control and double-edged swords in a strikingly modern fashion.

This ambivalence is one of humanity’s oldest and most consistent intuitions. Technology enlarges the range of what we can do, but in doing so changes the conditions under which we choose. It gives us power over nature while threatening to subject us to systems, incentives, and purposes that no individual intended. The recurring, deep fear that permeates the history of human consciousness is therefore not simply that a machine will malfunction. It is that, by building machines powerful enough to transform the world, we will transform ourselves and lose control over what we become.

As in all things, probably the best articulation of ancient fears was the Greeks. Unlike most cultures, the Greeks had a god of technology who invented: Hephaestus, the blacksmith of Mount Olympus who created everything the Olympian gods needed. He was not merely a handyman, but also an inventor. In Greek mythology, nearly every technology, whether fire or Pandora’s box, comes from his workshop by conveyance or pilfering, and all come with a loss of control for humanity. Hephaestus himself also suffered a consequence as a result of his blacksmithing—he was lame, unable to leave his workshop. Although his loss of leg function was related to being thrown off of Mount Olympus, this was a common affliction of blacksmiths at the time because of arsenic exposure, still making it a powerful metaphor: embrace technology too much, and you will suffer the consequences, just as a blacksmith who spends too much time in his workshop loses the ability to leave.

The Greek fear of technology was not limited to merely Olympian myths; human inventors also suffered from their own creations in classical mythology. Probably the most famous tale of peripeteia is that of Icarus flying too close to the sun and melting his waxen wings. As such, although technology myths are often moral parables, there are Greek myths of explicit punishment for inventing. In the ancient story of the  Sicilian Bull, an inventor created a new torture device wherein a person was boiled alive in a bronze bull. When the inventor proudly demonstrated his invention to the king Phalaris, he became the first person on whom the device was demonstrated. Invent at your own peril. Similarly, Prometheus is punished for acquiring fire, as in nearly every other culture with a “man stealing fire” tradition.

This theme was not unique to the Greeks. Generally, the main fear surrounding technology throughout time and across various historical cultures is unintended consequences. Usually, the invention itself is what goes awry. Perhaps the most famous example is the ancient Jewish legend of the Golem, wherein an artificial being is magically animated out of mud, but escapes human control and embarks on a Yudkowsky-style non-aligned rampage. This theme repeats over and over across traditions. For example, Ilmarinen, a Finnish craftsman, creates a bride made out of gold who is beautiful but still and lifeless, leaving him unhappy, while the Egyptian god Thoth produced books with knowledge that would cause misfortunes like insanity or divine punishment. In Hindu culture, the inventor Maya Dānava builds a mirror funhouse, the Māyā Sabhā, that is so convincing that it tricks a king and triggers a war. In Petronius’s Satyricon, an inventor of flexible glass is killed by Tiberius Caesar for fear that the invention would be too valuable and put glassmakers out of work.

When technology—depicted in Clarkeian fashion as magic or crafts— is personified in a god, they are often associated with unpredictability but also creation: they are both fathers of civilization and tricksters. The Mesopotamian god of crafts and magic Enki, creates humans out of clay but also sometimes manipulates them. In Native American cultures, the Coyote spirit both steals fire for humanity from the sun and teaches them to fish. In Micronesia, Analup is the god of magic and crafts...