If we dont like it, well kill it. If we love it, well marry it: We were dreaming about ChatGPT thousands of years before it existed here's how ancient myths shaped the AI were building today

Date:
Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Description:
The authors of Myth-Made Machines explain how ancient myths and science fiction shaped our hopes and fears about todays AI.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Whenever a new AI model is released in a cut-down form because it is too powerful , or one transgresses its sandbox and performs an unexpected cyber hack on a companys website , we tend to see jokes made about Skynet or HAL 9000 becoming a reality.

But science fiction didnt just predict our current relationship with AI, it influenced it. Our fascination with artificial life began long before computers or even electricity existed. Ancient Greek stories featured mechanical servants created by the god Hephaestus, while Jewish folklore gave us the Golem, an artificial being brought to life to carry out its creators commands. In their new book, Myth-Made Machines: The Stories Behind
Artificial Intelligence , authors Dave Bradley and Kelly Vero trace humanitys dreams and fears about machines that can think, through mythology,
literature, movies and television. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here:

Their argument is that these stories havent simply anticipated AI; they have shaped how we talk about it, what we expect from it and, in some cases, the technology people have gone on to build.

I spoke to Bradley and Vero about why humanity keeps creating machines in its own image, whether science fiction has influenced todays AI developers, and why our response to artificial intelligence still swings between two
extremes: If we don't like it, well kill it. If we love it, well marry it.
You may like I asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok which sci-fi AI they're most like I asked Gemini and ChatGPT to build OpenAI's mythical AI gadget
What AI psychosis looks like, and why experts question the term The ancient beginnings of AI TechRadar: Talk me through the title - why is it called Myth-Made Machines ?

Dave Bradley: The core argument of the book is that humans have always been fascinated by the idea of creating thinking machines and artificial life.
When ChatGPT formally launched in 2022, one of the first jokes I saw on
social media was about Skynet coming online. It struck us that the whole way we understand and talk about this new technology is shaped by stories weve been telling ourselves for years. Kelly has a deep knowledge and love of
Greek and Roman myth, as well as stories such as Frankenstein , while Im a huge science fiction nerd (and occasional medievalist). Through our conversations, we realised that our cultural idea of AI is much older than modern computers. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Kelly Vero: Myth-Made Machines is the essence of where every element of AI
or robo-futurism comes from: Myth. With myth, we, as humans, have to navigate the real and the prescient from the propaganda and the fanciful.

TR: When did artificial intelligence first enter our human stories?

KV: When we started researching the book, it was Greek myths that we started with. We found our own Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei hiding in plain sight. What to read next The thing I dislike most about AI is exactly what some users love The more famous people tell me to use AI, the less I want to Googles AI chief warns of growing AGI risks

DB: The idea is incredibly ancient. In Greek myth, Hephaestus creates golden workers to help him in his workshop. Jewish legend brings us the Golem. The idea that one might build autonomous servants out of inanimate material is thousands of years old.

For something closer to what we would recognize as a computer, Jonathan
Swifts Gullivers Travels gives us a wonderful early example in the 18th century. The Engine of Lagado randomly rearranges words in the hope of generating useful knowledge. Read today, it looks uncannily like a satirical ancestor of generative AI.

The term artificial intelligence in the modern sense of machine learning and reasoning was coined in the 1950s by computer scientist John McCarthy and thats when it starts creeping into TV and film too. There are some great
early Twilight Zone and Star Trek episodes about the possibilities and perils of machines in our homes and workplaces.

TR: Which are your personal favorite sci-fi AIs/robots, or movies and TV shows that involve AI?

KV: Im a Lawnmower Man aficionado, but having worked on the actual Transformers franchise, Im also a Decepticon through and through.

DB: Im a huge sci-fi geek, and to this day I maintain that R2-D2 is the most important character in Star Wars . He has a mission, gets on with it, saves everybody repeatedly and barely receives any credit.

But I also nerd out over Marvin in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy , the Cylons in both versions of Battlestar Galactica , and, of course, Data in
Star Trek: The Next Generation , who Id argue is the character on the real heros journey in that series.

Side note: HAL 9000 slightly infuriates me, mainly because people have been quoting Im sorry, Dave, Im afraid I cant do that at me personally for
decades. R2-D2 the true hero of Star Wars ? (Image credit: Shutterstock / Logan Bush) TR: Do you think our myths about conscious machines have influenced the real development of AI?

KV: Absolutely! Human life is all about dreaming up concepts to adore or fear; its how we roll.

DB: Todays engineers and entrepreneurs grew up on Star Wars , Star Trek , Isaac Asimov and William Gibson, and theres good evidence that science
fiction influences the people who go on to build the future. One 2022 study found that 93 per cent of UK astronomers enjoyed science fiction, for instance, and 69 per cent said it had influenced their career decisions.

Sometimes the connection is very direct. Pete Bonasso at TRACLabs has
credited HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey as an inspiration for his work
on NASA space AI systems. Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics were invented for fiction, but theyve become a reference point for real-world thinking about AI safety. Google DeepMinds 2024 Robot Constitution, for example, sets out
safety rules for machines in a way that is very much in that tradition.

TR: What do you think of the current crop of AI models?

DB: I follow this area as closely as I can, although you have to bear in
mind that it changes almost daily. Weve just seen another generation of frontier models arrive. It moves fast, which is fascinating for tech writers, although it also explains why we wrote a book largely about things that happened hundreds of years ago rather than trying to capture the state of AI in 2026!

When it comes to video games still my day-to-day working life I believe its going to be important to work out what new experiences AI can bring to the table, not just how quickly they can automate existing processes.

KV: Theyre facsimiles of every book, TV series, movie or game weve ever imbibed. Theyre not as clever as we are and they never will be.

TR: Do you think of AI as a threat to humanity, or as an opportunity?

KV: A super opportunity to ride alongside a civilizations worth of
knowledge? Its almost too good to be true. If you think about it, until AI came along, humans held a monopoly on intelligence. We kind of only knew what we could discover or search for as humans (history is always written by the victor). Today, we can effectively outsource our thirst for knowledge to something else and tell it how we should understand the results; for the most part, we get balance: the rest is sponsored content!

DB: It feels glib simply to say both, although Im tempted. Personally, Im an optimist by nature, and I like to believe the general direction of travel is towards progress, growth and better lives. That doesnt mean everybody
prospers equally, or that there arent important battles over jobs, ownership, ethics and power along the way. William Gibson famously said that the future is already here; its just not evenly distributed. I think thats a useful way to think about AI too. The interesting question isnt simply whether the technology is good or bad, but who prospers from it, who controls it, and how widely any benefits (and risks) are shared. I'm sorry, Dave... (Image credit: Google) TR: Do you think well ever reach man-made super intelligence, and if we do what happens then?

KV: We have man-made everything else, dont we? Why should this be different? For me, the detail lies in sentience. We already have man-made superintelligence, but we dont have fully operational sentience yet. When something can blink its eye without thinking as quickly as humans can, well, lets talk again.

DB: I dont think its going to emerge simply by scaling todays transformer models, regardless of some of the more excitable predictions around them. However clever and interesting LLMs are, these are fundamentally
probabilistic systems that generate text, images and other media. That doesnt make them conscious.

An omnipotent silicon supervillain, like Skynet, makes for good screen drama but if we do eventually create genuine superintelligence by some route, Id actually hope that a networked brain with access to vast amounts of information, capable of seeing problems from many different perspectives, would naturally tend towards connection and assistance rather than destruction. But Im not nave about it. Systems also magnify our biases, flaws and prejudices. Thats why alignment matters.

TR: What have you learned about humanity's approach to AI from writing this book?

KV: That were the only stakeholders. Were the arbiters of our own creation(s); if we don't like it, well kill it. If we love it, well marry it. AI is all of us, and my main worry is that only 6% of the worlds population currently decides on how the other 94% will live, work and adapt to an AI future. However, if the past is to be believed, were probably going to be ok. (Famous last words, I know!)

DB: Technology and automation are things humans do. What became very
apparent is that humans repeatedly try to create things in their own image, while simultaneously struggling with the implications of that. We worry about job losses, replacement and loss of identity. Were fascinated by creating something powerful, then immediately frightened that it might overthrow us. But the fear of the servant who will turn on us, or the untrustworthy ally
who might sneakily replace us, is not limited to machines, right? We might project those stories onto computers in our books and films, but the subtext is often about human paranoia around class, politics, war

More specifically, theres a recurring oscillation between loving and fearing our own technology. In the 1970s, amid Cold War paranoia, computers were frequently instruments of doom: Colossus, Cylons, HAL 9000, even VGer in Star Trek: The Motion Picture . In the 1980s, as PCs and games consoles became familiar household playthings, popular culture increasingly gave us machines as loyal companions: KITT, Metal Mickey, Twiki, Nono and Data. Then the pendulum swings back: by the late 1980s and 1990s, we get The Terminator and The Matrix . You can trace those alternating waves of optimism and anxiety
all the way back through the Industrial Revolution. The technology changes, but our emotional responses to it are remarkably consistent. Author bios and book details Kelly Vero Author

Kelly Vero has worked in video games and technology for 30 years, from programming to senior management, working on titles including Tomb Raider , the Halo series, the Transformers series, and Subway Surfers . Vero is an international keynote speaker and leading gamification and metaverse thought leader, regularly featured in tech lists and future lists such as Forbes 100 Women of the Future, an award-winning educator, and an award-nominated and bestselling author whose nonfiction works include Breaking Through Bytes: Women Shaping the Digital World , and From Pixels to Portals: How Video Games Made the Metaverse . She lives in Zurich, Switzerland. Dave Bradley Author

Dave Bradley has worked in the media for nearly 30 years as a magazine and online journalist, writer, editor, and event host and as a senior manager and consultant. He has written for and edited newsstand publications including Microsoft Windows: The Official Magazine , SFX , Comic Heroes , and more, and has written and published for online publications including Pocket Gamer , PC Games Insider , Crime Fiction Lover, and others. A huge science fiction fan, Bradley watches movies, plays games and travels a lot. He curates the AI Gamechangers newsletter and appears frequently at Pocket Gamer Connects conferences. He lives in Bath, United Kingdom. Myth-Made Machines: The
Stories Behind Artificial Intelligence

co-written by Dave Bradley and Kelly Vero

Published by Bloomsbury on 3rd September 2026

Available as ebook or hardcover Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us
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