So, Yeah, AI Is Already Taking Our Jobs

A new study sheds light — or rather shadow — on the job question

Source: HBR

Automation wasn’t invented in the 19th-century factories of the Industrial Revolution, nor during the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century. The idea of machines imitating human actions goes back much further. We have to travel two thousand years into the past, to the 3rd century BCE, during the Hellenistic period — a time long before even the steam engine, which some believe was first developed in a rudimentary form by the Romans.

In the sunlit archipelagos that populate the Aegean Sea southeast of what’s Turkey today, you’d find the influential maritime power of Rhodes. And somewhere between Rhodes and the Library of Alexandria (depending on when you arrived), you might encounter the renowned poet and scholar Apollonius. While he didn’t invent the concept of automation, he’s credited with one of the earliest — and most influential — stories of machine’s power over man.

I’m referring to the myth of Talos, the bronze automaton who guarded Crete, tasked by Hephaestus to fend off invaders, pirates, and any sailor with questionable intentions. It didn’t last long — or so Jason and his Argonauts might recount today. They confronted and ultimately defeated the giant sentinel, but only with the help of the sorceress Medea…