Homer’s Intelligent Machines

Abstract

Abstract Through close literary analysis of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, this chapter traces the various gradations of weak to strong machine ‘intelligence’ that these ancient poems describe and the mind models that they assume. Beginning with a re-examination of the weak AI evinced in Homer’s descriptions of relatively simple automata, it goes on to analyse Homer’s autonomous vehicles and golden slave girls, considering the more sophisticated models of artificial mind and machine cognition attributed to Homer’s stronger, embodied AI. Throughout, this chapter asks: What kinds of priorities and paradigms do we find in AI stories from Homeric epic and how do these still resonate in contemporary discourse on AI? In particular, what distinctions does Homer draw between artificial and human minds and intelligences? And what is the legacy of Homer’s intelligent machines and the ancient narrative history of AI?

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