The Sprites and Fairies of AI

Lord Byron, The Mad Genius

The celebrated English poet Lord Byron once experienced the majesty of the mythical marbled temple of Poseidon at Sounion. It was there that he must have felt an overwhelming grandeur of the setting sun because it wasn’t merely a gamble for his dying wish to be buried under ancient Greece’s ruins. That place must have stirred up a profound fondness in the poet’s heart for the land’s ancient grace. There is an unsuspecting endless chain of myths and legends that show our obsession with stories of creation, the roots of which form an eternal bond between imagination and science. Unknowingly, Lord Byron was caught in a woven path that would eventually branch into a full force pursuit for the enigma of intelligence.  

Place me on Sunium’s marble steep— Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep: There, swan-like, let me sing and die;

^{Lord Byron, The Isles of Greece}

It was no secret Byron admired ancient Greek culture. He swam the Hellespont, the present-day Dardanelles, imitating the mythical Leander, who swam across every night to meet his forbidden love. Before Byron, it was thought impossible to achieve such a feat. Later in his life he would secure substantial loans that would make him able to take command of his own fleet and offer financial and logistic support to Greece. His contribution in their fight against the Ottoman Empire has been historically rewarded by naming at least one street “οδός βύρωνος” (Byron Street) in nearly every Greek city. So profound was Byron’s devotion, he was willing to die for the Greek cause, a fate he did meet in the end. “Die I must: I feel it. Its loss I do not lament; for to terminate my wearisome existence I came to Greece.—My wealth, my abilities, I devoted to her cause”. By infusing his poems with elements from Greek mythology, Byron tried to convey his ideals, unmasking the degeneracy that plagued his contemporary society. He would also repeatedly imbue himself with divine and heroic qualities, finding pleasure in tales concerning Hades, Prometheus and Leander.

Truly, Byron was precisely that, a poetic renegade, a true rockstar, a reckless spender, some might have even called him morally fractured; “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, as one of his more unhinged girlfriends put it so lyrically. He was lustful and wildly extravagant even by the most tame measure. But, he was also a beloved figure in England; a national treasure.

Drama was Byron’s constant companion, a man who enjoyed life going from scandal to scandal. There was no rest for him in England, especially not after the break up with his crazy girlfriend who unveiled profane practices such as homosexuality and incest with his own sister. At least, that’s what she alleged. This was not at all an unbiased account of course, because at this point Byron was married and had a daughter with Annabella Milbanke. Unfortunately for Byron, the slander confirmed the brooding suspicions Annabella had over him. His marriage with Annabella was stale and probably a necessary political fabrication to mask his upheavals and problems to the general public. Byron was becoming heavily burdened by the consequences of his failed marriage, sordid affairs and mounting debts that compelled him to leave England in 1816 and vow to never return.

Dark Story Commence

The year of 1816 was exceptionally dark and not just figuratively for Byron because it was aptly called the year without a summer. It was thought to be a volcanic winter, a worldwide phenomenon likely attributed to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous year. Unthinkable snows during the summer months, heavy rains and miserable grey days led to withering crops, impoverishment and immense suffering in Europe, especially in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Luckily, Byron was having an affair with Mary Shelley’s step sister, someone who eventually arranged the gathering of the literary prodigies of Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and John Polidori in Switzerland, they met in Villa Diodati which Byron had rented for a few months that same year.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,  And men forgot their passions in the dread

^{Lord Byron, Darkness}

Byron was fond of the macabre and the Gothic arts but the darkness and dread of that year was a clear source for him to propose a contest to the group of friends on who would write the most compelling horror story. And thus around a log fire at Byron’s villa, the conversation turned to the principles of life and to “whether man was to be thought merely an instrument”. It is safe to assume these savants discussed then and there the tragedy of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (460 BCE), where the Titan Prometheus steals back the knowledge of fire from Zeus and gifts it to humanity. Fire is what gave mankind the ability to think for itself and manipulate the world in their own accord, it’s the source of technology, crafts and arts. In one account, Prometheus is also credited to have sculpted humanity out of mud, which the goddess Athena then infused with the breath of life.

Life from lifeless things, animated entities, these subjects were the center stage that evening that led Mary Shelley to write her short ghost-story “The Modern Prometheus”. It tells the story of a ghastly and hideous creature that gets rejected by society and its own creator, although the creature itself is capable of thought and reasoning. Mary drew inspiration from the contemporary attempts to understand life and the clear link to the myth of Prometheus. Can we create a living organism out of a hunk of clay? What makes us alive, is it a necessary vital force within us, is it electricity, is all life made from simpler parts? Mary immortalized the conception of autonomous thought and life under the title “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus”.

Mary’s horror story is essentially a cautionary tale of the dangers that come from the desire for mocking the stupendous mechanism of god’s abilities. Man is limited in sight for the consequences of its own doing. Overreaching science and the oversight of ethical consequences will bite us in the back and Prometheus (=forethought) is the only one that can help us.

I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

^{Mary Shelley dreamt this}

It wasn’t the only masterpiece written then, Byron wrote a vampiric novel “A Fragment of a Novel” inspired by his travels in the Balkan. Which John Polidori then transformed into his own magnus opus “The Vampyre’’. Polidori took the liberty of basing the main character on Byron’s grotesque personality. His novela would be the first fictional vampire work in the modern form we recognize today.

The God of Artificial Intelligence

Since fire was a divine possession on the Olympus, Zeus was of course enraged by Prometheus’ theft. In his fury, he set out to inflict punishment on both humankind and the defiant Prometheus. He ordered the limp god of fire and metalworking Hephaestus to quickly assemble an entity from mud and water and make it follow Zeus’ commands without hesitation. This being was named Pandora (Πανδώρα: all-giving) as all the gods poured in their own abilities - ultimately a woe for men who live on bread because Pandora was evil disguised in beauty. And by lack of her own will, she opened a jar unleashing death and sickness into the world, from this day onwards Prometheus’ actions would doom humanity. The Greek poet Hesiod makes a rather important distinction by saying that Pandora was made and not born. It is what separates us, the living, from the artificial. Her sole purpose was to infiltrate the human world and carry out her programming. Zeus then commands Hephaestus to chain Prometheus to a mountain and send an eagle to feast on Prometheus’ liver every day, his liver would then regenerate constantly during the night as he was immortal. The hungry eagle was not a simple bird sent by Zeus, it was said to be a bronze automaton made by Hephaestus, constructed for the sole purpose of torment.

Hephaestus set away the bellows from the fires and with a sponge he wiped his face. He then took up a stout staff and went to the doorway limping. And in support of their lord, moved his attendants. These are golden, and in appeareance like living maids. There is intelligence in their hearts, and in them there is speech and strenght, and they know cunning handiwork by gift of the immortal gods.

The theme of animating the lifeless is not uncommon in Greek mythology. The fragment is from Homer’s iliad written around the 7th century BCE telling the story of how the Greek god created golden maidens to aid him at his workplace. It’s one of the first written mentions of the idea of self operating machines: mechanical beings acting on what seems out of their own free will. Throughout Greek mythology, Hephaestus seems to be the all-father of automata, forging devices such as a colossal bronze guardian to patrol the beaches of Crete and intelligent golden hounds. A more remarkable mention is how Hephaestus crafts a set of self-propelled tripods to cater the gods; these were akin pieces of furniture that moved mechanically by the interaction of multiple independent parts. It is important to distinguish between mechanically self-operating entities and those that draw inspiration from living beings; it highlights how the concept of mechanics can be universally applied even if this originates in myth.

On each side there were gold and silver hounds, immortal and ageless for all time, which Hephaestus had crafted with intelligent minds

We see this concept likewise applied in the myth of Odysseus. Odysseus shipwrecks on the coast of Phaeacia, the local king then offers one of his own ships to sail back. However, his ships were built very differently and Odysseus quickly learns that he can be brought home without needing human pilots or rowers; the ship steers a course by means of its own intelligence, without ever fearing damage or shipwreck. Things could move on their own and it needn’t be an imitation of life.

Name your country, your people and your city, so our ships may take you home, steering a course by means of their own intelligence. Phaeacian ships have no helmsman or steering oar, for the ships themselves know our thoughts and wishes

Hephaestus’ Mortal Legacy

If each instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which [Hesiod] relates that “Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus.” A shuttle would then weave of itself, and a plectrum would do its own harp playing. In this situation managers would not need subordinates and masters would not need slaves.

^{Aristotle, Politics}

Many of the ancient science fiction tales were grounded in the cunning and ingenuity of the gods; it was only through them that these objects could gain autonomy. So at first sight it seems impressive how Aristotle remarks that society can free itself from slave labour through the deployment of non-divine automata. It’s another topic entirely whether Aristotle and his Hellenic contemporaries genuinely believed this to be a possibility and it’s much debated to what extent their conceptions mirror our modern understanding of robots and machine-driven mass production. We know that the automata of ancient Greeks were typically used as toys for theatrical purposes or as mere philosophical tools, there is little evidence to suggest they were used for more productive means.

Yet philosophically, Aristotle’s thoughts about the social impact of mechanical labour presages some of the issues we are grappling with today. It shows how the ancients were already conceiving of some sort of idea of replicating nature, at the bare minimum through myths and sagas. The universe appears to conspire a mechanistic nature and in this regard the thought of something being able to resolve our work in a magical or mechanical manner does not seem unimaginable by any society and has been effortlessly observed in other cultures. Aristotle goes further to use a comparison to theatrical automata in his Generation of Animals, an attempt to explain the genesis of an organism by virtue of how the sperm seems to be the cause that sets in motion an ever expanding chain reaction.

Just as in the automata, a part moves in some way without being touched at all at present, but having been touched in the past, in this way too the source of the embryo or what made it causes it to move, having been touched by something in the past but not now being touched anymore; in some way the indwelling motion [works], just as house-building makes a house.

^{Aristotle, Generation of Animals}

It’s his point precisely on the characteristic of the living that is echoed by the inventive machines from his time.

The animated figures stand Adorning every public street And seem to breathe in stone or move their marble feet.

^Pindar

And the thought wasn’t just reserved for highly regarded philosophers, the poet Pindar captures the common fascination held for automata on the island of Rhodes with his short poem. Moving statues and self-operating devices were a testament to human ingenuity and the innate desire to mimic the vivacity of nature. Early engineers and inventors like Ctesibius of Alexandria and Philo of Byzantium were probably the first to properly describe the use of pneumatics for automata. Ctesibius (270 BCE) is said to have invented a water organ, singing statues, and most notably the clepsydra which held the title of the most accurate chronometer until the advent of the pendulum clock in the 1600s. Hero of Alexandria (60 AD) likewise appeared to have constructed pneumatic and steam-powered devices that were precursors to our modern engines. In his work pneumatics he harnesses the steam-engine to choreograph figurines dancing on a moving altar. Birds and gods, carved in solid matter, were given the illusion of movement and song on their pedestals. He also ingeniously described how to open temple doors automatically using the invisible forces of steam and water pressure to perform the role of unseen guards. It’s a pity that it remains unclear whether his documented designs for these devices were truly brought to life.

From mythical tales and the verses of Pindar to the commentary of Aristotle and the engineers of Alexandria, we see the ancients standing at the intersection of art and engineering, they had the common admiration for the mimicry of the ceaseless pulse of nature. An appreciation that would not end in any form. Aristotle’s suspicion that some processes in the universe unfold mechanistically would be a faint prelude to the dawn of the industrial revolution. All it takes is a single initiated action that unleashes a sophisticated sequence of programming.

Like Looms Weave Flowers and Leaves

The Jacquard loom from the 1800s would embody just that. The loom bore a head capable of using replaceable punched cards to control a sophisticated sequence of operations. A series of punched cards contained the pattern of the loom’s weave and by simply changing the cards one could alter the weaving pattern. It closely resembled the important notion of programming and data entry. Charles Babbage knew the Jacquard loom and planned to use such a punched card system to store programs in his analytical engine, which would be the successor to the difference engine that is often regarded as the first mechanical computer. Babbage managed to convince the Italian engineer Luigi Menebrea to pen a comprehensive overview of the capabilities of the Aaalytical engine. Menebrea went on to publish an article on the subject in French. Both Menebrea and Babbage understood the potential of the analytical engine for tackling complex and tedious computations, including tasks such as solving rudimentary linear equation systems and expanding product terms.

However, both of them wouldn’t be the ones to elevate Babbage’s invention to the next level. It takes someone more subtle of heart holding the mathematical rigour to do so. He eventually found precisely the person who would possess an unearthly gracefulness he endearingly called “lady fairy”; Ada Augusta Countess of Lovelace - a woman borne from the tumultuous union of Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke. Although Ada would never meet her father, she was an undeniable analogue to him. Much to the dislike of her mother, she would lace the remnants of Byron’s poetic passion and Hellenic love into her work to create an insight beyond mere computation. Annabella was determined to prevent Ada from following the same romantic shadow as her father. The mere thought filled her with such dread that she undertook to rigorously train Ada in logic and mathematics, which were disciplines not typically pursued by women of that era, but both were something Annabella was fond of. It’s the reason she was called distinctively by Lord Byron “the princess of parallelograms”. And yet Ada carried a certain fine-spun Byronic fervor that kept her mother in anxious disquiet until her death. Ada had an appetite for curiosity, it showed in her interests ranging from flight and neuroscience to life’s vital forces (Mesmerism) and from poetry to her proficiency with the harp and piano. Ultimately, it was in the realms of mathematics and computation where she would astound us.

Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child! ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart? When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled

^{Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s pilgrimage Canto III}

During his self-funded revolution, Byron’s mind was consumed by Ada and the fight for Greece in his last moments in the agony of death. The prospect of meeting his end in Greece offered him a measure of solace, a refuge that stopped the stream of tears he shed when uttering Ada’s name. And so his final swan song swept murmuring Greece and Ada, though it encompassed merely half of what he wished, it was arguably his most profound portion in life. He died at the age of 36.

Bow down in hope, in thanks, all ye who mourn;— ⁠Where’in that peerless arche of radiant hues ⁠Surpassing earthly tints,—the storm subdues!

^{Augusta Ada Byron, The Rainbow}

Ada was thus trained in the formal arts and her mathematical prowess was later certainly not gone unnoticed. Augustus De Morgan which at some point became the mathematical mentor of Ada would confidentially remark to Annabella how Ada’s cognitive abilities “has been something so utterly out of the common way for any beginner, man or woman”. He would further admire Ada commenting how in the case she would have been a young male beginner going into Cambridge “they would have certainly made him an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first rate eminence”.

“I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo…I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one’s elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar.

^{Ada Augusta Byron, in a letter to Augustus De Morgan about mathetmatical formulas.}

Ada translated Menebrea’s article into english and would extend it considerably with her notes. Her work on computing the Bernoulli numbers is seen as the first computer program. Ada would be the first to notice how you can repeat certain code segments and she would see how one should be diligently precise in every way when programming the analytical engine, already understanding the potential for generating bugs or errors. But what’s more important is that she envisioned a future where computation was more than mere number-crunching.

We may say most aptly, that the analytical engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

^{Ada Augusta Byron, Notes on Menebrea’s translated article}

Ada was the first to foresee the analytical engine’s potential for tackling tasks beyond arithmetic operations; a tool that could manipulate any data represented symbolically. She speculated that music, artwork, and even scientific discoveries could all be formulated as elaborate calculations and processed by the machine. She saw how the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible to “the abstract science of operations” and how, if adjusted accordingly, the analytical engine could then create complex and methodical music pieces of any length or complexity. Just by simply following the necessary steps, following a carefully constructed musical algorithm.

The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the analytical engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science.

^{Ada Augusta Byron, Notes on Menebrea’s translated article}

This visionary insight placed her far ahead of her time, as she hinted at the dawn of an era where machines wouldn’t just calculate, but create. She was endlessly weaving art with computation and it turned out historically a deficiency for both Menebrea and Babbage as they lacked Lovelace’s enchanting predisposition. She demonstrated the potential of imagination to illuminate what calculation could not. It’s what she called “Poetical science” that empowered her with a unique perspective. She had the ability to perceive a reality that unfortunately would not be obvious to others for at least another hundred years.

Lady Lovelace’s Objection

In her vision, she saw a deficiency in the analytical engine, however. A thought that she wouldn’t have known would leave a profound impact ever after. Not because her comment was directly applied afterwards, but rather because her underestimation of the matter would stir up a new series of questions on the enigmatic nature of intelligence. From this point onwards it’s out of the question that machines could operate on their own, but it would be a different subject whether these would have in turn their own thoughts, contemplate their own affairs or reason about the world as opposed to just act in accordance to their immediate environment.

Lovelace importantly mentions how

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.

^{Ada Augusta Byron, Notes on Menebrea’s translated article}

The passage is what Alan Turing a hundred years later names “Lady Lovelace’s objection”. It’s far from an unfair assessment given that she never had a chance to work directly on the physical machine (it was never really built), and her time spent with the analytical engine was unfortunately quite brief. It highlights the limitations of the machine, emphasizing its inability to create and anticipate, which is a crucial distinction between AI and human intelligence. A machine cannot reason on the relationship between the symbols, it can only carry out commands. He raises the question on intelligence for the first time in his seminal paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, where he presents the imitation game, he tries to refute Lovelace’s objection in defense of the question central to his debate “Can machines think?”. Alan therein agrees with the notion that Ada’s remark does not imply that it may not be possible to construct electronic equipment which will “think for itself”, it rather tells us that Ada did not have sufficient evidence to think in that manner. The distinction here is whether machines can demonstrate tangible creativity. Alan continues to question whether a machine can be made to create novel ideas from initial ideas. Humans seem to undeniably be able to transform one idea into many subsequent ones, we are said to be supercritical, while animals or a piano are subcritical, they will eventually fall into silence after being set into motion by an initial “idea”.

Supercritically, Ada’s thoughts influenced Alan into thinking on the distinction between carrying out programming and how that relates to the issue of creativity. In what way can machines surprise us? He hypothesized that machines would fulfil this condition if they bring forth results that were not directly anticipated. He considered the potential for artificial intelligence to develop to the point where it could rival human thought. Yet, he also acknowledged the limitations of the machinery and programming of his time, considering the enormous complexity of the human brain and its capacity for creativity and intuitive thought.

The Promise of Intelligence

These ideas paved the way for the development of AI research and laid the groundwork for the Dartmouth conference, where the term “artificial intelligence” was first coined. It’s at this juncture that the journey into exploring the potential of artificial intelligence truly begins, with Turing’s paper sparking the debate and setting the stage for the ongoing exploration of machine intelligence and creativity. His insights offered a starting point for the researchers who would endeavour to propose the following.

The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.

^{McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon, 1955 Dartmouth Proposal}

This conference saw the inception of many of the sub-areas of artificial intelligence we know today and shaped how we perceived the problem of intelligence for decades afterwards. Now, AI takes a more primordial form where the concepts of thinking and creativity have been brought to a valley where it’s increasingly more difficult to distinguish a human creation from a machine’s. While the concepts of intelligent machines may have once been the realm of myth and fantasy for ancient philosophers and poets, we are now on the precipice of an era where these distinctions are dissolving, bringing machinery ever closer to the realm of humanity.

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve and mirror our own human traits, it prompts us to reassess the uniqueness of the human condition. Once, creation was thought to be the exclusive domain of the divine creators, a territory fit only for mythical figures like Prometheus and Hephaestus. We are now challenging them in a way we haven’t done before. There is a certain sense of solitude in this new realm, a land where imagination is being overstretched, where myth and folklore of old are being eclipsed. Before long there will be no ancient gods to revere as we simply begin to forge our own.

Byronic Harmony

At heart, Ada Lovelace eventually became the mirror image of her father Lord Byron, most likely to her mother’s disapproval. Her later life would be riddled with affairs, gambling debts and disease. She died at 36 years of age, just like her father. Perhaps in defiance of her mother or perhaps because she esteemed her father, it was either way undeniably poetic to request to be interred alongside him.

“There are in all extensions of human power, or additions to human knowledge, various collateral influences, besides the main and primary object attained.”

^{Ada Augusta Byron, Notes on Menebrea’s translated article}

It was the tug of war between mathematics and poetry that made her think differently that would make her the remarkable woman that she was. Ada saw how different disciplines are intricately woven together. It’s not necessarily about the evident and immediate contributions of one’s work. Realization and invention are non-linear, non-euclidean processes. It is why it seems so strange to us that Ada and Hero of Alexandria feel so far ahead of their time. And perhaps Hero was not actually that far ahead, maybe Ada Lovelace did not need complex imagination from the arts to arrive at her conclusions. Was it merely the case that Hero lacked that interdisciplinary perspective to apply his inventions for production or is the missing ingredient in this process the social necessity for automata? It wasn’t obvious how automation could transform every aspect of life. How manufacturing processes can be sped up to shift the socioeconomic landscape. In the grand scheme of progress, each thread, each discipline, contributes to the overall pattern. The myths, poetry, science and early engineering of the ancients spark philosophical questions and conundrums which bear implications that will continue to resonate. It takes one simple observation from a lady or one mad man with a fervent passion to start a chain reaction where each moment of realization adds a new dimension leading us to where we are.

Those who view mathematical science, not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, whose intrinsic beauty, symmetry and logical completeness, when regarded in their connexion together as a whole, entitle them to a prominent place in the interest of all profound and logical minds, but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world, and those unceasing changes of mutual relationship which, visibly or invisibly, consciously or unconsciously to our immediate physical perceptions, are interminably going on in the agencies of the creation we live amidst: those who thus think on mathematical truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man can most effectually read his Creator’s works, will regard with especial interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its principles into explicit practical forms.

^{Ada Augusta Byron, Notes on Menebrea’s translated article}