Prometheus and the Prehistory of AI with Professor Adluri
Professor Adluri traces the philosophical origins of machine creation from Prometheus to modern AI, connecting ancient myth to contemporary technology.
Why we picked this
This is the kind of talk that reframes a contemporary debate by going 2,500 years upstream. Adluri doesn't just use Prometheus as metaphor — he argues it's the actual philosophical lineage of AI.
Long before silicon and training data, humans were already asking what it means to create an intelligent being and what responsibilities follow from that act. Professor Adluri begins where the question actually starts: with the Titan who stole fire from the gods and handed it to humanity, and the long tradition of thought that myth spawned.
The talk traces a through-line from ancient Greek myth through Enlightenment philosophy and into the modern era of machine learning. Adluri’s argument is not merely analogical — he contends that the conceptual problems at the center of AI development are direct descendants of questions first posed in the ancient world about creation, consciousness, and the moral status of beings we bring into existence.
The Olio Lighthouse hosts intimate, intellectually serious conversations. This one puts the deepest questions about AI back where Adluri argues they belong: inside a 2,500-year-old tradition of thought about creation and moral obligation.