I was absolutely floored at the detail and the descriptions of what these different relics would actually do - super advanced! Many of them were made as centrepieces for banquets but looked way too important for that (can't impress fellow members of the aristocracy too much).
I distinctly remember a ship that would drive around on the table, with music coming from inside of it - many of the men looked like they would move around on deck - and finally the ship would fire real tiny cannonballs across the table, imagine that at a dinnerparty in 1585, almost 500 years ago!
If you are interested in ancient Greek "robots" then I can recommend the book Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology by Adrienne Mayor.
He was inspired to start building automata by the Cabaret Mechanical Theater in Covent Garden in the 80s/90s - which was my absolute favourite thing to do in London back then.
Humans for much of history have understood the implications and potential of 'artificiality.' It is important also to remember the etymology of art, not as the way we think of it now as a piece of paint on the wall to be looked at, but rather any kind of craft that utilizes human design and creativity. (see greek τέχνη)
This is just one obscure historical witness to this...
I've heard AI used to describe the early versions of things that perform the duties that we always imagined an AI would. Like how Siri is basically just an expert system with some NLP, but if we had a genuinely intelligent helper, it would behave exactly like Siri across a narrow range of tasks.
https://www.khm.at/objektdb/?id=11227&L=0&q%5B%5D=automaton&...
I was absolutely floored at the detail and the descriptions of what these different relics would actually do - super advanced! Many of them were made as centrepieces for banquets but looked way too important for that (can't impress fellow members of the aristocracy too much).
I distinctly remember a ship that would drive around on the table, with music coming from inside of it - many of the men looked like they would move around on deck - and finally the ship would fire real tiny cannonballs across the table, imagine that at a dinnerparty in 1585, almost 500 years ago!