Artificial Intelligence: Are we creating a new Frankenstein?

Abstract

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) is an English novelist best known for her Gothic novel[1] Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, written in 1818. In this novel, Victor Frankenstein, an excellent young scientist specialized in chemistry but also connoisseur of other sciences, develops a genius technique to impart life in a huge humanoid that he constructed using parts of dead human bodies. However, when he sees his creature come into life he abandons it terrified. As the creature wanders without an aim or help, it faces human enmity and that transforms it to a maniac for vengeance, extremely directed against its creator. It does not hesitate to murder the persons who are most precious to Victor, including his younger brother and even his bride at the night of their wedding. Victor starts a desperate chase of his creature that leads him to the North Pole, where he dies of exhaustion. The Creature, seeing him dead, mourns for him and, having decided to die too, drifts away on an ice raft and is  soon "lost in darkness and distance", never to be seen again.¹ Although the “Creature” remains nameless in the novel, it is usually referred in every-day practice with the name of its creator. That’s why the name “Frankenstein” is often used metaphorically to describe an evil existence that causes death and destruction (fig. 1).