Mary Shelley Publishes Frankenstein

As mechanization rose throughout the globe in the nineteen century, much like AI is today, we faced similar fears of humanity's power to construct its own intelligent beings. Thankfully, in the twenty-first century, that fear has entirely disappeared. Oh. Isaac Asimov would go on to name the fear the novel dramatizes the “Frankenstein complex.”

We know about the fears of people two hundred years ago through their art and culture like, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus which was published anonymously in London in three volumes on January 1, 1818. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley had begun it in the summer of 1816 near Geneva, when Lord Byron proposed that each member of his party, including Mary and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, write a ghost story.

The story itself if well known. Scientist, Victor Frankenstein, assembles a living being and ultimately their relationship sours. The "monster" learns language by listening in secret and turns on its maker.

Many further such stories have been told, including films like The Terminator and the Matrix. But humanity's ability to create its own destruction has been persistent fear in our psyche.