Create CE 1373 Albertus Magnus' Metal Statue.md

Stories/CE 1373 Albertus Magnus' Metal Statue.md

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+---
+layout: story
+title: "Albertus Magnus' Metal Statue"
+story-status:
+  wip: true
+  issue:146
+historical-date:
+  title: "Albertus Magnus' Metal Statue"
+  bce: false
+  year: 1373
+  source: [https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/the-history-of-the-americas/the-conquest-of-mexico/for-students/what-the-textbooks-have-to-say-about-the-conquest-of-mexico](https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198846666.003.0004)
+  author: Kang & Halliburton
+  source-date: 2020
+category: improving-research
+authors: Ismael Kherroubi Garcia
+contributors: Julie Samuels (conceptualisation)
+tags: ["Science Influencers","What We Value"]
+media:
+  source: link to the site where the image is; delete line if there is no image
+  caption: ALT text and acknowledgement of source; delete line if there is no image
+read-more: link to the story's pertinent document/article/book, if there is one; otherwise, delete line
+intro: Spanish officials appear to control most of the narrative around their colonisation of Mexico
+---
+### The Story
+<!-- Paste the story into this line! Remember the old adage: a line is a paragraph, and a blank line must be placed between paragraphs. -->
+History shows that human-kind is naturally curious about both creation and intelligence. 
+At the intersection, we find what we now commonly refer to as “artificial intelligence” or “AI.” 
+In often fictional contexts, “AI” refers to artefacts – whether physical robots or disembodied algorithms – that have some attributes we usually ascribe to humans – such as consciousness. 
+In stricter academic settings, the term “AI” is a marketing gimmick that is more attractive than “cybernetics.” 
+More generally, “AI” is a fraught concept, referring to cutting-edge research techniques, a myriad of technologies, and fictional imaginations.
+
+This essay focuses on one such fictional imagination: Albertus Magnus’ “metal statue,” a 13th-century creation that was first mentioned in passing and which has been reinterpreted throughout the centuries in different ways. 
+Outlining an abridged version of The Android of Albertus Magnus, we provide a simplified narrative about how humanity has engaged with “AI” and continues to do so centuries later.
+
+#### Albertus Magnus’ “Metal Statue”
+The moral treatise “Rosaio della vita” was written in 1373, supposedly by the Florentine merchant Matteo Corsini. 
+The treatise teaches Christian virtues through various narratives. 
+The following passage – which we focus on in this essay – is presented by Corsini to illustrate that the ignorant may erroneously fear intellectual endeavours:
+
+“We find that Albertus Magnus, of the Preaching Friars, had such a great mind that he was able to make a metal statue modelled after the course of the planets, and endowed with such a capacity for reason that it spoke: and it was not from a diabolical art or necromancy – great intellects do not delight in such things because it is something that makes one lose his soul and body; such arts are forbidden by the faith of Christ. One day, a monk went to find Albertus in his cell. As Albertus was not there, the statue replied. The monk, thinking that it was an idol of evil invention, broke it. When Albertus returned, he was very angry, telling the monk that it had taken him thirty years to make this piece and “that I did not gain this knowledge in the Order of the Friars.” The monk replied, “I have done wrong; please forgive me. What, can’t you make another one?” Albertus responded that it would be thirty thousand more years before another could be made, as that planet had made its course and it would not return before that time.”
+
+The story presents an inventor with “a great mind” creating a metal statue with “capacity for reason.” In contraposition stands a monk who destroyed the artefact out of fear and ignorance. This dialectic is one that we readily find in the AI ethics discourse of today, with technosolutionists being challenged by sceptical experts who value more socially informed approaches to the problems of our age.
+
+Whilst the “intellect-vs-ignoramus” dialectic has evolved, and the stances have become blurred in recent times, there is no doubt that modern debates about the ethics of AI have inherited the dynamics proposed by Corsini.
+
+#### Confusing Fiction and Reality
+In the most influential version of The Metal Statue, the 15th-century Spanish theologian Alonso Tostado responds to the question: “Can it be that some rational virtue, responding to questions, might be able to be caused naturally and astrologically?” For Tostado, the story of the metal statue means yes; we can build rational machines. Importantly, Tostado assumes that such a machine would be possible in the first place. Taking a step back, we would question this very assumption as Alan Turing did in 1950 when asking “Can machines think?” Unfortunately for Tostado, Turing and many thinkers since, this question often relies on underdetermined notions of thinking or intelligence.
+
+In relation to this story, the assumption of AI wasn’t always present. Some sceptics questioning elements of the story sought to explain how the metal statue would have spoken. Another century would pass for an explanation more convincing than astrology to be proposed. Both 16th-century scholar of magic Giambattista della Porta, and 17th-century librarian Gabriel Naudé, suggested that the statue hid a series of long pipes, at the other end of which spoke a person whose voice was conveyed by said pipes. With this, Albertus was called out for simply producing a form of trickery, as Alan Turing has been, as well as the general preoccupation with passing the “Turing Test.” 
+
+Meanwhile, the suggestion of mechanistic pipes entails a clean cut from astrological and other supernatural devices. This legitimises AI as a more scientific endeavour, as was done when the term “AI” was first proposed in the 1950s. Notwithstanding, AI has continued to be seen as requiring “expertise, artistry and magic” for its development and control.
+
+#### Concluding
+From making a point about fear and ignorance in 1373 to inspiring renaissance scholars to reflect on how a metal head would be built to make eloquent utterances, we have seen how centuries-old thinkers reflected on the creation of human-like machines.
+
+Though technology has advanced a great deal since, and what we call “AI” today involves far more complex artefacts than statues and pipes, our greater scientific know-how does not seem to detract from our natural curiosity. We continue to allow our imaginations to stray; to ponder on building artefacts that are like humans – what Naudé called “androide.” And all this while being aware of our limited understanding of philosophically fraught concepts such as consciousness, sentience, creativity or art. We strive for fictional creations that don’t need to be informed by rigorous thought.