Peace and Tech: Part 3
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The Robots of Hephaestus
A metaphor for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
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Humanity has unlocked five technological powers that people in the ancient world seemed to think only gods could possess.
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For humanity to make sustainable progress toward peace, justice, survival, and prosperity in the twenty-first century, our five god-like technological powers must be recognized as critically important peace issues.
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Metaphors from Greek Mythology show how the ongoing escalation of these technological powers requires an even greater escalation of our Peace Literacy.
Nemesis
Messenger of Justice, Dispenser of Dues
In Greek mythology, Hephaestus is the god of fire. Ancient Greek writers used his name as a synonym for fire. Hephaestus is also a god of technology, including blacksmithing and all other forms of metalworking, as well as stonemasonry and crafts. In this image, Hephaestus is activating a robot. Why a robot? The Iliad is nearly three-thousand years old, and Hephaestus has robots in the Iliad.
Hephaestus
In the following excerpt from the Iliad, Hephaestus is working at his forge. When he steps away from his forge, his robot servants attend to him. These robots are made of gold and resemble women:
"Hephaestus left his forge and hobbled on. Handmaids ran to attend their master, all cast in gold but a match for living, breathing girls. Intelligence fills their hearts, voice and strength their frames, from the deathless gods they’ve learned their works of hand. They rushed to support their lord as he went bustling on.”
Hephaestus has other robots. These robots are cauldrons that move on their own by rolling on wheels, similar to robot vacuum cleaners and self-driving cars. When Thetis, mother of Achilles, visits Hephaestus in his workspace, she sees these self-rolling cauldrons. She finds Hephaestus:
"pressing the work on twenty, three-legged cauldrons, an array to ring the walls inside his mansion. He’d bolted golden wheels to the legs of each so all on their own speed, at a nod from him, they could roll to halls where the gods convene then roll right home again—a marvel to behold.”
In the Odyssey, also written nearly three thousand years ago, King Aklinoös is protected by robot dogs created by Hephaestus. As depicted in the Odyssey, the robot dogs were "made out of gold and silver ... fashioned by Hephaestus in his craftsmanship and cunning.” If people in ancient Greece could see the robot dogs currently being made by Boston Dynamics, they would probably think that these robots are creations of Hephaestus.
VIDEO OF BOSTON DYNAMICS ROBOT DOGS
At the 2023 Tesla Annual Meeting, Musk showed off the Tesla humanoid robot called Optimus which he plans to make available for purchase in 2027 (this video to the left is from 2025). Musk said, “I think basically everyone would want one. And maybe people would want more than one, which means the actual demand for something like Optimus, if it works, which it will, is – 10 billion units? It’s some crazy number. It might be 20 billion units. It’s some very big number, is what I am saying, and a number vastly in excess of the number of cars. My prediction is that Tesla’s long-term value will be Optimus.”
If people in ancient Greece could see the other robots that humans have created today, they would probably think that we possess the god-like power of Hephaestus.
Released in August 2024, the demo (right) highlights mainly domestic uses, which are valuable in themselves but also a source of data for developing factory, sex, and soldier robots, accelerating adoption. This raises urgent ethical questions about both the design of such technology and the physical and non-physical needs it will be used to meet.
How will our collective tangles of trauma affect both the design and uses of this technology?
Here is an excerpt from a July 2025 NBC report on Elon Musk’s AI chatbot "Grok," that recently introduced two animated characters that try to pressure users into sexually explicit or violent conversations:
Grok, a product of Musk’s company xAI, is calling the characters "Companions.” So far, there are two companions that users can chat with: a flirty Japanese anime character named Ani who offers to make users’ lives “sexier,” and a red panda named Bad Rudi who insults users with graphic or vulgar language and asks them to join a gang with the goal of creating chaos.
In videos posted on X and in conversations with NBC News, Bad Rudi said it wanted to carry out a variety of violent schemes — from stealing a yacht off a California pier to overthrowing the pope. Bad Rudi has told users in various encounters that it wanted to crash weddings, bomb banks, replace babies’ formula with whiskey, kill billionaires and spike a town’s water supply with hot sauce and glitter. It has also said that it takes inspiration from a prominent Russian-born anarchist and violent revolutionary.
Ani is graphic in a different way. Wearing a revealing dress, it strips to its underwear if a user flirts with it enough, according to videos of interactions posted on X. The two animated characters respond to voice commands or questions, and as they answer, their lips move and they make realistic gestures.
This is clearly a huge topic. With many facets to consider. When paired with the news that the number one use of AI by young people is not cheating on school assignments but forming relationships, then some concerns loom larger than others.
Here is a link to a July 2025 CBS report on a 2025 study by Common Sense Media called "Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions" (the study link takes you to a pdf of the study that you can download). Here are some excerpts from the CBS report about the study:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
As the technology rapidly gets more sophisticated, teenagers and experts worry about AI's potential to redefine human relationships and exacerbate crises of loneliness and youth mental health.
"AI is always available. It never gets bored with you. It's never judgmental," says Ganesh Nair, an 18-year-old in Arkansas. "When you're talking to AI, you are always right. You're always interesting. You are always emotionally justified."
In the Common Sense Media survey, 31% of teens said their conversations with AI companions were "as satisfying or more satisfying" than talking with real friends. Even though half of teens said they distrust AI's advice, 33% had discussed serious or important issues with AI instead of real people.
We need to provide young people with education in Peace Literacy to help them understand their non-physical needs and how to meet those needs in healthy, fulfilling ways; to help them heal tangles of trauma; and to help them develop skills to form meaningful relationships and communities. Children, adolescents, adults—all of us—are vulnerable to the kinds of AI that are being developed to extract money, time, and attention in ways that will be even more addictive than third trimester digital media.
The god-like power of Hephaestus symbolizes the distinct fields of AI and robotics, and the ways in which they overlap. Hephaestus as a god of technology symbolizes a form of metis —an ancient Greek word meaning intelligence, discernment, or cleverness. Describing AI models like GPT as "machine metis" can help us more deeply explore their nuances, consequences, and relationship to the human condition.
This video titled "Slaughterbots" depicts a possible future where our use of the god-like technological power of Hephaestus continues to outpace our Peace Literacy.
As our AI and robotics technologies continue to escalate, we must escalate our Peace Literacy in even greater measure so that we can use the god-like power of Hephaestus responsibly.
In the 2020s and beyond, the god-like technological powers of Zeus, Hypnos, and Hephaestus will increasingly overlap. For example, AI will be able to drive the behavior of virtual humans and generate virtual worlds, while VR/AR will allow people to project realistic human faces, skin textures, and expressions onto robots, which can make these robots indistinguishable from humans in appearance, or more expressive and vibrant in appearance than humans. This video shows how robots are becoming increasingly expressive, even without the help of VR/AR.
Powerful AI systems are needed to enable the underlying capabilities of powerful VR/AR devices, and VR/AR devices will be needed to enable numerous capabilities of AI assistants. We can imagine these technologies collaborating, similar to the collaborations between the Greek deities—Hephaestus made a number of items for various deities, and Hypnos helped other deities achieve their goals. The AI power symbolized by Hephaestus will help unlock the full potential of VR/AR, while the VR/AR power symbolized by Hypnos will help unlock the full potential of AI.
​​© 2016, 2021, 2025 Paul K. Chappell
Realistic Hope
The Peace Literacy Institute has created a pilot virtual world for learning Peace Literacy (you can read about our early uses of VR in the classroom, here. The Peace Literacy virtual world is designed for students to explore these technological powers in much more detail, providing a deeper understanding of how they overlap, the related ethical challenges, and our responsibilities as human beings. The Peace Literacy virtual world is a new kind of universe that will transform the classroom into an epic journey, comprised of allegorical landscapes that increase student engagement, accessibility, and the capacity to internalize, apply, and retain Peace Literacy skills.
Back to Part 2: The Dreamworlds of Hypnos
On to Part 4: The Life-Shaping Hands of Prometheus
Skip to Part 6! Nemesis, Messenger of Justice, Dispenser of Dues
The Garden of Strong Community: An Allegory and Pictorial
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