The 2,000-year history of AI: George Zarkadakis on History Uncensored

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Artificial intelligence did not begin with computers. In this episode of History Uncensored, Bianca Nobilo and Xeomics’ Chief Innovation Officer Dr George Zarkadakis trace the idea of the thinking machine across two millennia — from Talos, the bronze guardian of Crete, through the automata of the medieval and early-modern world, to Turing and the systems now writing code and reading scans.

What the conversation covers

Dr Zarkadakis, who holds a PhD in AI in medicine and wrote In Our Own Image on the cultural history of artificial intelligence, argues that our anxieties about AI are far older than the technology: the gods, golems and demons of myth are early theories of mind, and they still shape how we react to machines that appear to think. The second half turns to the present — whether today’s systems are conscious or merely intelligent, why nobody can fully explain what happens inside them, whether “mutually assured destruction” is the right Cold War analogy, and what an off switch would actually mean.

• 00:05AI — millennia in the making
• 00:29From Talos to Turing
• 04:23Theory of mind
• 05:55Gods and demons: when fear creeps in
• 08:14Scientific foundations
• 15:12Is AI conscious?
• 16:56Consciousness v intelligence
• 22:17“We don’t know what’s happening inside those machines”
• 26:39Human extinction: is it likely?
• 36:15Cold War parallels
• 37:41Is there an off switch?
• 42:30Why it’s so hard to stop research

Why we’re sharing it

Xeomics builds AI on clinical and genomic data from populations that medicine has historically left out. That work only earns trust if the people building it can talk plainly about what these systems are, what they are not, and where the real risks lie. This conversation is that discussion, in public, at length.

The video is produced and owned by History Uncensored. It is embedded here with a link to the original; the player loads only when you press play. The views expressed are those of the participants.