Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge: Whither Goes AI?

This article discusses John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the contemporary film Ex Machina as a coherent group concerning the boundaries of knowledge and the perils of scientific Prometheanism. The development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) should be delimited and contained, if not curtailed or banned, and scientists ought to proceed in a responsible and cautious manner. An obsessive or excessive pursuit of knowledge, aiming to equal God and create humanoid beings, constitutes the essential feature of scientific Prometheanism, which can end in catastrophic destruction. Both Frankenstein and Ex Machina stringently critique scientific Prometheanism as one aspect of modernity, and expose the real dangers that AIs pose to the very existence of humanity and civilization. In Paradise Lost, Milton provides the epistemological framework for Frankenstein and Ex Machina. The article concludes that the union of science and arts in science fiction (films) can be very productive.