Frontispiece from the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, published in London by Colburn and Bentley.

1818

FRANKENSTEIN

“Frankenstein was written during the first Industrial Revolution,” writes Paolo Gallo, the Chief Human Resources Officer at World Economic Forum, “a period of enormous changes that provoked confusion and anxiety for many. It asked searching questions about man’s relationship with technology: Are we creating a monster we cannot control, are we losing our humanity, our compassion, our ability to feel empathy and emotions?”

The dangers of a special kind of artificial intelligence is a prominent theme in the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Shelley (1797–1851). In the novel, scientist Victor Frankenstein robs slaughterhouses and cemeteries in order to construct a creature from various parts, which he then animates with “a spark of life.” Meanwhile, he reflects on his creation as an experiment in achieving immortality: “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator. . . . I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might . . . renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.”

By the time Mary Shelley finished her novel at age nineteen, Europeans were fascinated by theories about the role of electricity in biology and the potential for reanimation of dead tissue. The basic story idea came to her in a dream. As it happens, Italian physicist Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834) had participated in many public attempts at human reanimation through electricity around 1803 in London.

Death and destruction lurk everywhere in the novel, as numerous characters meet their ends. Notably, Victor destroys the unfinished female companion for his monster, and the monster (who is never actually referred to by the name “Frankenstein”) kills Elizabeth, the scientist’s wife. By the end of the novel, Victor has pursued his creation to the North Pole, where Victor dies, and the creature vows to kill himself on his own funeral pyre.

Journalist Daniel D’Addario notes: “Frankenstein relies on the notion that humans will inherently reject artificial intelligence as unnatural and bizarre. A great deal of that is owed to the particularly odd appearance of Frankenstein’s monster. . . . But what about when A.I. comes in a more attractive package, one that has real utility?”