Talon / Τάλων, left, the flying anthropomorphic robot made by Hephaistos, god of metallurgy and technology. Hephaistos made the winged robot for Zeus who gifted it to his lover, Europa. Zeus had taken the form of a beautiful bull, right, tempting Europa to climb on his back. Zeus then carried Europa to Crete. Talon would fly 3 times a day over Crete to protect the large island and Europa. Medea, expert in magic and daughter of Aeetes, King of Colchis (present-day Georgia) in eastern Euxeinos Pontos (Εύξεινος Πόντος), Black Sea, joined Jason and the argonauts returning the Golden Fleece to Greece. In Crete, the argonauts faced Talon and Medea put Talon out of action. Courtesy Numismatic Museum, Athens, Greece.

What tech companies peddle as artificial intelligence (AI) is only artificial. It is not intelligence. Only humans are endowed with the virtue of intelligence – intellectual ability to reason, speak, think, reflect, appreciate the beautiful and the good, decide and create a better or worse present and future. Machines, from the pre-Homeric winged metal robot Talon (about mid-second millennium BCE) to the female robots of Hero of the first century to the robots fueled by AI in the 21st century, are in a sea of ambiguity and doubt.

The AI robots in particular are make-believe computer prophets. They cannot think, imagine or reason. They are mechanical talking boxes that spit out and regurgitate information humans feed them. Their war and bomb origins, however, give them aura and commercial and military value. They maintain, or their owners try to convince the rest of us, that the robots are essential for organizing the present and possibly the future. But the emerging high tech defense contractors go a step further. They envision AI wars: “Software,” they say, “will change how war is waged. The battlefield of the future will teem with artificially intelligent, unmanned systems, which fight, gather reconnaissance data, and communicate at breathtaking speeds.”

Corporate defense of AI

One of the greatest defenders of this indefensible AI technology is the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. In a lengthy article on nearly everything (computers, AI, economics, strategies, wars, climate change, polymathy), he wrote eloquently but thoughtlessly about the miracles of computer chips and the talking AI. He has no doubt these machines and their chips are capable of “learning, predicting and decision making.”

“We are moving from programmable computing,” he says, “ where a computer could only ever reflect the insight and intelligence of the human who programmed it — toward polymathic A.G.I. [Artificial General Intelligence]. That is where you basically describe the outcome you want, and the A.I. melds insight, creativity and broad knowledge to figure out the rest. We are shifting the boundary of cognition, [Craig] Mundie [former Microsoft computer expert] argues, from what humans can imagine and program to what computers can discover, imagine and design on their own. It is the mother of all computing phase changes — and a species-level turning point.”

Certainly, AI machines are fed a variety of sciences, but that does not make the machines polymaths. Polymaths like Aristotle, Plato or Pythagoras made sense of the different sciences and integrated the threads that tie them together. They had insights that enriched their knowledge. Machines cannot do such brain work. They have zero notions of truth or falsehoods or right and wrong. Thus, suggesting that “computers can discover, imagine and design on their own,” is imaginary at best. Those machines may as well be mechanical humans of genius. But they are not. They are wires and metal that simply react to the programming of engineers. They cannot think, much less imagine. To imagine is to have a brain and be curious and philosophical. A machine cannot possibly have a brain and be curious or philosophical.

AI represents money and power

The excitement of Friedman is the excitement of a man married to corporations, people with money and power, the State Department, Department of War and the illusion that technologies wedded to business will solve the deadly anthropogenic problems threatening our world. Or, more likely, he has convinced himself that the alliance of AI computers and capital will maintain the present oligarchy at its privileged position and hegemony. He says nothing about billionaires and their heavy footprint on politics, the near extinction of freedom, corruption and ecocide the world over. After all, billionaires own fossil fuels that are raising the planet’s temperature more than 2 degrees Celsius. Thus guaranteeing more floods, more heat and suffering – everywhere, a dismal conclusion of Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General. But these realities are beyond Friedman who is proud saying that corporate executives are his ”tutors.”

For example, what is the most appropriate name describing our age? Post Cold War? No, one of his tutors suggests polycene, perhaps to replace Anthropocene, scientists’ choice for the age where humans, but primarily billionaire businessmen, are crushing global ecosystems, science and traditions and civilization – now during the 21st century. Friedman defines polycene as “multiple intelligences, seamlessly networked, co-improving and co-evolving in real time.”

This assertion is meaningless. What exactly are multiple intelligences? AI companies directing communications, computers and the military?

Polycene mirrors the ancient Greeks

Constructing a bronze statue (upper right) and shining a statue of a warrior (lower bottom). Tools and parts hang on the wall of the workshop. Masks and votive offering hang from horns (upper left). A worker is stoking the furnace, and a boy works the bellows. About 480 BCE. Kylix by the Foundry painter. Antikensammlung, Berlin. Wikipedia

Friedman’s invention of polycene is no invention at all. Poly is a Greek word meaning many. Polycene defined Greek society for millennia. Why? Because the Greeks who invented science and civilization were polymaths like the giants of science, men like Pythagoras (mathematics, music, cosmology), Democritos (atomic theory), Hippocrates (scientific medicine), Euclid (mathematics), Aristotle (political theory, science and philosophy), Aristarchos (heliocentric theory), Archimedes (mathematics and engineering), Hipparchos (astronomy), Ptolemaios (mathematical physics, geography) and Galen (scientific medicine). Then we have Homer (epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey), Hesiod (epics of Works and Days and Theogony) and the tragic poets of the fifth century BCE; politicians like Solon, Kleisthenes, and Pericles (sixth-fifth centuries BCE) who set the foundations of Democracy.

The polis / Πολιτεία

These men actually imagined, invented and created the polis / city-state for the protection of citizens and the natural world. The polis was the fertile ground for the ideas and institutions that gave birth to the virtues of freedom, science, sacredness of the land, agriculture, Earth and civilization.

Polis in America and Europe?

Neither America nor Europe have had polymaths who are like the Greeks. Western civilization emerged from the Greek books and infrastructure that survived the Christian and Islamic monotheistic holocaust lasting several centuries – in occupied Greece.

I would also love to see a repetition of the ancient Greek innovations in America, Europe and the rest of the world – especially in modern Greece, which still remains a Christian country since the fourth century.

Alexander the Great (fourth century BCE) and Ioannes Kapodistrias, the first president of independent Greece, 1828-1831, had the same dream. Yes, polycene is a great name for an age of science and civilization shaped by polymaths. But it does not represent the imaginary machine society cooked by AI enthusiasts like Friedman.

America and Europe of 2025 are far from the Greeks. Their universities train students to do little technical tasks fitting the needs of machine corporations. They have abandoned agriculture to ruthless and unethical corporations employing carcinogens and neurotoxins to fight insects and weeds. They no longer have thinkers / philosophers / polymaths but specialists. Their governments themselves have become bureaucratic business.

They rewrite history to fit the dark visions of corporations and especially billionaires. Their new history thoroughly rejects the contributions Greece made to science, the arts and civilization. Monotheism clouds their minds and superpower America (after the model of England) forces them, including Greece, to embrace a schizophrenic strategy. That is, treat Islamic genocidal Turkey like an ally. But Turkey’s centuries of exterminating millions of Armenians, Greeks, and other non-Muslim minorities excludes the country from civilization. Moreover, Islamic Turkey occupies almost half of Greek Cyprus since 1974. America and England made that possible. Which means that the US and England are equally responsible for the inhumanity and barbarism of Turkey in Northern Cyprus.

America, NATO and the European Union also find it convenient to ignore the aggressive Turkish policy towards Greece, especially in the Aegean. Turkey has been calling the Greek Aegean its blue homeland. Neither America, nor the EU, nor NATO find that unsettling. This extremely troubling fact weakens more than international law and human rights. It saps any claims of integrity, respect for themselves and their allies that NATO, America and the EU proclaim. In other words, their indifference to the dangers Turkey represents makes mockery of the civilization they proclaim to the world. America and its NATO allies, without virtues, are sinking Western civilization.

Moral abyss

Corporate and state AI gadgets simply lock these undemocratic attitudes and policies together. Thus the US and Europe behave not as states that value science and civilization. They speak and act like mechanical entities from another planet. Their power is based on nuclear bombs and AI corporate institutions, compromised universities, giant but poisoned agriculture and militaries. That’s why they support the deadly wars in Ukraine and Israel. That’s why they still drill for petroleum and natural gas. They are rejecting the dire data of climatology. They barely tolerate Antonio Guterres telling them they are risking civilization and the planet, the Greeks’ Mother Earth and Plato’s oldest of the gods.

Another Renaissance – for America and Greece

I speak about this coming dark age because I want to prevent it and return to science and civilization. I draw my inspiration from the Greeks who started humanity to science and civilization. Even the ancient ruins in Greece inspire me and millions of tourists. My ancient ancestors read the light of the Sun god Helios, his sister Selene, Moon, and the other stars and the blue sea. They defeated vast invading armies and built the Parthenon to honor Athena, a beautiful female goddess of intelligence and freedom. Athena was the daughter of Zeus, father and commander-in-chief of the gods. Plato opened his school, the Platonic Academy, that became the model of the institutions of higher learning we call universities. One of the students of the Platonic Academy, Aristotle, invented science and set the reasoning for civilization and freedom.

These extraordinary things happened in Greece because the Greeks invented beautiful male and female gods that inspired them to think for themselves, even to be like them, love and investigate the natural world, and respect each other while controlling their passions with the virtues of logic and moderation. Greek religion had neither holy books, nor clergy, nor dogmas.

Of course, the Greeks often messed things up, too, even resorting to civil wars. Nevertheless, their artistic, architectural, political, scientific and technological achievements were unsurpassed for centuries. They remain models for flourishing societies as well as for rebirth through a renaissance.

In a renaissance for science and civilization, let’s say in America, the first priority would be to control or abolish the billionaire class. Billionaires should be given a choice. Investing their immense wealth to healing the wounds they have caused in society and nature: that is, pollution in land and seas, deforestation, mining, genetic engineering, AI, animal farms, and machine agriculture. In other words, billionaires should be required by law to fund the replacement of fossil fuel energy with renewable energy; clean-up plastic and other forms of pollution; reforest the country; and dismantle industrialized farming and replace it with small-scale organic family agriculture. Refusal to alter their ways, would mean heavy taxation and, possibly, ostracize them from the country. The US should also prohibit money in elections.

Second, the country ought to lead an international effort to ban nuclear weapons – worldwide.

Third, the Constitution must be brought up to date. The Supreme Court ought to be abolished and replaced by a High Court of elected judges for a maximum period of 4 years of service and no chance for reelection. The title of Justice for judges should be prohibited.

Fourth, the Electoral College must be abolished. The President should be elected by the people.

Fifth, universities must strive to educate students to the virtues of science, technology, climatology, ecology, political theory, democracy, preventive medicine, law and human and environmental health, the arts, music, history, Greek philosophy, ancient Greek language, and other humanistic studies.

Why teach American students ancient Greek? Because Greek gives birth to science and civilization. It is an extremely rich language in vocabulary, insights and philosophy. Greek mirrors an advanced civilization based on millennia of Greek history, science, the good and the beautiful, self-knowledge, moderation, the rule of law, the Olympics and freedom. Greek words like polycene define modern science and medicine. Greek also enriches English, French, German, Russian and other major languages – with thousands of Greek words.

As for modern Greece, the country must have a renaissance of bringing back ancient Greek and making it entirely her own written and spoken language. Modern Greek is a simple form of ancient Greek, so the transition to ancient Greek should not be a difficult process. Modern Greece must also redesign its education to highlight the virtues of ancient Greece: freedom, history, mythology, theater, moderation, courage, science, self-knowledge and the beautiful and the good and the revival of the naked Olympics – in Olympia, Greece.

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