Young Achilles riding the man-horse super centaur Cheiron. “The Education of Achilles by Cheiron.” Painting by Eugene Delacroix, French, 1862. Getty Museum. Wikipedia. Public Domain.
Prologue
I have always been skeptical of the viability and potential benefits of AI technologies. This is because they are primarily war technologies, masquerading in the deceptive cover of intelligence. But they have nothing to do with intelligence, a human virtue of distinguishing good from evil, beautiful from ugly and justice from injustice. AI technologies can never incorporate human intelligence. They are mechanical triggers / devices following human instructions. In fact, I see the evolution of these technologies into more lethal war weapons and war-related consequences, as well as deceptive but profitable devices like iPhones, computers and other machines – here in America and other societies. Unless these AI machines are checked, regulated and, the weaponized versions phased out, anarchy, authoritarianism and destruction will strike humans, civilization and the planet. Why? Because man and machines don’t mix. But if they become scrambled eggs, watch out for monsters.
Centaurs in ancient Greece
Gaetano Zompini,“The Centaur Cheiron Teaching Geography to the Young Achilles.” 1759. LACMA. Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain.
The ancient Greeks opened human minds to the pleasures of intelligence, science, technology, ethics and civilization. They also experimented (in their mythology and literature) with the invention of human animals: Centaurs (piercing bulls, man-horses), Satyrs (humans with the tail and feet of goats and followers of Dionysos), Minotaur (man with the head of a bull) and other hybrid non-human monsters like Chimera (lion, goat, snake) – and other less known monsters.
One of the centaurs named Cheiron was an exception to the untamed, uncivilized and wild centaurs. He lived on Mount Pelion in Thessaly. He was the immortal son of the pre-Olympian god Cronos and the sea nymph Philyra. He had the reputation of possessing broad knowledge of the Cosmos and Greek society. He was also a healer. He was, in addition, a renowned teacher. Achilles, the great Greek hero of the Trojan War in late 13th century BCE became his pupil. Other young men followed on the footsteps of Achilles and studied under the centaur Cheiron. One of the most distinguished was Jason who, a generation after the Trojan War, in late 13th century BCE, led 50 Argonauts, most of them sons of gods, all the way from Iolkos, Thessaly, to Kolchis, or, in modern times, Georgia. Kolchis was in the easternmost region of Euxinos Pontos or Black Sea. The King of Kolchis was Aietes, son of the god Sun Helios. Aietes suspected the visiting Argonauts and planned to kill them. He started his hostilities by demanding that Jason would take a fire-spitting bull to sow a field with teeth of dragons. Warriors would sprout from the teeth of dragons. Jason would have to fight and kill those earth-born warriors. Jason did all those astonishing tasks successfully. He had the assistance and knowledge and magic of the king’s daughter, Medeia. Thanks to Aphrodite and her son Eros, Medeia was helplessly in love with Jason. Medeia gave Jason drugs that made him invulnerable to the flames and power of the bulls. Medeia was a priestess of a Kolchian goddess, Hekate. She was well-versed in magic and drugs. Add to those superhuman efforts the affection of Hera, wife of Zeus, and love goddess Aphrodite to Jason, and the story had an auspicious ending. The Argonauts returned to Hellas with the Golden Fleece, as well as precious metallurgical knowledge.
This story of adventure, exploration, heroism, passionate love, and divine relationships with humans almost normalized the human-horse Centaur Cheiron, the exceptional and divine teacher of Greek heroes.
These stories of the rare symbiosis of ancient Greeks with one centaur on Mount Pelion in Thessaly did not have a continuity. Herakles, son of Zeus and a superhero, accidentally shot a poison arrow against Cheiron. But Cheiron, being immortal, could not die. He sided with Prometheus then punished by Zeus for giving his Greek grandchildren the flame of knowledge. Zeus put Cheron among the stars, making him the constellation Sagittarius.
US-AI mythical centaurs
Despite these Greek myths, there are American tech enthusiasts in 2026 who seriously contemplate their own mythical realm: a massive ruling class of 8 billion humans being served and “educated” by a trillion AI human-centaur robots.
Antikythera, an AI thinktank in Los Angeles, California, boasts of its priorities in “planetary computation and evolution of intelligence.” Here’s its mythical thinking in its own words:
“Imagine,” it said in an email inviting proposals, “a world with 8 billion human minds and a trillion non-human, human-level AI minds. With such ratios, what is a “society”?
“Agentworld [a research unit of Antikythera] treats the proliferation of AI agents as an anthropological condition as much as a technological one. As [AI] agents become more capable of communication, delegation, coordination, and adaptation at scale, hybrid human-AI societies can no longer be understood as simple aggregates of humans plus tools. They become entangled populations of human and non-human intelligences, co-producing new forms of language, hierarchy, dependency, exchange, and environment.”
In other words, the Antikythera planetary computation “thinktank” experts no longer value democracy, American society and civilization. They are drunk with the wine of AI money and tech robots, making coffee or fighting wars, pretending to imitate and compete with human intelligence. Those delusions trigger scheming and even thinking how to create or “entangle” AI-human zombie resembling the Greek mythological centaurs – a hybrid of human and horses –one of which, son of Titan god Cronos, Cheiron, became teacher of Achilles, Jason and other Greek heroes. The Antikythera AI tech experts, oblivious to Greek history, are determined to probably exceed the Greek model of Cheiron. They are planning no less than “composing the medium-term future of centaur human-AI societies.”
Epilogue
This is science fiction going mad. It is nonsense. Their nightmare would not even work in a totalitarian state. Imagine the audacity and hubris. To think of bringing to life hybrids of humans and machines in the form of AI-powered centaurs? Mechanical horsemen run wild and armed to the teeth? But do these tech experts have any clues of Greek history and mythology, out of which emerged the centaurs and chimeras? Plato and Aristotle taught that moderation was a governing virtue, σωφροσύνη. Ancient Greeks also were well aware not to violate the principle of μηδέν άγαν: not to be extreme in anything. They slayed their own monsters.
Antonio Canova, “Theseus Defeats the Centaur,” 1805. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain.
We should do the same: phase out AI monsters like those contemplated by the Antikythera thinktank of Los Angeles. Otherwise, the money-rich but intelligence-poor plutocrats will take over the government and establish a real political nightmare of entangled humans and machines.
