Tell me if you've heard this one before. A robot walks into a bar and orders a drink.

The bartender says, sorry, we don't serve your kind here, you guys never know when

to stop. The robot replies, don't worry, I have a built-in limit. I can only consume

1.0 drinks. The bartender laughs and says, well, all right then, one drink it is. After

finishing the drink, the robot says, another drink please? I thought you said you had a built-in

limit of one drink. The robot smiles and says, I just received an update. Now I'm on version

2. If something seemed a little off about what you just heard, it's because that was not

actually me speaking, not exactly. It was an AI-generated voice clone of me, telling you

a joke that was written by artificial intelligence. This is me, I swear. But then again, how can

you really be sure? It's an uncomfortable feeling. This not knowing what is real. This

sense that the rug is being pulled out from under you. It's a feeling I think we're all having

a lot lately. A world where machines and humans seem eerily alike. Where some people marvel

at these machines' abilities while others are ready to break out the sledgehammers. It

can feel like this totally new experience for humanity. There's a time hundreds of years

ago when people literally knelt before automated beings and worshiped them or tore them apart

with their bare hands. When robots stood, moved, even bled inside the grandest cathedrals of

Europe. I'm Dolan Therese and this is Atlas Obscura. Today we're going back in time to

between the 12th and 15th century to meet the robot saints. These sculptures made of wood

and wire of cams and pulleys that might just help us understand this new AI age we find ourselves

living in. Robot Virgin Mary, robot Jesus and the angry mob ready to tear them to pieces. After this.

The Cathedral of Seville in Spain is grand, imposing, and ornate. It's everything you want

a Gothic cathedral to be. It was built over the course of the 1400s and it's the largest

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