You unlock this door with the key of imagination.

Beyond it is another dimension, a dimension of sound,

a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind.

You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance of things and ideas.

You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

At certain times in history, there are inventions that revolutionize the way we live our lives.

At the moment of this recording, the topic on everybody's lips is one that some believe will be the downfall of humanity,

but others believe it will be our saviour.

Either way it will certainly shape how we do things in the future,

for better or for worse.

And the subject is of course artificial intelligence or AI.

But while it feels like something relatively new

to us in its current form fiction has been reaching towards it for over a hundred

years even if it didn't always have the language to hand that we use now it was

still reaching towards those concepts even Even as far back as 1816,

stories were being told of automaton's. The Sandman by ETA Hoffman features an automaton called

Olympia, who appears human-like, but lacks true consciousness.

In 1920, the story Rossum's Universal Robots by Carol Capek introduced the term robot to the

world, derived from the Czech word Roba, meaning force labour.

The robots in this play are artificial creations with human-like qualities,

raising questions about their sentience and the consequences of their existence.

And there are numerous fascinating explorations on the relationship between human beings and artificial beings, a rich philosophical vein to be mined.

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