From Homer's Robots to ChatGPT: Why Every Generation Fears Automation

Want to know the strangest thing about our fear of AI?

Homer wrote about it in the Iliad.

Every generation thinks they're the first to face the robot apocalypse. Today it's AI. Yesterday it was automation. Before that, computers.

But here's something fascinating: Homer's Iliad, written three millennia ago, featured self-driving vehicles and intelligent robots serving the gods. In the 1920s, people feared "labor saving devices" would eliminate human work entirely. Each time, the same panic. Each time, the same result.

Economist Robert Shiller calls these "perennial narratives" - stories that replay generation after generation, each time feeling uniquely urgent to those living through them.

But history shows us something different: tools don't replace us, they transform us. Calculators didn't eliminate accountants; they empowered them. Word processors didn't kill writing; they democratized it.

The real question isn't "Will AI take our jobs?" but "How will this tool change the nature of work?" Because that's what tools do - they don't end work, they end limitations.

The future isn't about replacement. It's about transformation. Just like it has been for the last 3,000 years.