Letters to the Editor: Centuries-old literature predicted one eerie AI creation

To the editor: Among the eeriest AI innovations introduced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was the invention of an animated character in a glass tube embodying a “soulmate” companion (“China is already putting AI in everything from cars to bird feeders,” Jan. 15).

Flashback to the alchemical lab in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Faust,” where a “homunculus” — a little man with redemptive power — is conjured up in a glass vial. Perhaps alchemy wasn’t so behind the scientific times after all.

John Leverence, Studio City