perspectives. join us and be inspired by distinctive instagram or others at g.w. story the two topics each week on instagram. he's the stuff of legend. from jewish myth and folklore as old as the ages. made of clay dust or soil he's an artificial being brought to life by human hands he's a helper a companion and above all a guardian but whenever he sets out to discover what he is he runs amok. the image of this mythical being has evolved over the centuries. but now in the age of robotics. this legendary super hero suddenly seems within reach of becoming a reality. the gollum. in mine again about my generation's perception of the gollum as a doll a large powerful being from the late middle ages stemmed from the characters militant portrayal in full vegas movie. and via have to. the goal of how he came into the world was one of the most successful german silent films of all time. the early horror movie has influenced the way the mythical figure is perceived to this day. when making the iconic film director and lead actor paul bacon and drew from a tale of old prague. the secret of the golem it is said is still hidden within the city's old new synagogue. at the end of the sixteenth century during the reign of rudolph the second not far from the vault of a river prague's jewish quarter and its community were enjoying a golden age of relative security. it was enough to know that they were protected by the hapsburg holy roman emperor. but evil never sleeps. rumors spread that the jews of prague were using the blood of christian children to perform their rituals. the intent was clear the jews were to be forced to abandon their homes in the city. with no salvation in sight one man rabbi yehuda live had an idea he believed would help his community face this calamity. was progs chief rabbi and leading scholar of the talmud and common law the mystical traditions of judaism. even today people come to pay homage at his grave in prague's famous old jewish cemetery. desire to this rabbi yehuda live known as the mo harle in hebrew a great sage is said to be the first who created a column to defend the to see her. it's hard to do if you contract law by love takes two of his peoples down to the vault of where there's a whole lot of mud holes in lucky shapes the golem from this mud he does this with his pupils performing a ritual found in earlier sources he and his pupils walk around and around the rudimentary form of the column went down and then it happens the golem slowly rises from the earth and goes reddish light appears along with him he rises ever higher and goes rather still then begins to breathe it's not like god breath isn't blown into him instead he sits up and then stands he's a very big and they already figured he would be naked so they brought clothing along for this new person and they gave him a name. of course they don't call him call him he's called joseph so they take him along and then tell him what he has to do with it first of all he's supposed to sit on a well behaved out in the synagogue and when they need him they'll call for him when called from. the. i will thank you because i am marvelously may i well know that you all work so wonderful while i was being made in the darkness and woven in the depths of the earth my body was not hidden from you your i saw how i came to be. your meat with no god but if. adam praises god in this song the most prominent man in the human race leads us to the origins of the myth of the gollum. the small the word column first appears in the hebrew bible. it's in the verse to be exact in which adam thanks god for seeing him in the soil as he came into being. offered prayers go out to me who in the heart. goalie is that bad so. we sell and. according to the story adam is god's creation but what is the golem then a kind of brother how does he come to be. an indication and they live through bible god brings adam forth from the earth and after he has been created from dust god breathed life into him. and i was the procedure must be exactly the same for the call on the gullah must be made of earth he is of the earth the only question is how do we breathe life into him. what. are their directions for this a formula. hence can be found in the book of creation one of the most important texts of karbala. is to describe the creation of the union. by the. main meal of. the alphabet. so when you have to mention if a person wants to make a call on him all he needs is the torah and the person has to know the many possibilities of combining the letters and the torah and has to know how to combine the letters to apply them to create a column. and that knowledge is a mysterious art. is. just can you do to know the tables but the tables aren't enough light there are also directions for it but the big problem is that not everyone can do it. here that's because humans are sinners and sinners people cannot replicate god like acts or acts of god including how god made man. and i don't mention stuff. this. takes us. of orms and germany's rhineland in the early twentieth century the city was home to a jewish mystical acetic movement called the pious of ashkenaz be damned if they were very sure of their own capabilities that they were truly righteous but they could do good what god desired and that they were complying with all the commandments for them. that's why they achieved what others could not. do or think that's where we for the first time find accounts of rituals for creating a column that were also successful for correction. at least according to the legend it's an inspiring magical moment a ceremony that brings an anatomist matter to life. as is the show by it both things are surely present and the desire to create a gollum the desire to be closer to god and the desire to be god's equal court to miss me. is. ultimately the creation of a column reflects the human desire for the power to create korea shot from death cough to. the letters a trend that are everything you know i say it and it appears in the original creation story of the bible as well there is the breath and words that are associated with that actually very far mation of every name. and the original golem story. am it is written on the forehead and then the rabbi knows that when the time comes that the golem is uncontrollable he can erase that all f.n. and the golem is met it's dead. the power is in the letters and that means truth met means dead. and some my golem is meant he is just made of memes and talk. while rabbi look made his golem out of clay. california artist joshua barber nel has used wood the creative process somehow feels somewhat spiritual in the sense that it's connecting things that don't exist yet that aren't physical and then making them material in some way. the sort of mystical part of it. the power and that energy and that force that was being harnessed to bring something that was on an earth and not alive to life. and that is a form of alchemy you know and that's again sort of why all projects feel somewhat like the golem but this one even more so because of what the subject that i was. the golem is an extension of my own sort of wrestling with what it is to live in a modern contemporary society. to some of us michele goal in my mind is what moved me about the golem from the start was his function as a guardian that's at a time of great need a people can create a being by harnessing the power of their faith mysticism. and the power of kabbalah to protect them against unfounded accusations and harassment. for. cinnabon i'm repeatedly surfaces as a key figure in times of crisis like now when certain questions on identity are coming to a head. at the start of the twentieth century the jewish communities of eastern europe were targeted by pogroms. the golem became a being that evoked a sense of cultural identity offering protection through his strength. to god it's precisely this type of column that appears simple bacon is filmed and. it was a strategy of deterrence. with this creature the rabbi proved to the christian emperor and his court that the jewish people were no longer defenseless. then never been a rabbi live created the golan because the emperor was threatening the jews of prague with expulsion it's interesting cause. of the. yes. but what is the role of the golem when the threat is extermination rather than expulsion. as the holocaust unfolded there was widespread longing for the golem but the savior failed to materialize. the yiddish writer opera hum razan dedicated a poem to the gollum. awake oh gollum it is high time once again those people have grown wild and all the beasts bellow in their cages. awake oh call them with your heavy tread go around and raise the prisons in every country and every town. and knock down wall upon wall of the palace where evil resides. and with your divine smile liberate the suffering people. i was stunned this is interesting that in this context he does not a paris a defender of the jews and. perhaps it's a kind of acknowledgment that there was actually no entity within the community that could have would it off this threat not at that time was. inside. in his novel in title. wrote something that cannot die is stocking this district. discounted element by fear is the main element when it comes to the gollum is the fear of the dark of uncertainty which can be no negotiation with someone who has great strength but who doesn't speak and is intellectually inaccessible. at the start of the twentieth century found a following in popular non jewish culture. but the creature was a fearsome figure rather than the guardian. this new cult status peaked at the time of gustav myricks dark novel. from nine hundred fifteen. which was on my rinks novel is the most famous version of the column of all time. pogs illustrations were just as popular. with them but if you can shine approx column clearly has asian feature the eyes are half closed lids it's apparent immediately that the character is something to be afraid of an oddity. the image of a frightening creature was present in the literature painting and film of that period. paul begun to depicts the golems creation as a mix of black magic and jewish mysticism it's reminiscent of pounced pact with the devil. this which was an unmistakable hints that of course this is one thousand to the supernatural but there is also a potentially demonic aspect to it as well. dark forces are what a the rabbi rather than the power of the letters. in the scene is and they seem depicts the ambivalence of the whole film which has anti semitic overtones but also playful fanciful moments. it's the little christian girl who vanquishes the golem with childish innocence. because all the books in the tradition that's the way many people use the column today that presumably not very interested in the jewish element of it instead the column is a universal symbol of horror and airiness card. this wide eyed expression is far more than an affirmation of identity it set standards for a whole genre the horror movie. but it's not only the characters appearance that's inspired artists it's the. you know whether an artificial being can have an inner life a soul. director for it's long explored this in his iconic film metropolis. when this is first introduced as a robot which is a really beautiful robot it comes out and they say. it's just like a human every way but it can. and then literally give it a sort of bring it to life in a sort of magical way. you could say that it's also present in fritz lang's metropolis. you can interpret it as a version of the column story. even if the cyborg isn't called a column like. the names change cyborg or replicant yet every one of these beings is on a quest to uncover their own identity that goes too far ridley scott's cult film blade runner i think. the american science fiction author philip k. dick had the most fascinating concept of all with blade runner he created a being that didn't even know itself if it was a human or a robot. this key character moves through the film in a state of perpetual doubt. who am i am i a human am i a robot and if i am a robot why do i feel what i feel where do i come from i want to very. well. he can look up to him don't you. know. it's me with my mother. the old gold the myth humans create an artificial companion and then lose control over it has also provided fodder for t.v. series. real new ones real humans naturally plays with the threat to make systems but not and that's what's nice about it through brutal armed military conquest that would immediately provoke a negative response instead it takes place in an insidious and subtle way. but again such catherine do. they could look out for such catherine do. district you do. as a lot of molding. in the digital age the golem has evolved into an avatar the human alter ego. there's this great film called surrogates by a surrogate in the store and slip into it that works really well anyone who's tried three d. virtual reality knows that it takes just a few minutes for you to feel at home in a virtual world. i knew. with the grace and beauty of the human with most people living their longs through the same songs our world has become a safer place take a seat in your step chair. of the car. the golem legend even served as inspiration for johann but gone from good when he was riding the sorcerer's apprentice. for once the old magician now all his ghosts will do my bidding. on two legs stand gravely. have a head besides. with your pale now bravely off and do take strides. master come to my assistance. wrong i was in spirits calling. for now i find them galling. in mice and men the column is a character that's created to help with household chores. so he's a helper for humans from the stories i've read it did things like when i was asked to help with carrying water picked up the well and carried it out because it was too strong and when i was asked to bring firewood it brought the whole trieste including the roots. film did such a fantastic job that. the golem simply isn't smart enough to really be a true helper. these characters always seem to be heading straight for disaster not too many years ago. a moment to create children and young people here. when you wanted to say. to someone. you were in egypt you were. in a movie that's the way it is in the vague in a film of course for gollum starts to destroy everything he starts to destroy the ghetto and attack people and to lay everything to waste. the climax of the movie comes when the golem turns against the people he's supposed to protect. on thus the naturally the extreme there what happens when a creation a creature or something manmade is released and it has tains a degree of independence and if you like in the sorcerer's apprentice people overestimate the characters abilities it becomes overwhelming and then turns against its master meister. even back in old prague rabbi look couldn't keep the gollum under control. you probably can't allow a being like that to become the way you would vision it instead when it develops its own consciousness through imitation that's when we've already lost control in the moment in the moment when the column starts to discover itself and ask yourself who am i really. frightening i ask for example am i a jew. do i belong to these people or ten people who are needed to form a community for the service in the synagogue and do i have sexual needs can i love a woman. commissioner. in vegas bill the golem seduces the rabbi's daughter and ends up tangled in a web of previously unknown emotions. you mere the more the golem becomes like a human the greater his destructive potential that's when things can go really horribly wrong that her guns go by and she figured. this destruction is ultimately after all just a reflection of our sin which we committed by doing this because we wanted to compete with god. has naturally a warning there are two years if you don't create him in the first place the nothing like this can happen to you. california's silicon valley is a hotbed of innovation and rapid technological progress. every day hundreds of creators are bus to work many from nearby san francisco. so they say only a rabbi can make a call them and so only one group of people will have this weapon because it could be considered to be a weapon and therefore it can be a guard and tear and. but with a rope it's different because anybody can make them. these days they're not inventing guardians instead they're designing helpful robots that are supposed to become fully fledged family members and display a high level of social skills introducing the world's first family robot say hi do you go thank you. helps everyone now throughout their day he's the world's best camera. he's a hands free help you can talk to him and he'll talk to you back so you don't have to skip a beat. yes. governments are seeing it as an economic driver big corporations are seeing this economic drivers. pushing forward and saying you know all the things all the good things. looking after children. the robotics company boston dynamics has introduced a good specimen known as big dog. it's designed for military use to clear mind. recover. and then the big companies the big companies. they do the. most extraordinary. intelligence surveillance and security systems with the capability of detecting and tracking as well as suppression is designed to replace human. the limitation. not only on borders but critical locations such as. storage bases and military. science fiction notion of the technology their view was that you know robots could be humans and behave like soldiers they talked about soldiers they talked about the notion that but the soldiers. because they won't seek revenge. they won't. develop the. it's the latest in technology. seems to have a grip on his strength and personality. he's not easily provoked and stays focused on. his task. can humans control the gholam of today. one of the one of the problems with with the whole fast rapid development of robotics is that it's on regulated and there are no national policies and more concerning is this know what tend to create any. could humans actually end up melding with machines. google's engineering director ray kurzweil says transhumanism is a boundless research field create bodies that attack well you create virtual bodies in virtual reality then a virtual reality will be as realistic as real reality the virtual bodies will be as we tell them convincing is real bodies. that's hard to do the idea today is that artificial human beings will really be created but to do what services sources for spare parts or to become better people than we are. it's precisely this vision that director dominic graff takes as the premise of his science fiction film gollum the return. they call him dr gollum is an amalgamation of notions about an ideal figure how could we be how much bob brain capacity to use how much do we use our capacity to make moral judgments all that plays into the image of the figure. on the other it was that we're reaching the point where we need to re-evaluate our rob a simple moral that's not so that out that's not something the good lord intended we've got to differentiate a bit and say ok we understand it's not allowed but we're going to do it anyway so how do we regulate it with them because on the. me on is a product of the neuro robotics research laboratory in berlin. to counter the primary difference between many robots that are being examined in other research laboratories and meon is that me on his design to have the capability to do his own thing. it could be talking to. a boy and to be able to. thank you this isn't. me on has already demonstrated the ability to learn and to make decisions independently even on a major opera stage and berlin. here the robot is being taught the most human trait of all. the ability to feel. so where does this fascination with me on come from. you can't even really walk on his own. then in japan they have silicon robots so they try to make them actually human like professor sugar there who's the probably the most famous person made a robot that looked exactly like him and. there's never been a machine that looked more like a human than gemma noid h. one. can a robot that looks like its creator down to the last detail take on his personality to. looks a bit down and to the side the robot copies that really well but unlike with me on which focuses on autonomy this robot is all about telepresence it's more like an avatar. when we're looking at robots being deceptive to humans there's a strange effect called the uncanny folly effect when they start getting more and more real they become more and more spooky people start noticing the differences between the human and the robot. meon is different and not just in terms of looks. like a small child he collects and processes experiences. for me what we're concerned with is the enter conflict how is that decided when the robot looks at something fixes its gaze and then looks in another direction it's a process that strikes as a surprisingly true to life. and. people talk with machine perception but what they mean is the the the camera has detected the ship and certain sorts of like and then that's processed by the machine and then it can be classified. and. naturally we believe in our working hypothesis that intelligent behavior occurs through the interaction of many partial systems to suddenly bring forth the emerging phenomena of intelligence and perhaps also consciousness as well like we've lost sight the thing about artificial intelligence in robotics when you're talking about consciousness it's exploiting a mystery we have no idea what consciousness is even today. we're going to what happens if the robot can point out things that are in its past and address the question what is i then it has something like a personality that's an initial lower stage and it's absolutely achievable with any . if you look at which practically can learn physical movement through imitation and if you consider the summations which are ultimately just the result of some sign ups isn't chemical processes in the head if they too can be learned through imitation. then i think things would get interesting unfinished that's what i'm trying to something. more. could a robot empathize with a human could you could you live and be a human some philosopher say that you need patient you need to be a moral patient and that means you have to know what it feels like to suffer it does and is it a consciousness imitated and stolen from us or is it within the scope of the robot's capabilities to use more brain capacity than we can at the moment. does that hold out the possibility that one day another form of consciousness may exist beside our own on the one that has a more expanded concept of itself than we do for example. one that doesn't put its own interests first. one that is less fixated on itself and its own perceptions a robot that can somehow think in a more complex way than we do and so on we would need to redefine consciousness at least as it relates to a robot of. intelligence and consciousness. are they nothing more than a binary code. is the goal or merely a symbol of human hubris. they believed it to create prob it's much more ambitious than anyone would do we stick with it before we really want to change the words we really want to create the future we. need to guard the fear of artificial intelligence has taken on a new dimension now that machines have the capacity to learn today it's not an individual golem that poses a threat it's our networked world. because i don't believe robots will rule the world we're far too domineering and narcissistic will always know how to challenge and prevent it. but there will probably be people who will use robots to act out their sexuality and there will likely be people who find it easier to air their soul to a robot to tell their deepest secrets to a machine which is something abstract yet when they would do to another person i think these mechanisms will become prevalent. here. i think it can take over the world but maybe not in the way that the people are thinking about it in the fearsome way. we will make it take over the world we're in control of it and it just depends on how much control we actually give it. the problem of our time is that complex systems have their own momentum. things are being worked on but definitely will be incorporated in our lives but they will be able to monitor our coexistence and our behavior in a way that we will come to hate. advising for this house and where. we are becoming increasingly artificial the more artificial we are made by the behavioral modes incessantly being forced on us and the more we are swallowed up by these companies the greater the desperate hope will become that some form of artificial life will resist all this better than we can because we apparently are unable to resist these attacks that have been raining down on us since the network was invented. it's. possible that if you don't stand. it appears that even centuries after rabbi love the longing remains for the protective superhuman power of the golem. ultimately gone really could be a protector for us it has to come from ourselves and when we have that sort of level of control ourselves and it's not externalized into something else i feel. actually a lot safer and less threatening. sit . at home day month even today the dream of creating an artificial figure is still fed by notions of an idle you could say it's a figure that knows more about us than we do about ourselves. when someone demands in the job. losses then moving. from the after the birth to the best discarding. six puts. the pants this is. eco africa smart solutions for our environment. they are comfortable. they create jobs. and they mean to sway this. jury old tires are being transformed into an. eco africa thirty minutes d w. d w media center see it find it here it discover. video and audio podcast and language courses in the d w media center at media center dot d.w. dot com. using your home because of persecution the city. starting from scratch in an unfamiliar country. finds people who found a new home in a foreign land. with their stories books and music they've built bridges to the past and the future. after the escape starting december seventeenth on t.w. . protests have erupted around the world as anger and tense a phys over president donald trump's decision to recognize jerusalem as the capital of israel two palestinians have been killed.