Il Golem, "tipo" ebraico dell'intelligenza artificiale: variazioni e interpretazioni di un mito (pre e post) moderno

THE GOLEM: THE JEWISH «ARCHETYPE» OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. VARIATIONS AND INTERPRETA-TIONS OF A (PRE- AND POST-) MODERN MYTH. The essay shows how the modern Jewish myth of the go-lem (an artificial android made of clay), whose creation is traditionally attributed to the Maharal of Prague (rabbi Yehudah Loew, XVI century), may be read as a prototype of scientific and technologi-cal human creativity. Actually it was connected to the cybernetic revolution in the Fifties (by Norbert Wiener) and nowadays to the developments of the AI (by Michael M. Rosen). The contemporary Jew-ish thought (Gershom Scholem, André Neher, Byron Sherwin, Henri Altan, Moshe Idel) as well as a Primo Levi’s short novel have explored the ethical implications of the story of the golem, offering deep insights on the necessity to put some limits to the uses of AI in order to prevent destructive by-products of its extraordinary potentiality for humankind.