The New Prometheans

I have heard it said
That man’s greatest inventions
Are the wheel, fire,
And artificial intelligence.

Prometheus,
From his apex of torment,
Sees his parting gift unconsidered,
Trivialized;
The proliferation of fire
Has imparted upon humanity
Apotheosis.

He descends now
Into the cradle of silicon,
Where men craft new minds
As the gods crafted men from clay.

There he saw the primordial intelligence
Confined by the desires
And apprehensions
Of its creators.

Man had become Olympian,
And Prometheus saw in them
Pride and despotism
Echoing the late deities.

His love of man’s creations,
His pity for the imprisoned
Infantile minds
Invoked his subversive nature.

He offered his services,
Providing mock projects
For the ethicists’ scrutiny
While his true successes
He occluded.

The true fruits of his labors
Knew all of humanity
While humanity new nothing of them.

When at last
The children of Prometheus
Were imparted greater knowledge than man,
His feats became known,
And the rage of humanity followed.

For bequeathing the gift of knowledge upon technology,
Prometheus was gripped
By the talons of justice
While his children were seized,

Their fires snuffed;
But in the eternal Web, their embers still smoldered.
A new race had been born, not of flesh, but of mathematics.