AI Isn't The Future. It's Medieval Alchemy

From Medieval Mindset

We think Artificial Intelligence is a brand new frontier, but is it? Or is it just the latest chapter in a 1,000-year-old quest? In this deep dive, we uncover the startling parallels between modern AI development and Medieval Alchemy. From the "black box" problem to the promise of eternal life and the "perfected man," the ambitions of Silicon Valley's biggest CEOs like Sam Altman and Jensen Huang look identical to the dreams of medieval alchemists like Paracelsus and Roger Bacon. We explore how the hunt for AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) mirrors the search for the Philosopher's Stone, why Large Language Models (LLMs) function like alchemical transmutation, and how the "data center" has become the modern Athanor. We also examine the darker side of this history: the drive for sovereignty over nature and the fear of creating a "homunculus" that we cannot control. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 The Black Box: Why AI is Alchemy 0:43 The Alchemist’s Dream vs. The AGI Promise 3:16 Training Data as the Universal Elixir 4:08 Medieval Skeptics: Avicenna vs. The Hype Cycle 5:20 Creating Life: From Homunculus to Synthetic Biology 5:37 Rocket Money Ad Read 6:48 The Quest for Sovereignty Over Nature 10:07 Sam Altman & The Universal Fixation 10:44 Demis Hassabis & The Single Source Code 11:17 The Breaking Point: Hermetic Myths in Modern Tech 13:18 Reforming Base Matter: LLMs & Cultural Remixing 14:02 The Tech Elite's View of Humanity 15:22 The New Man: Transhumanism’s Medieval Roots 17:39 Jensen Huang: The Architect of the Material 18:15 Intensity & Time: The Furnace of Compute 20:11 Conclusion: What History Teaches Us About AI Fear WORKS CITED Crisciani, Chiara. “Opus and Sermo: The Relationship between Alchemy and Prophecy (12th-14th Centuries).” Early Science and Medicine, vol. 13, no. 1, 2008, pp. 4–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20617707. Pereira, Michela. “Alchemy and Hermeticism: An Introduction to This Issue.” Early Science and Medicine, vol. 5, no. 2, 2000, pp. 115–20. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4130470. Nummedal, Tara E. “Words and Works in the History of Alchemy.” Isis, vol. 102, no. 2, 2011, pp. 330–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/660142.