The Age of Artificial Connection
Lessons from history's chess-playing puppets and broken copyright laws.
In the late eighteenth century, a curious contraption known as the Mechanical Turk debuted in the courts of Europe. Pimped out like a Turkish sorcerer, this wooden automaton sat behind a wooden cabinet adorned with gears, levers, and brass knobs.
The Turk could do something astonishing for its time — play chess. And not just play — win. Kings and queens marveled as the Turk outwitted their finest strategists. It seemed a marvel of Enlightenment ingenuity and a glimpse into a future where machines rival human intellect.
But like most good magic tricks, the Turk’s true genius lay not in its mechanics but in its deception. Inside the machine, hidden in a cramped compartment, was a chess master, silently moving the pieces and operating the levers. For nearly 85 years, people believed they were witnessing the dawn of machine intelligence, while all along, a human was behind the curtain, toiling away in the dark.
Fast forward two centuries, and in what clearly must be their sick sense of irony, Amazon resurrects the name "Mechanical…
