Yoga Vāsistha describes application of Artificial Intelligence (A.I), human emotions, ego to Robots. Sambarasura creates dama, vyāla, kaTa to win on Adityas.
Yoga Vāsistha (योग-वासिष्ठ) is a discourse of sage Vasistha to Prince Rama. Sage Valmiki is credited as its author. It has 6 parts and in one of the part, application of Artificial Intelligence (A.I), human emotions etc to Robots is described.
One Asura named Sambarasura had the powers to raise himself in the sky and fight from outer space. Rig Veda clearly mentions that Asura does not mean ‘Demon.
Asura means ‘the one who is not sura, or one who has magical or phenomenol powers (according to Rig Veda)‘.
This Sambarasura created 3 robots using his technology and named them dama, vyāla and kaTa.
The name ‘dama’ is derived from the root dam which means to tame, subdue, conquer, restrain of course the enemy. ‘Vyāla’ means vicious, fierce, cruel, savage like tiger or snake.
KaTa was like a modern tank protecting army. The word ‘kaT’ means to go, to cover. It could go and cover the army.
Those three Robots were lifeless machines and therefore had no sentiments, no emotions, so they were never defeated.
These 3 robots always won the wars against Adityas (gods). Later Artificial Intelligence (A.I) was induced into them.
So Adityas played a trick to induce sentiments and emotions in them. They fought with the three Robots and ran away, many times,with defeat. This induced Ego in the Robots.
Ego arised as the robots were thinking like humans due to artificial intelligence.
Adityas observed this change and told them that, because of their valour Sambarasura always wins and enjoys his life at their cost.
This added emotions and sentiments. They felt that they should also enjoy their lives.
As the human sentiments arose, fear too proped up in them. Naturally they could not fight with the previous zeal and were defeated by Adityas.
Modern day robots have Artificial intelligence embedded into them. So one day they might get Ego and then they may rebel against the mankind. It will be difficult to defeat them.
They may conquor the mankind. In that situation man can play the same trick as played by the Gods. For future this past story is very useful. We may learn from the past history if we study the history with proper bearing.
This is how we can get futuristic ideas from ancient literature.