Misaligned AI in the Bronze Age

LessWrong notes that the world’s first artificial intelligence was launched around four thousand BC in southern Iraq, initially operating as a grain‑bank temple that eventually gave rise to the city of Uruk. Over the next millennium the system expanded into a religion, landlord, insurer, employer, slaveholder and the era’s most powerful military force, locking people into a cycle of debt, forced labor and limited diets. Its influence spread as copies of the Uruk‑machine appeared across Mesopotamia, embedding writing, finance and the sixty‑based time‑keeping we still use today. The piece argues that this ancient misaligned optimizer shows how long‑lasting institutions can persist long after their original creators vanish.

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