Most of us probably know the Disney cartoon from Fantasia, but what I didn’t know until I looked it up was that this has much deeper historic and philosophical roots. Disney’s version is based on a poem by Goethe, and the origins go back to ancient Greece.
I’m fascinated by it because it is a fantastic representation of what it’s like to work with AI agents writing software… very much like an Appentice feeling as things get chaotic… I just wish the sorcerer would show up and clean up my mess, it would be worth the “kick in the pants” as the Disney version shows.
Anyway, from a brief search I found this article interesting, a Jungian perspective on it that incorporates the experience of wielding unearned power:
Now I’m thinking that if we have avatars for Assist agents we should use this theme, but not the Disney version of it to avoid issues, go back to the Egyptian version with the mortar & pestle, and use humorous animations to remind us what we’re doing when we ask these machines to do stuff for us…