What Frankenstein Can Teach Us About AI
Why our fear of artificial intelligence may reveal as much about us as it does about the technology
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What Frankenstein Can Teach Us About AI
Depending on which article you read last, artificial intelligence is a monster, destined to destroy our jobs, our creativity, education, truth, relationships, privacy, civilization, and eventually us.
Apparently, we’ve been turning things we don’t understand into monsters for a very long time because hearing all this made me think of a book published more than 200 years ago.
But first, a story.
Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein at 18 and published it when she was 20 years old.
The Frankenstein Story We Think We Know
If you haven’t actually read the book, you probably still think you know the story. Mad scientist. Laboratory. Lightning. Huge green guy with bolts in his neck. “It’s Alive!!”
Except that’s the movie from the 1930s, not Shelley’s story from 1818.
First of all, in her book, Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, not the monster. And rather than the lumbering idiot Boris Karloff would later make famous, Shelley’s creature learns to speak and read, and wrestles with love, loneliness, morality, and why the man who created him is so horrified by what he created.
Shelley was surrounded by people questioning accepted ideas about politics, religion, marriage, women’s rights, science, and society. And since then, critics have been arguing about which of these issues Frankenstein actually addresses.
Maybe that’s what makes the book so enduring. Shelley created something that captured the anxieties of her age and still captures ours today.
Which Monster Are We Afraid Of?
When she was 34, Shelley substantially revised her novel.
By then, three of her children had died. Her husband had drowned. Her friend Lord Byron had died. And the young woman who revisited Frankenstein had experienced a very different world from the teenager who first wrote it.
Then, in 1931, Hollywood changed Frankenstein again.
How Hollywood Changed Frankenstein
Boris Karloff’s mostly mute, shambling creature became so familiar that people eventually started calling the monster Frankenstein. The Library of Congress describes this transformation as a “misapprehension.”
But over time, our misunderstanding became more familiar than Shelley’s original.
All of this makes me wonder how much our own age and experience determine what we see in something new.
How Age and Experience Change What We See
Consider TikTok. Pew Research reports that 63% of Americans 18–29 use it compared with only 12% of people 65 and older. To one generation, communicating, building communities, and earning a living on social media can seem perfectly ordinary. To another, it can look bewildering, overwhelming, or even dangerous.
Yes, we’re looking at the same technology, but through very different lives and very different lenses.
What Frankenstein can teach us about AI
AI is our newest Frankenstein. We worry about whether we can control it, whether it will take our jobs, whether it will become smarter than us, and whether creating it was a mistake.
Legitimate Risk Is Not the Same as Premature Judgment
Some of those concerns are legitimate. But a reread of Frankenstein suggests another possibility: Maybe we’re deciding what AI means before we really understand it.
The 18-year-old Mary Shelley couldn’t know how the 34-year-old Mary Shelley would see her creation. And the people watching Boris Karloff couldn’t know their interpretation would eventually replace Shelley’s in popular culture. Likewise, we certainly don’t know how people will look back at our assumptions about AI.
Understand AI Before Turning It Into a Monster
Perhaps the lesson of Frankenstein isn’t to fear what we create. Perhaps it’s to be careful about turning it into a monster before we understand what value it might add.
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FAQs for GEO and Answer Engines
What can Frankenstein teach us about AI?
Frankenstein reminds us that creators are responsible for what they build, but it also shows how fear, rejection, experience, and later retellings can reshape what a creation means. For AI, the lesson is to investigate real capabilities and risks before allowing a familiar monster story to replace evidence.
Is Frankenstein the scientist or the monster?
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein is the scientist who creates the unnamed Creature. Popular culture gradually applied Frankenstein’s name to the Creature as well.
How is the Creature different in Mary Shelley’s novel?
Shelley’s Creature learns language, reads, reasons, and reflects on love, loneliness, morality, injustice, and his creator’s rejection. That is very different from the mostly mute screen image many people know from the 1931 film.
How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley began the story near Lake Geneva in 1816 when she was eighteen. The novel was published anonymously on 1 January 1818, when she was twenty.
Did Mary Shelley revise Frankenstein?
Yes. A substantially revised single-volume edition appeared in November 1831 with a new introduction by Shelley. She was thirty-four when that edition was published.
Why does age affect how people perceive technology?
People compare unfamiliar technology with the tools, risks, and social norms they already know. Different generations therefore can look at the same platform and see opportunity, ordinary behavior, confusion, or danger.
Are concerns about artificial intelligence legitimate?
Yes. AI can create risks involving reliability, privacy, security, transparency, bias, misuse, and accountability. The practical response is to govern, test, measure, and manage those risks rather than treating either panic or blind optimism as analysis.
What should leaders do before adopting AI?
Leaders should define the intended value, map affected people and processes, test capabilities and failure modes, protect sensitive information, establish accountability, and monitor results. Understanding the use case should come before either rejecting the technology or treating it as inevitable.