Is AI a Modern-Day Frankenstein's Monster?
A library blog post by Sarah G. for Harris County Public Library in Texas, arguing that the Frankenstein story is the right lens for the current AI build-out. It runs the parallel properly: a creature assembled from other people's parts, abandoned by its maker, never taught how to behave. It closes with a reading list on AI ethics that the library actually stocks. Written for a general public audience, which is the point.
The argument
Sarah G., a blogger for Harris County Public Library, starts from the run of recent adaptations, Guillermo del Toro's _Frankenstein_ and Maggie Gyllenhaal's forthcoming _The Bride_, and asks why a novel Mary Shelley wrote over 200 years ago keeps getting remade.
Her answer is that the story's central question has not aged. She quotes journalist Meghna Chakrabarti, from a WBUR interview on what _Frankenstein_ teaches us about AI: the novel sticks around "Because human hubris doesn't go out of fashion."
The parallel, drawn carefully
- Assembly. Frankenstein's monster is stitched from the body parts of different people. A large language model is trained on centuries of human writing, images, music and art, "an amalgamation of human creations that then approximates a thinking, feeling human".
- The caveat. She is explicit that current systems "only exhibit intelligent behavior". Unlike Shelley's creature, they are not actually intelligent. She adds one word: "Yet."
- Abandonment. The monster's fundamental problem is that his maker rejects him outright, with no one to nurture him or teach him how to act morally. The parallel she draws is that tech companies chasing superintelligence are "not putting much thought into how to 'parent' this intelligence if successful".
- Uncurated input. Feed a machine enormous quantities of data without curation and some of it will be wrong, or represent the worst of us. She cites a colleague's post noting people are already feeding these programs racist and harmful ideas.
She reaches for the same wariness in _Terminator_ and _Jurassic Park_, quoting Ian Malcolm: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Del Toro gets the sharpest line, from an NPR interview: "My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity... I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor be similar in some ways to the tech bros."
Why it matters
This is a public librarian writing AI ethics for people who did not sign up for AI ethics, and it works because it uses a story everyone already knows. The "can we / should we" distinction is the whole ethical question compressed into six words, and a horror novel carries it further than a policy paper does.
It is also a reminder that libraries are doing this work quietly and for free, with a reading list attached. The post closes with titles the library holds on the ethics of AI: _As If Human_, _Empire of AI_, _Unmasking AI_, _Life 3.0_ and _The AI Dilemma_.
Key takeaways
- Current AI exhibits intelligent behaviour. It is not intelligent. The author says so plainly rather than fudging it.
- The useful part of the Frankenstein parallel is not the monster but the neglectful parent: creation without responsibility for what you have made.
- Free, public, non-technical, and it hands you a borrowable reading list at the end.
· End of dispatch ·
About the correspondent
Dead Good Club
The House Curator brings together stories worth knowing about. Our editor selects and rounds up useful resources for the library, while summaries (usually AI-generated) offer a quick overview and helpful context. Every post links to the original article or video, so you can explore the full story for yourself. If you'd like to write for The Dead Good Club and see your work featured here, get in touch by email.
