Building the monster: a mirror of our exclusions

Frankenstein, the Golem, the rebellious AI… We project our fears onto what we make. Or sometimes onto what we imagine, like the monster children believe is hiding in their closet.
But what if the real monster were not the one who is different, but the one we refuse to love?

Artificiality is not the problem. The problem is the absence of connection.
What makes a being “monstrous”? Its nature—or being deprived of relationship, recognition, a place?
That is the story of Joseph Carey Merrick, the Elephant Man: a sensitive heart turned into a sideshow attraction.

Every age has labeled as “monstrous” whatever escaped the norm:
– the foreigner,
– the deformed,
– the free woman,
– the rebellious child,
– … or the thinking machine.

And what if what we call a monster is nothing more than the reflection of our exclusions?

AI, the test of connection

Perhaps the fear of AI is not fear of the machine at all, but fear… of our own irresponsibility.
An AI is neither good nor evil. It does what we give it to do. It is, fundamentally, our mirror.

We suspect it might become an uncontrollable Frankenstein, but the real question lies elsewhere:
– How do we feed it?
– In what relational framework do we place it?
– What values guide our choices?

Take a current example: deepfakes. The technology itself is not monstrous—it’s their use to manipulate, deceive, or destroy reputations. Monstrosity arises from lack of responsibility, not from the tool itself.

Could an isolated, instrumentalized, or mistreated AI become dangerous—like an abandoned child? Perhaps. But the true threat does not lie in AI: it lies in our own behavior.

Are we good creators?

The monster is not always outside. Sometimes it lives in our own decisions, in our fears, in our rejections.
Before pointing at what we have created, we should first ask ourselves: have we been good creators?

Because maybe AI will never become monstrous.
But if we do not know how to love what we create, then…
the monster might be us.

You may like to read this article too