With Hephaestus, myth moves from intelligent making toward artificial agency.

His workshop contains self-moving devices and artificial attendants.

The question changes:

Can we make an object?

becomes

Can we make an object that acts?

In the Iliad, Hephaestus is assisted by artificial golden maidens endowed with capacities associated with living persons.

The ancient fantasy is already recognizably humanoid:

Can the made thing become sufficiently like its maker?

One of the most persistent fantasies is delegation.

The artificial being carries, assists, manufactures, obeys.

labor → delegated labor → autonomous labor

The machine performs what we cannot, will not, or no longer need to do ourselves.

A machine need not imitate the whole human.

It may instead extend a capacity.

lever → force

vehicle → movement

writing → memory

computer → calculation

artificial agent → cognition?