In her new illustrated book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology, American Historian Adrienne Mayor, writes that Ancient Greece’s ships and wheeled devices foretold how today’s modern technology would work.

Along with similar discoveries from the Romans, Indians and Chinese, she wrote that what Ancient Greece brought was an invaluable contribution to how the world works today.

Odysseus’s pilotless Phaeacian ships, for example, which guided him back home to Ithaca, draw parallels with modern GPS technology, she said, while Homer’s works described self-driving wheeled tripods that carried nectar and ambrosia, a prediction of modern autonomous delivery services. She said technology experts today should closely analyze the stories of the Greeks as a future of automation and robots looms.

But Mayor also cautioned that while Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be beneficial it needed to be kept under control.