There is an old story of a Prague rabbi named Loew, who made a golem of clay; an artifical servant of sorts. Needless to say, the golem, through an error of the rabbi, escaped his control and started behaving violently. Fortunately the rabbi was able to incapacitate him (it?).

This story is, I think, 400 years old?

It seems that humans have been distrustful about artificial beings since a long time, before they actually could have met them.