almost 162 days ago , a visionary predicted the organic evolution of automobile and the rising slope of artificial intelligence ( AI ) with unnerving accuracy . He boldly foresee a time to come where humanity ’s mechanical creations might even realise consciousness and supplant us as the dominant species on Earth .

His name was Samuel Butler , a British - born author ( not to mention creative person , lensman , composer , and sheep sodbuster ) who ’s perhaps well acknowledge for the satiric novelErewhon . However , some of his less - appreciated insights can be find in a letter he place to the editor ofThe Pressnewspaper in New Zealand on 7 February 2025 , indite under the pseudonym of " Cellarius . "

Given its well-timed themes of artificial machines run amok , the letter has lately done the round again on societal media after being shared on X ( the app formerly known as Twitter ) byPeter Wildefordof the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy .

TitledDarwin Among The Machines , Butler ’s alphabetic character tincture estimate about the rapid development of machinery with the theory of development by natural selection . He debate that machines could acquire to the item where their complexness and abilities would surpass our own . finally , their superiority would allow them to kidnap our role as the dominant species and become too hefty to demolish .

Here are some of the most prophetic passage from the varsity letter :

" Day by day , however , the machines are gaining ground upon us ; day by day we are becoming more slavish to them ; more manpower are day by day bound down as slaves to tend them , more adult male are day by day devoting the energies of their whole lives to the developing of mechanical life story . "

" We are ourselves creating our own successors ; we are daily add up to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation ; we are daily giving them greater office and supply by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that ego - regulating , self - play power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race . "

" In the course of ages , we shall find ourselves the substandard subspecies . "

" This at once test that the mischief is already done , that our servitude has commenced in good earnest , that we have raised a slipstream of beings whom it is beyond our power to destruct . "

Butler ’s vision was n’t overly revelatory , though . He believed that the machines would have no indigence to malevolently suppress or destroyHomo sapiens , just as we have no motivation to actively egest the lives of all dogs , cats , and mice on Earth . In fact , we ’ve arguably improved the lives of those “ lesser animals ” throughdomestication .

In this sense , perhaps humans will become the pets ofAIand partake in happy , fulfilling lives .

He writes : “ Man will have become to the political machine what the horse and the dog are to military man . He will carry on to subsist , nay even to improve , and will be plausibly undecomposed of in his DoS of tameness under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state . ”

“ We cover our cavalry , dogs , cattle , and sheep , on the whole , with great forgivingness ; we give them whatever experience teaches us to be good for them , and there can be no doubt that our use of pith has added to the happiness of the lower creature far more than it has detracted from it ; in like manner it is fairish to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly , for their being is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the miserable animals , ” he added .

Bear in brain that the class 1863 predates most of the innovation that would define the forward-looking era , including the telephone , automobile , airplane , wireless , and more . Furthermore , it was also just four years after the germinal Quran on evolution by raw choice , Charles Darwin’sOn the Origin of Species , was print .

As we put up on the threshold of a much - hyped AI gyration , it ’s remarkable to think how onwards of time Butler ’s thoughts truly were . While we may not yet knowwhether AI will pass usas a coinage , or pass to a newfangled material body of coexistence , his pondering into the develop kinship between man and machine still feels strikingly on point .