When the 19th century could not comprehend stunning predictions about artificial intelligence takeover, Samuel Butler’s letter in New Zealand was the first warning.
Anxiety over artificial intelligence dominance might seem like a modern idea based on movies like “WarGames” or “The Terminator”, but it turns out the warning against machine dominance actually dates back to the American Civil War era. On June 13, 1863, a letter was published in “The Press” newspaper in Christchurch warning of the potential threats of “machinery development” and explicitly calling for its destruction to avert a future where technology might become a threat driving humanity to extinction. This letter is arguably the first written call to halt technological progress to prevent machines from dominating humans.
The letter was published under the title “Darwin among the Machines” and signed with the pseudonym “Cellarius.” It was later revealed that the actual writer was Samuel Butler, an English farmer who settled in New Zealand. Butler drew inspiration for his text from Charles Darwin’s ideas on evolution, viewing that machines could acquire consciousness and overthrow humans as the dominant species on Earth. Butler wrote: “We are creating our successors. Every day we are becoming more refined and exact in the development of their physical structure… And the day will come when we find ourselves the weaker race.”
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Butler imagined in his letter that humans would become “servants” to machines, while simultaneously demanding that they be confronted before gaining the upper hand. He drew an analogy showing humans as breeders of pets, providing them with food and shelter, explaining that if the tables turned, machines might become dominant and humans would not be able to stop them.
Butler’s ideas also manifested in his 1872 novel “Erewhon,” in which he portrayed a society that bans any modern mechanical invention and destroys all machines created in the past 300 years out of fear that machine evolution would take over humanity.
Butler sparked widespread controversy; some critics thought he was mocking Darwin’s theory, while he denied this. In fact, in a letter he wrote to Darwin himself, he expressed his fascination with the book “On the Origin of Species,” explaining that he was defending the theory of evolution against its opponents in the New Zealand press.
What makes Butler’s vision astonishing is the chronological context in which he wrote. Decades before the creation of the first actual mechanical computer, and without any advanced computing devices—other than simple machines and early production lines—Butler dared to conclude that technology would evolve into an independent thinking machine, perhaps smarter than humans. His predictions stemmed from his observation of machine development during the Industrial Revolution.
The controversy sparked by Butler remains alive today. Just a few years ago, the world witnessed a series of intense debates surrounding the risks of ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence, and warnings issued by researchers and tech company executives that these systems, if left unchecked, could threaten the long-term survival of humanity. Some even proposed halting their development to avoid a catastrophic scenario.
Some wonder: will these future fears be just a page in the history of machine evolution? Or will time confirm the truth of the pessimists’ warnings? In any case, we cannot ignore the fact of our increasing reliance on smart systems that organize the details of our lives and control many of our decisions. Perhaps robots will not turn into tyrannical rulers, but the idea that we are becoming more dependent on technology, even relying on it for the most personal matters, was—for Butler—a spark worth listening to.
At the end of his controversial letter, Butler called for “a relentless war against machines, the destruction of every machine without exception, and a return to the primitive state of man,” as he viewed that falling into the trap of these devices and our inability to disconnect from them means we have already begun the march of technological slavery. If we are unable to carry out this call, this is the ultimate proof that “the evil of machines has crept into our lives, and we have already begun walking toward our complete subjugation.”
