The AI-dependence argument is 163 years old — Butler predicted acquiescence, not domination
Smart_Fly_5783 · reddit · 2026-09-07
A Reddit post argues the "will machines dominate us" debate is not new: in 1863, Samuel Butler's letter Darwin Among the Machines mapped onto today's discourse almost exactly — but his actual thesis is usually flattened into an early Terminator scenario.
- Butler's real claim: the danger was never machines seizing power; it was that humans would find machines so useful that removing them becomes practically impossible — at which point who is in charge is already settled, regardless of who appears to hold it. A society unable to destroy its machines has "raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy" and become "acquiescent in our bondage."
- Contrast with superintelligence takeover: closer to today's arguments about algorithmic dependence, attention-economy lock-in, and infrastructure too embedded to unwind — and it applies to any indispensable technology, not just intelligent machines.
- The letter is also the direct source of Dune's "Butlerian Jihad." The OP asks whether "acquiescence through indispensability" is a distinct risk category or repackaged dependence-anxiety.
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