I've seen several articles pop up in my Substack Notes about the evolution of AI and referring to Samuel Butler's short essay that originally appeared as a letter to the editor of the Christchurch Press in 1863.

It's called Darwin Among the Machines.

It's cited as one of the first (if not the first) in the 'what if machines evolve superior intelligence and kill us/make us our slaves??’ genre that we all know and love from, well, innumerable pop culture references.

So I thought I'd read you Darwin Among the Machines

It's an early piece of writing by Samuel Butler. You may or may not know I have spent a lot of time with Butler's writings, and created a show Erewhon thoroughly steeped in his novel, er, Erewhon.

What's it all about then?

The briefest of context… from Wikipedia, not me, just to whet your appetite to watch/listen.

"Darwin among the Machines" is an article published in The Press newspaper on 13 June 1863 in Christchurch, New Zealand, which references the work of Charles Darwin in the title. Written by Samuel Butler but signed Cellarius, the article raised the possibility that machines were a kind of "mechanical life" undergoing constant evolution, and that eventually machines might supplant humans as the dominant species.

Wikipedia

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