Machinery which will by-and-by throw itself fatally out of work
May 1879 (William Blackwood and Sons). Novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) in the chapter Shadows of the Coming Race of her last book, a set of essays by a fictional narrator, published May 1879. The narrator spars with his friend Trost, who sees machines as slaves.
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (Shadows of the Coming Race)
More from George Eliot · AI and jobs · AI and philosophy · Before ChatGPT
Who else?
What it refers to: The human race, imagined as building machines like the Bank of England's coin-testing device that could one day supersede their makers.
Other voices
- “The ultimate development of mechanical consciousness” Samuel Butler,
- “The employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests” David Ricardo,
- “His real, his permanent problem” John Maynard Keynes,
- “The race to come after man” Philip K. Dick,
- “A society of laborers without labor” Hannah Arendt,
- “Lightened the day’s toil of any human being” John Stuart Mill,










