The case for tracing fears of self-improving machines to George Eliot in 1879

A post reads George Eliot’s “Shadows of the Coming Race” as an 1879 warning that recursive self-improvement—systems improving their own capabilities—could leave humans obsolete. It says contemplating an automated weighing machine at the Bank of England sparked her thinking. The comparison comes in a quote post sharing a video whose author describes worrying about recursive self-improvement on Australia’s Lateline in 1996.