Japanese robots in Tsukuba

The late Isaac Asimov argued that there were two ways to judge a science fiction writer. One was to consider him mad; the other, a visionary. He preferred the second description for himself.

He probably still has supporters. Many of his readers remember that he anticipated the atomic bomb. But when it comes to choosing “the best”, others may vote for a more classical figure. Perhaps Edgar Allan Poe, who imagined such things as a journey to the Moon. Or Jules Verne, with his vision of an extraordinary voyage beneath the sea. Or H. G. Wells, who in 1901 described what automobiles would do to people living in cities half a century later.

Yet the course of history now seems to have pointed towards another, lesser-known writer: Samuel Butler.

What this remarkable Englishman imagined was nothing less than a society capable of foreseeing the danger that machines might one day mate with one another, reproduce and evolve like living beings. A recent newspaper report contains enough suggestive details to make Butler a candidate for the crown.

The scientific city

The Japanese established Tsukuba, about 80 kilometres from Tokyo, as their scientific city. They concentrated researchers and resources there, following a formula associated with success since the United States used it in 1942 to manufacture synthetic rubber and shortly afterwards to build the atomic bomb.

It was precisely from Tsukuba that newspapers reported the announcement: “A robot has been made to reproduce.”

The head of the research group stated that the creation of the first self-reproducing robot meant that machines capable of replicating like animals and evolving through “natural selection” could become available in the near future.

The robot uses microchips as “genetic codes” and preassembled components as the equivalent of cells.

The metallic creature, which resembles a centipede, assembles itself from components scattered across the floor until it grows to twice its original size—20 by 10 by 10 centimetres—and then divides into two identical, independent units.

As long as parts remain available, the robot can multiply exponentially. Its “genetic codes” could be programmed to create random mutants. Those best adapted to their working environment would be able to produce more “offspring” and thereby ensure the Darwinian evolution of the species.

Anticipating ethical or religious objections, the scientist added that researchers were studying a mechanism to prevent the machines from reproducing uncontrollably.

That, in condensed form, was the news.

Its significance becomes even more striking when read alongside a work of speculative literature—and satire—written in 1872 by Samuel Butler, whom George Bernard Shaw considered the greatest English writer of the second half of the nineteenth century, partly because of works such as this one and The Way of All Flesh.

Erewhon

The novel is titled Erewhon and was published while Charles Darwin’s ideas in On the Origin of Species were still the subject of intense debate.

The title is a playful rearrangement of the word “nowhere”.

The story follows a traveller who discovers a civilisation beyond the mountains during an expedition through a frontier region, probably inspired by New Zealand.

After living among the inhabitants, known as Erewhonians, he encounters several surprising principles of their culture. They regard illness as a crime committed by the person who suffers from it and have therefore, according to the novel, developed a physically beautiful and strong population.

But an even more striking feature defines their society: they have abolished and destroyed their machines because they consider them dangerous competitors to the human species.

Most of the novel is devoted to this idea.

At some point in their history, the Erewhonians became convinced that the relentless progress of machinery might eventually lead machines to develop consciousness, subjugate humanity and even begin reproducing like living beings.

These fears were collected in a manuscript titled The Book of the Machines, which provoked a civil war between supporters and opponents of mechanical devices.

The development of machine consciousness

The manuscript argued that there was no guarantee against the emergence of machine consciousness.

Within only a few centuries, machines had advanced at a rate incomparable with the evolution visible in either the plant or animal kingdoms. In three thousand years, they had taken giant steps compared with those made by humanity over twenty million years.

What, then, might they achieve in another twenty million?

Some people argued that machines should be regarded simply as servants of humanity. But the manuscript warned against such confidence.

A servant, it suggested, may gradually infiltrate the life of the master, make that master dependent and eventually subject him to its control.

The relationship would change so slowly that the human being might fail to notice the transfer of power.

Could machines reproduce?

The defenders of machinery raised another objection. Machines, they said, had no reproductive systems.

The author of The Book of the Machines agreed that it was unlikely anyone would ever witness “the fertile union of two steam engines, with their little ones playing outside the shed”.

But he did not consider the objection convincing.

Nobody expects every characteristic of existing organisms to be reproduced exactly in a new form of life. The reproductive systems of animals differ greatly from those of plants, yet both are genuine forms of reproduction.

Why assume that nature has exhausted every possible form of that power?

Inspired by such fears, the Erewhonians revolted and destroyed all their machines.

Not quite all of them. Some disabled devices were preserved in a museum and displayed like fossils, as a warning intended to ensure that the memory of the danger would not disappear.

Butler’s warning in the modern world

The comparison becomes more unsettling in the contemporary world.

Computers already surpass human beings in many tasks. Medicine increasingly relies on cyborg-like combinations of organisms and machines: dialysis systems connected to patients, artificial hearts, lungs and kidneys, pacemakers and projects involving organic-electrical connections between the brain and large computers.

Human beings now live in growing intimacy with machines.

Against that background, the announcement from Tsukuba may appear wonderful to some and ominous to others.

The birth of a “self-reproducing robot”—a metallic centipede capable of producing random mutants in the future—was presented as a triumph by its Japanese creators.

Some readers may therefore celebrate and exclaim: “They did it!”

Others, whether pessimists or cynics, may ask a different question:

Who did it—the Japanese scientists or the machines?