Destructive Power of AI Predicted (1828)
Many feared the dangers of a monstrous body of knowledge
What did the future look like in 1820s Britain?
For those who championed progress, this period roared with possibility. Encyclopædia Britannica first became available to the British public in 1771; by the early nineteenth-century, at least fourteen major encyclopedias, and reams of subject-specific dictionaries, were passing through all kinds of British hands.
In contrast - poking fun at liberal ambitions for education reform, the rapid pace of industrialization, and a fashionable interest in applied knowledge, Robert Seymour’s The March of the Intellect offered a satirical vision of the wonders and potential cost of progress.
The March of the Intellect is an apocalyptic vision of the future - where a jolly automaton stomps across society. Its head is a literal stack of knowledge — tomes of history, philosophy, and mechanic manuals power two gas-lantern eyes. The message is that the relentless pursuit of progress and knowledge can have destructive consequences if not properly managed.
Remind you of AI?
It wears secular London University as a crown. The machine smokes while crusading, blowing hot-air-balloon follies from a pipe bowl, carried on the breath of its menacing exhalation: “I Come I Come!!”.
Wielding a straw broom, capped with the head of reformer Henry Brougham, it sweeps away all potential encumbrances. Gone are the pleas, pleadings, delayed parliamentary bills, and obsolete laws. Vicars, rectors, and quack doctors are turned on their heads.
The March of the Intellect critiques the era's fashionable interest in applied knowledge by satirizing the idea that scientific and technological progress can solve all of society's problems. And it echos modern concerns over AI. Both express worries about the unintended consequences of technological progress and the potential for machines to become too powerful and destructive.
Like Frankenstein’s creature, birthed from a pick ‘n’ mix of exhumed organs and ossified science, the monster in this satirical cartoon is patchwork knowledge itself, practically applied and made widely available for the very first time. ~ “March of Intellect” Cartoons (1828–29)
Image: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect, ca. 1828. Wikimedia
For another British critique of progress from that era see William Heath, March of Intellect, 1829.
