The influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (ALife)
technologies upon society, and their potential to fundamentally shape the
future evolution of humankind, are topics very much at the forefront of current
scientific, governmental and public debate. While these might seem like very
modern concerns, they have a long history that is often disregarded in
contemporary discourse. Insofar as current debates do acknowledge the history
of these ideas, they rarely look back further than the origin of the modern
digital computer age in the 1940s-50s. In this paper we explore the earlier
history of these concepts. We focus in particular on the idea of
self-reproducing and evolving machines, and potential implications for our own
species. We show that discussion of these topics arose in the 1860s, within a
decade of the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, and attracted
increasing interest from scientists, novelists and the general public in the
early 1900s. After introducing the relevant work from this period, we
categorise the various visions presented by these authors of the future
implications of evolving machines for humanity. We suggest that current debates
on the co-evolution of society and technology can be enriched by a proper
appreciation of the long history of the ideas involved.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018
(ALIFE 2018), MIT Pres