Claim · 1994-10 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Minsky's article of 1994 answers its title question, whether robots will inherit the earth, "Yes, but they will be our children."

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Will Robots Inherit the Earth? → articulates → Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence

Where it appears

Machine succession, scale and acceleration: propositions in located texts, 1979–2026 →

Claim and evidence

Will Robots Inherit the Earth?articulates ↓Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1994-10 · publication Records dated 1994 →
Wording attested: 1997-01-02. Author's web text marked "with some minor revisions" and "Last modified: Wed Jan 02 1997", read in a copy of the MIT Media Lab site hosted at web.mit.edu; not compared with the magazine pages.
Role: Articulation
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction

Scope and limitsThe article's main subject is replacing human bodies and brains; its answer treats the inheritors as human descendants, not as a separate species.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Will Robots Inherit the Earth?

Copy of Marvin Minsky's MIT Media Lab site hosted at web.mit.edu/dxh; published in Scientific American 271 (4), October 1994 · 1994-10

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.”

Location in source Final paragraph, before "Further Reading"

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-01

Source details and check notes

Authors: Marvin L. Minsky
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 31720270c1a06a4c58da1a470a0f6d891f194cfca12a5f9781f1026cc4449ba5). Author's web text marked "(Scientific American, Oct, 1994 with some minor revisions)" and "Last modified: Wed Jan 02 1997", read in a copy of the MIT Media Lab site hosted at web.mit.edu (the original address returns HTTP 404). Not compared with the magazine pages.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-31
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Marvin L. Minsky, “Will Robots Inherit the Earth?”, 1994-10.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, machine succession, scale and acceleration (research/heterodox-thought). The quotation (12 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Machine-checked. Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.

Date. Scientific American, October 1994.

Record ID ht-w01-minsky-1994-will-robots-inherit-the-earth