Claim · 1999-12 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Moravec's Scientific American article of 1999 states that the path it outlines suggests robot intelligence will surpass human intelligence well before 2050, in which case most of what science knows in 2050 will have been discovered by "our artificial progeny".

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

Rise of the Robots → 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

Rise of the Robotsarticulates ↓Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1999-12 · publication Records dated 1999 →
Wording attested: 2001-03-30. The cross-family check found the archive capture of 30 March 2001 byte-identical to the copy read.
Role: Articulation
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction

Scope and limitsRead in the author's transcription; the magazine pages were not inspected. The passage concerns machines as the principal agent of scientific discovery, conditional on its forecast ("In that case").

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Rise of the Robots

Hans Moravec (author-hosted HTML transcription); published in Scientific American, December 1999, pp. 124-135 · 1999-12

Cite the original source

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

Source excerpt

“It suggests that robot intelligence will surpass our own well before 2050. In that case, mass-produced, fully educated robot scientists working diligently, cheaply, rapidly and increasingly effectively will ensure that most of what science knows in 2050 will have been discovered by our artificial progeny!”

Location in source Section "Fast Replay", final paragraph

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-01

Source details and check notes

Authors: Hans Moravec
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 ec04af75ba1f78b81963e916b7d0910e3e7a17d8b0b78434102254928012d907). Author-hosted HTML headed "Scientific American December 1999 pp.124-135". The magazine pages were not inspected. Earliest capture located: 2001-03-30 (not compared). The author's June 1999 draft "Robots Among Us" was also retrieved but not used.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-31
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Hans Moravec, “Rise of the Robots”, 1999-12.
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 (45 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. A cross-family machine check (2026-11-01, item 84) re-read the record’s source and agreed with its stance; its corrections were applied at admission. 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, December 1999.

Record ID ht-w01-moravec-1999-rise-of-the-robots