[Ads-l] Quote Origin: We Should Regard It as a Privilege To Be Stepping Stones to Higher Things

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The controversial statements made by science fiction author Arthur C.
Clarke during a BBC-2 program in 1964 are considered threatening by
some in the twenty-first century as AI research continues to progress.

[Begin excerpt]
… the most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won’t be men
or monkeys. They’ll be machines--the remote descendants of today’s
computers. Now the present-day electronic brains are complete morons,
but this will not be true in another generation. They will start to
think, and eventually they will completely outthink their makers.

Is this depressing? I don’t see why it should be. We superseded the
Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men, and we presume we’re an improvement. I
think we should regard it as a privilege to be stepping stones to
higher things. I suspect that organic, or biological, evolution has
about come to its end, and we’re now at the beginning of inorganic, or
mechanical, evolution, which will be thousands of times swifter.
[End excerpt]

A slightly different version of this passage appeared in a companion
article by Clarke published in “The Listener” magazine in October
1964.

Both versions are present in the QI article:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2026/05/29/stepping-higher/

Garson O'Toole

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org