# Humans May Become to Robots What Dogs Are to Us by Claude Shannon > "I see no limit to the capability of machines. The microchips are getting smaller and smaller and faster and faster and I can see them getting better than we are. I can visualize sometime in the future we will be to robots as dogs are to humans." > **— Claude Shannon**, *Anthony Liversidge interview, Omni, August 1987* ## Sources and Context - **Primary interview transcript:** [Anthony Liversidge, ‘Profile of Claude Shannon’](https://gwern.net/doc/cs/algorithm/information/1987-liversidge.pdf), *Omni*, August 1987, reprinted in *Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers*, p. xxxi. The poster text is Shannon’s complete contiguous answer to whether he could imagine being friends with a robot; punctuation has been lightly standardized. - **Composite-quotation note:** The familiar line joining ‘we will be to robots as dogs are to humans’ with ‘I’m rooting for the machines’ combines two separate answers and changes Shannon’s ‘as’ to ‘what.’ Earlier in the same interview, when asked about strong chess computers, Shannon said: ‘I am not depressed by it. I am rooting for machines. I have always been on the machines’ side.’ The two answers are kept distinct here and in the Bell Labs article. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Article:** [[articles/Bell Labs and the Distributed Architecture of American Power|Bell Labs and the Distributed Architecture of American Power]] - **Article:** [[articles/A History of Machine Intelligence|A History of Machine Intelligence]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Claude Shannon|Claude Shannon]] - [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - [[wiki/Machine Civilization|Machine Civilization]] - [[wiki/Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] - [[wiki/Civilizational Handoff|Civilizational Handoff]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "I see no limit to the capability of machines. The microchips are getting smaller and smaller and faster and faster and I can see them getting better than we are. I can visualize sometime in the future we will be to robots as dogs are to humans." — Claude Shannon, Anthony Liversidge interview, Omni, August 1987 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-claude-shannon-humans-robots-dogs ```