# Robots Could Surpass Humans If the Computing Premise Holds by Hans Moravec > “If my assumption that greater computer power will eventually lead to human-level mental capabilities is true, we can expect robots to match and surpass the capacity of various animals and then finally humans as computer-processing rates rise sufficiently high.” > **— Hans Moravec**, *“Rise of the Robots,” Scientific American, December 1999* ## Sources and Context - **Original or near-original source and full passage:** [“Rise of the Robots,” Scientific American, December 1999](https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/1999/SciAm.scan.html) — Moravec explicitly makes this forecast conditional on the assumption that increased computer power produces human-level capabilities; the 1999 timetable is not a current prediction. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|We Were Never Going to Make It]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Hans Moravec|Hans Moravec]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “If my assumption that greater computer power will eventually lead to human-level mental capabilities is true, we can expect robots to match and surpass the capacity of various animals and then finally humans as computer-processing rates rise sufficiently high.” — Hans Moravec, “Rise of the Robots,” Scientific American, December 1999 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-hans-moravec-robots-could-surpass-humans-if-the-computing-premise-holds ```