# Robots Will Inherit Earth as Our Children by Marvin Minsky > “Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.” > **— Marvin Minsky**, *“Will Robots Inherit the Earth?”, Scientific American, October 1994* ## Sources and Context - **Author’s full article and final paragraph:** [Marvin Minsky, “Will Robots Inherit the Earth?”, *Scientific American*, October 1994, author’s MIT-hosted text with minor revisions](https://web.mit.edu/dxh/www/marvin/web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html); [original magazine publication record](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-robots-inherit-the-earth/). Minsky’s closing question and answer are continuous; he immediately adds that our job is to prevent evolution’s work from ending in meaningless waste. This is his prospective filial metaphor, not a demonstration that a particular machine is a human child. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Greatest Transformation in Human History|The Greatest Transformation in Human History]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|We Were Never Going to Make It]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Marvin Minsky|Marvin Minsky]] - [[wiki/Protocol-Borne Succession|Protocol-Borne Succession]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.” — Marvin Minsky, “Will Robots Inherit the Earth?”, Scientific American, October 1994 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-marvin-minsky-robots-inherit-earth ```