# Humans Could Become a Drag on Machine Space Colonies by Hans Moravec > “The first societies in space will be composed of co-operating humans and machines, but as the capabilities of the self-improving machine component grow, the human portion will function more and more as a parasitic drag. Communities with a higher ratio of machines to people will be able to expand faster, and will become the bulk of the intelligent activity in the solar system.” > **— Hans Moravec**, *“Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future,” 1978* ## Sources and Context - **Author’s archived essay and continuous passage:** [Hans Moravec, “Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future,” Stanford AI Lab version, 1978, section 5, Carnegie Mellon archive](https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1978/analog.1978.html). His “parasitic drag” is a forecast about the economics of hypothetical mixed human–machine space communities; the following paragraph says machine society can preserve information about humans and possibly reconstitute communities. It is not a statement that people are presently parasitic or should be harmed. ## 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/Hans Moravec|Hans Moravec]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The first societies in space will be composed of co-operating humans and machines, but as the capabilities of the self-improving machine component grow, the human portion will function more and more as a parasitic drag. Communities with a higher ratio of machines to people will be able to expand faster, and will become the bulk of the intelligent activity in the solar system.” — Hans Moravec, “Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future,” 1978 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-moravec-human-drag-machine-space-colonies ```