Bysurface analysis,Butlerian +jihad(“holy war,crusade”). Named after the bookDune: The Butlerian Jihad, in which a war—namely, the Butlerian Jihad—is being waged by the last free humans against autonomous machines.
The term “Butlerian” refers to English novelistSamuel Butler. In Butler's 1872 workErewhon, a society destroys all complex machines preemptively out of fear of theirreplacement by those very machines.[1]
Butlerianjihad (pluralButlerian jihads)
- (sociopolitics) A notionallarge-scale andvehement opposition to and suppression ofartificial intelligence.
- Previously, this term was little known outside the context of theDunescience fiction franchise. It has since gained traction as a term inpopular culture with theadvent of powerful commercially-availablemachine-learning text-, image- and video-generating AIs in the early to mid-2020s.
- ^Erik Hoel (30 June 2021), “We need a Butlerian Jihad against AI”, inThe Intrinsic Perspective[1], Substack
