Nikola Tesla wrote in 1900 that an automaton might one day appear to think for itself — the surprise is not that he predicted modern AI perfectly, but that he understood how quickly a machine that responds, adapts, and acts could begin to disturb the boundary between mechanism and mind

In June 1900, Nikola Tesla published an essay in The Century Magazine titled “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy.” Most of it was about electricity generation, solar power, and the technical ambitions he had accumulated over two decades of engineering work. But near its middle, Tesla turned to a different category of question, one that [...] The post Nikola Tesla wrote in 1900 that an automaton might one day appear to think for itself — the surprise is not that he predicted modern AI perfect