Butlerian jihad

== English == === Alternative forms === Butlerian Jihad === Etymology === From Butlerian +‎ jihad (“holy war, crusade”), from the science fiction epic Dune (1965). Butlerian refers to English novelist Samuel Butler, whose 1872 work Erewhon describes a society that destroys all complex machines preemptively out of fear of their replacement by those very machines. === Noun === Butlerian jihad (plural Butlerian jihads) (science fiction) A war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”) machines; the Great Revolt. (by extension, artificial intelligence) A notional large-scale and vehement opposition to and suppression of artificial intelligence. ==== Usage notes ==== Previously, this term was little known outside the context of the Dune science fiction franchise. It has since gained traction as a term in popular culture with the advent of powerful commercially-available machine-learning text-, image- and video-generating AIs in the early to mid-2020s. ==== See also ==== Erewhonian === References === === Further reading === Dune (franchise) § Butlerian Jihad on Wikipedia.Wikipedia