We think of artificial intelligence based on large language models as a discovery of our own moment. But Jonathan Swift – yes, the writer of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – foresaw it all in the 18th century.

In our modern world we are repeatedly told by companies, governments, journalists and others that our lives can be changed through the assistance of AI.

By plugging our questions into a machine and assigning it tasks of composition (from reports to books, essays, letters and even creative writing) we can sit back and let ChatGPT and its rivals do the work. Remarkable gains in knowledge and productivity are promised, based on an obscure internal architecture of algorithms that beaver away on our requests. Swift was wise to these ambitions and cast a sceptical eye on their claims.

Gulliver’s Travels, his greatest satirical achievement, covers enormous ground in the objects it submits to scrutiny. The first two trips famously lead to his encounter with the petty little Lilliputians and the outsize Brobdingnagians who expose the hero to various indignities and examinations that call his assumptions into question. In his fourth and final journey, the noble Houyhnhnms – rational horses with the gift of speech – emerge as paragons for Gulliver that make him doubt the value of humanity.

His third voyage, however, receives much less attention and forms no part of the popular recollection of what happens to him across his travels. Yet this sequence contains a multitude of instructive satirical occasions, one of which we could........

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