Thinking machines is a collective term for artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 in the Dune universe

Dune (franchise)

Dune is a science fiction franchise which originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert. Considered by many to be the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Dune is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history...

 created by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert

Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...

. The Butlerian Jihad

Butlerian Jihad

The Butlerian Jihad is an event in the back-story of Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. Occurring over 10,000 years before the events chronicled in his 1965 novel Dune, this jihad leads to the outlawing of certain technologies, primarily "thinking machines", a collective term for computers...

  a human crusade against thinking machines is an epic turning point in the back-story

Back-story

A back-story, background story, or backstory is the literary device of a narrative chronologically earlier than, and related to, a narrative of primary interest. Generally, it is the history of characters or other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative's start...

 of the Dune universe. The thinking machines are first mentioned in 1965's Dune

Dune (novel)

Dune is a science fiction novel written by Frank Herbert, published in 1965. It won the Hugo Award in 1966, and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel...

, and are adapted into autonomous robots to serve as the primary antagonists in the Legends of Dune

Legends of Dune

Legends of Dune is a prequel trilogy of novels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe.* Dune: The Butlerian Jihad * Dune: The Machine Crusade * Dune: The Battle of Corrin...

prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 trilogy

Trilogy

A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...

 (2002–2004) by Brian Herbert

Brian Herbert

Brian Patrick Herbert is an American author who lives in Washington state. He is the elder son of science fiction author Frank Herbert....

 and Kevin J. Anderson

Kevin J. Anderson

Kevin J. Anderson is an American science fiction author with over forty bestsellers. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E., and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the co-author of the Dune prequels...

.

The original Dune series

The glossary of the novel Dune includes the following:

JIHAD, BUTLERIAN: (see also Great Revolt) — the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible

Orange Catholic Bible

The Orange Catholic Bible is a fictional book from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert...

 as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

In Dune Messiah

Dune Messiah

Dune Messiah is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, the second in a series of six novels. It was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine in 1969. The American and British editions have different prologues summarizing events in the previous novel...

(1969), the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale

Scytale (Dune)

Scytale is a fictional character in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. In the novel Dune Messiah , Scytale is a Tleilaxu Face Dancer who participates in the conspiracy to topple the rule of Paul Atreides. He later returns as a ghola and Tleilaxu Master in Heretics of Dune and...

 notes that "From the days of the Butlerian Jihad when 'thinking machines' had been wiped from most of the universe, computers had inspired distrust."

Herbert refers to thinking machines and the Jihad several times in his later works in the Dune series, but does not give much detail on how he imagined either. In God Emperor of Dune

God Emperor of Dune

God Emperor of Dune is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert published in 1981, the fourth in the Dune series. It was ranked as the #11 hardcover fiction best seller of 1981 by Publishers Weekly.-Plot introduction:...

(1981), Leto Atreides II

Leto Atreides II

Leto Atreides II is a fictional character from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. Born at the end of Dune Messiah , Leto is a central character in Children of Dune and is the title character of God Emperor of Dune . The character is brought back as a ghola in the Brian Herbert/Kevin J...

 indicates that the Jihad had been a semi-religious social upheaval initiated by humans who felt repulsed by how guided and controlled they had become by machines:

"The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."

Later in the same novel, Leto tests Siona Atreides, who experiences a vision of the future Leto is trying to prevent with his Golden Path. She witnesses mankind's extinction at the hands of "seeking machines":

He knew this experience, but could not change the smallest part of it. No ancestral presences would remain in her consciousness, but she would carry with her forever afterward the clear sights and sounds and smells. The seeking machines would be there, the smell of blood and entrails, the cowering humans in their burrows aware only that they could not escape . . . while all the time the mechanical movement approached, nearer and nearer and nearer ...louder...louder! Everywhere she searched, it would be the same. No escape anywhere.

Herbert's death in 1986 left this topic unexplored and open to speculation.

Legends of Dune

Chronicling the Butlerian Jihad, the Legends of Dune series (2002–2004) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson establishes that the thinking machines are a host of destructive robots led by Omnius, a sentient computer network. A thousand years before the Jihad, a group of twenty dissident humans had used thinking machines to enslave the rest of mankind, and then converted themselves into weaponized human-machine hybrids called cymeks. Essentially immortal and unstoppable, they had become known as the Titans

Titan (Dune)

The Titans are a group of fictional characters in the Legends of Dune series of novels, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson and set in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert...

, but after a century had been overthrown themselves by Omnius and made his servants. Mankind suffers under thinking machine oppression for another 900 years, before the murder of young Manion Butler at the hands of the independent robot Erasmus incites the Butlerian Jihad. The last remaining free humans, unified under the League of Nobles, fight for a century before finally defeating the machines in the Battle of Corrin.

Hunters of Dune

In Hunters of Dune

Hunters of Dune

Hunters of Dune is the first of two books written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson to conclude Frank Herbert's original Dune series of novels....

(2006), Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's first of a two-part finale to the original series, the antagonists Daniel and Marty (introduced in Frank Herbert's 1985 Chapterhouse: Dune) are revealed to be incarnations of Omnius and Erasmus. In the third Legends novel Dune: The Battle of Corrin

Dune: The Battle of Corrin

Dune: The Battle of Corrin is a 2004 science fiction novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, set in the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. It is the third book in the Legends of Dune prequel trilogy, which takes place over 10,000 years before the events of Frank Herbert's...

(2004), Omnius had sent out a last burst of information before being destroyed in the Battle of Corrin; it is explained in Hunters that this signal had eventually connected with one of the probes disseminated from Giedi Prime

Giedi Prime

Giedi Prime is a fictional planet in Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune. A planet of Ophiuchi B , it is the homeworld of the vicious House Harkonnen, the sworn enemies of House Atreides.-Description:...

several decades earlier, uploading versions of Erasmus and Omnius.