Machines break down?

Here is a great quote from Hans Moravec (1999, p2):

"Things tossed up come down" is an early theory of gravity, demonstrably true in everyday life, unquestioned for millennia, until Newton developed a new theory of gravity that gave stable orbits to sufficiently fast satellites, and let slightly faster projectiles escape to infinity. "Wood rubbed warm cools down" may have been a truism for our distant ancestors, until one of them rubbed hard enough to achieve ignition temperature, whereupon the wood flamed hotter than ever on its own. "Machines break down" is a demonstrable truth of industrial society, but as machines increasingly design, diagnose, and repair themselves, it too will be suddenly invalidated. Once given "escape velocity," machines more capable than any we know will, without further help from us, grow more capable still, learning from the world, as we did in our biological and cultural evolution. The wood is already smoldering.

Moravec, H. (1999). Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Oxford University Press.