Robots are the future personified. Smart Dust and HyperLocal technologies will make the idea of robots seem ridiculous to our grandchildren.
This link has been bookmarked by 169 people . It was first bookmarked on 02 Mar 2006, by Jeff Schilling.
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05 Mar 14
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knowledge-enabled mass destruction
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erhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change. Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science's quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.
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Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the "gray goo problem." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.
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We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes
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the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions.
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Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently.
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life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby.
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we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science's quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.
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As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.
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create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species.
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This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself - as well as to vast numbers of others.
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But despite the strong historical precedents, if open access to and unlimited development of knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we reexamine even these basic, long-held beliefs.
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he truth that science seeks can certainly be considered a dangerous substitute for God if it is likely to lead to our extinction.
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we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive need to know.
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Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?
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the Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing is for us to conduct our lives with love and compassion for others, and that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal responsibility and of our interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali's Fraternity utopia.
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The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is that makes people happy, and acknowledge the strong evidence that neither material progress nor the pursuit of the power of knowledge is the key - that there are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do.
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We are also getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st-century technologies - the prevention of knowledge-enabled mass destruction - and further delay seems unacceptable.
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07 Apr 13
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03 Apr 13
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But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions.
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As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
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These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free.
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Kaczynski's dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well-known problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will."
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The cause of many such surprises seems clear: The systems involved are complex, involving interaction among and feedback between many parts. Any changes to such a system will cascade in ways that are difficult to predict; this is especially true when human actions are involved.
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Hans Moravec's bookRobot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Moravec is one of the leaders in robotics research, and was a founder of the world's largest robotics research program, at Carnegie Mellon University.Robot gave me more material to try out on my friends - material surprisingly supportive of Kaczynski's argument.
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In a completely free marketplace, superior robots would surely affect humans as North American placentals affected South American marsupials (and as humans have affected countless species). Robotic industries would compete vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence.
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Judiciously applied, governmental coercion could support human populations in high style on the fruits of robot labor, perhaps for a long while.
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He goes on to discuss how our main job in the 21st century will be "ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries" by passing laws decreeing that they be "nice,"3 and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be "once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot." Moravec's view is that the robots will eventually succeed us - that humans clearly face extinction.
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Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.
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The vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot dreams drives us forward
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Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger.
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The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.
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I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.
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Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science's quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.
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But because of the recent rapid and radical progress in molecular electronics - where individual atoms and molecules replace lithographically drawn transistors - and related nanoscale technologies, we should be able to meet or exceed the Moore's law rate of progress for another 30 years.
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As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.
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But now, with the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable. Having struggled my entire career to build reliable software systems, it seems to me more than likely that this future will not work out as well as some people may imagine. My personal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities.
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A second dream of robotics is that we will gradually replace ourselves with our robotic technology, achieving near immortality by downloading our consciousnesses; it is this process that Danny Hillis thinks we will gradually get used to and that Ray Kurzweil elegantly details inThe Age of Spiritual Machines. (We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body, as illustrated on thecover ofWired 8.02.)
But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human? It seems to me far more likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one in any sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.
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While there are many important issues here, my own major concern with genetic engineering is narrower: that it gives the power - whether militarily, accidentally, or in a deliberate terrorist act - to create a White Plague.
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The enabling breakthrough to assemblers seems quite likely within the next 20 years. Molecular electronics - the new subfield of nanotechnology where individual molecules are circuit elements - should mature quickly and become enormously lucrative within this decade, causing a large incremental investment in all nanotechnologies.
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Unfortunately, as with nuclear technology, it is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones. Nanotechnology has clear military and terrorist uses, and you need not be suicidal to release a massively destructive nanotechnological device - such devices can be built to be selectively destructive, affecting, for example, only a certain geographical area or a group of people who are genetically distinct.
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An immediate consequence of the Faustian bargain in obtaining the great power of nanotechnology is that we run a grave risk - the risk that we might destroy the biosphere on which all life depends.
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"Plants" with "leaves" no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous "bacteria" could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.
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A recent article by Stuart Kauffman inNature titled "Self-Replication: Even Peptides Do It" discusses the discovery that a 32-amino-acid peptide can "autocatalyse its own synthesis." We don't know how widespread this ability is, but Kauffman notes that it may hint at "a route to self-reproducing molecular systems on a basis far wider than Watson-Crick base-pairing
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It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds - a planet, newly formed, placidly revolves around its star; life slowly forms; a kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves; intelligence emerges which, at least up to a point, confers enormous survival value; and then technology is invented. It dawns on them that there are such things as laws of Nature, that these laws can be revealed by experiment, and that knowledge of these laws can be made both to save and to take lives, both on unprecedented scales. Science, they recognize, grants immense powers. In a flash, they create world-altering contrivances. Some planetary civilizations see their way through, place limits on what may and what must not be done, and safely pass through the time of perils. Others, not so lucky or so prudent, perish.
That is Carl Sagan, writing in 1994, inPale Blue Dot, a book describing his vision of the human future in space. I am only now realizing how deep his insight was, and how sorely I miss, and will miss, his voice. For all its eloquence, Sagan's contribution was not least that of simple common sense - an attribute that, along with humility, many of the leading advocates of the 21st-century technologies seem to lack.
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But she, like many levelheaded people, would probably think it greatly arrogant for us, now, to be designing a robotic "replacement species," when we obviously have so much trouble making relatively simple things work, and so much trouble managing - or even understanding - ourselves.
I realize now that she had an awareness of the nature of the order of life, and of the necessity of living with and respecting that order. With this respect comes a necessary humility that we, with our early-21st-century chutzpah, lack at our peril. The commonsense view, grounded in this respect, is often right, in advance of the scientific evidence. The clear fragility and inefficiencies of the human-made systems we have built should give us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles me.
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"I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.
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These technologies are too powerful to be shielded against in the time frame of interest; even if it were possible to implement defensive shields, the side effects of their development would be at least as dangerous as the technologies we are trying to protect against.
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These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.
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One would think we might be driven to such a dialogue by our instinct for self-preservation. Individuals clearly have this desire, yet as a species our behavior seems to be not in our favor. In dealing with the nuclear threat, we often spoke dishonestly to ourselves and to each other, thereby greatly increasing the risks. Whether this was politically motivated, or because we chose not to think ahead, or because when faced with such grave threats we acted irrationally out of fear, I do not know, but it does not bode well.
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I frankly believe that the situation in 1945 was simpler than the one we now face: The nuclear technologies were reasonably separable into commercial and military uses, and monitoring was aided by the nature of atomic tests and the ease with which radioactivity could be measured. Research on military applications could be performed at national laboratories such as Los Alamos, with the results kept secret as long as possible.
The GNR technologies do not divide clearly into commercial and military uses; given their potential in the market, it's hard to imagine pursuing them only in national laboratories. With their widespread commercial pursuit, enforcing relinquishment will require a verification regime similar to that for biological weapons, but on an unprecedented scale. This, inevitably, will raise tensions between our individual privacy and desire for proprietary information, and the need for verification to protect us all. We will undoubtedly encounter strong resistance to this loss of privacy and freedom of action.
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Thoreau also said that we will be "rich in proportion to the number of things which we can afford to let alone."
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Our Western notion of happiness seems to come from the Greeks, who defined it as "the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope." 15
Clearly, we need to find meaningful challenges and sufficient scope in our lives if we are to be happy in whatever is to come. But I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers.
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13 Mar 13
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13 Dec 12
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Ray saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn't happen, because the robots couldn't be conscious.
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In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
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If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power.
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What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions.
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As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones.
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Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem."
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Robotic industries would compete vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence.
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Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.
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at worst it disables a machine or takes down a network or network service. Uncontrolled self-replication in these newer technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of substantial damage in the physical world.
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genetic engineering may soon provide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills. Together they could significantly extend our average life span and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger.
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he 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.
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Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?
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Genetic engineering promises to revolutionize agriculture by increasing crop yields while reducing the use of pesticides; to create tens of thousands of novel species of bacteria, plants, viruses, and animals; to replace reproduction, or supplement it, with cloning; to create cures for many diseases, increasing our life span and our quality of life; and much, much more. We now know with certainty that these profound changes in the biological sciences are imminent and will challenge all our notions of what life is.
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echnologies such as human cloning have in particular raised our awareness of the profound ethical and moral issues we face. If, for example, we were to reengineer ourselves into several separate and unequal species using the power of genetic engineering, then we would threaten the notion of equality that is the very cornerstone of our democracy
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But genetic engineering technology is already very far along. As the Lovins note, the USDA has already approved about 50 genetically engineered crops for unlimited release; more than half of the world's soybeans and a third of its corn now contain genes spliced in from other forms of life.
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While there are many important issues here, my own major concern with genetic engineering is narrower: that it gives the power - whether militarily, accidentally, or in a deliberate terrorist act - to create a White Plague.
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beautifully how manipulation of matter at the atomic level could create a utopian future of abundance, where just about everything could be made cheaply, and almost any imaginable disease or physical problem could be solved using nanotechnology and artificial intelligences.
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molecular-level "assemblers." Assemblers could make possible incredibly low-cost solar power, cures for cancer and the common cold by augmentation of the human immune system, essentially complete cleanup of the environment, incredibly inexpensive pocket supercomputers - in fact, any product would be manufacturable by assemblers at a cost no greater than that of wood - spaceflight more accessible than transoceanic travel today, and restoration of extinct species.
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nanotechnologies can become "engines of destruction
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Unfortunately, as with nuclear technology, it is far easier to create destructive uses for nanotechnology than constructive ones. Nanotechnology has clear military and terrorist uses, and you need not be suicidal to release a massively destructive nanotechnological device - such devices can be built to be selectively destructive, affecting, for example, only a certain geographical area or a group of people who are genetically distinct
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"gray goo problem." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.
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Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors
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Part of the answer certainly lies in our attitude toward the new - in our bias toward instant familiarity and unquestioning acceptance.
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vision of near immortality
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Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science's quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.
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enormous transformative power is being unleashed
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These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor
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that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species
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How soon could such an intelligent robot be built? The coming advances in computing power seem to make it possible by 2030. And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.
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This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself - as well as to vast numbers of others.
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this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds
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Now, as then, we are creators of new technologies and stars of the imagined future, driven - this time by great financial rewards and global competition - despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating what it may be like to try to live in a world that is the realistic outcome of what we are creating and imagining.
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The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge
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If we could agree, as a species, what we wanted, where we were headed, and why, then we would make our future much less dangerous - then we might understand what we can and should relinquish
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we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive need to know
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If we had gained more collective wisdom over the past few thousand years, then a dialogue to this end would be more practical, and the incredible powers we are about to unleash would not be nearly so troubling
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genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics
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As Thoreau said, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"; and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed, Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?
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Thoreau also said that we will be "rich in proportion to the number of things which we can afford to let alone."
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We each seek to be happy, but it would seem worthwhile to question whether we need to take such a high risk of total destruction to gain yet more knowledge and yet more things; common sense says that there is a limit to our material needs - and that certain knowledge is too dangerous and is best forgone.
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Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of others, affording the promise of self-sustainment.
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A technological approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the most desirable utopia
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Where can we look for a new ethical basis to set our course?
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This all leaves me not angry but at least a bit melancholic. Henceforth, for me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet.
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07 Oct 12
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with Ray saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn't happen, because the robots couldn't be conscious.
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First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
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25 Jun 12
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27 Nov 11
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I decided it was time to talk to my friend Danny Hillis. Danny became famous as the cofounder of Thinking Machines Corporation, which built a very powerful parallel supercomputer. Despite my current job title of Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, I am more a computer architect than a scientist, and I respect Danny's knowledge of the information and physical sciences more than that of any other single person I know. Danny is also a highly regarded futurist who thinks long-term - four years ago he started the Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock designed to last 10,000 years, in an attempt to draw attention to the pitifully short attention span of our society. (See "Test of Time,"Wired 8.03, page 78.)
So I flew to Los Angeles for the express purpose of having dinner with Danny and his wife, Pati. I went through my now-familiar routine, trotting out the ideas and passages that I found so disturbing. Danny's answer - directed specifically at Kurzweil's scenario of humans merging with robots - came swiftly, and quite surprised me. He said, simply, that the changes would come gradually, and that we would get used to them.
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Morten JustBill Joy: Why the future doesn't need us (2004) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html (http://bit.ly/giN6IK)
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ken .Bill Joy's reflection the unabomber manifesto, technological risks, and Kurzweil's vision "the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control"
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Verifying compliance will also require that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic oath, and that they have the courage to whistleblow as necessary, even at high personal cost. This would answer the call - 50 years after Hiroshima - by the Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, one of the most senior of the surviving members of the Manhattan Project, that all scientists "cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving, and manufacturing nuclear weapons and other weapons of potential mass destruction."14 In the 21st century, this requires vigilance and personal responsibility by those who would work on both NBC and GNR technologies to avoid implementing weapons of mass destruction and knowledge-enabled mass destruction.
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16 Jul 10
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I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.
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Felipe LavÃnFrom the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date t
technology science culture singularity article ai philosophy history future essays from-delicious
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mikael böökBill Joy [quoted from Wired 8.04]: "A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control." --. " Uncontrolled self-replication in these newer technologies runs [...]a risk of substantial damage in the physical world.
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Sol HannaOur most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
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A textbook dystopia - and Moravec is just getting wound up. He goes on to discuss how our main job in the 21st century will be "ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries" by passing laws decreeing that they be "nice,"3 and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be "once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot." Moravec's view is that the robots will eventually succeed us - that humans clearly face extinction.
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I have long realized that the big advances in information technology come not from the work of computer scientists, computer architects, or electrical engineers, but from that of physical scientists. The physicists Stephen Wolfram and Brosl Hasslacher introduced me, in the early 1980s, to chaos theory and nonlinear systems. In the 1990s, I learned about complex systems from conversations with Danny Hillis, the biologist Stuart Kauffman, the Nobel-laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann, and others. Most recently, Hasslacher and the electrical engineer and device physicist Mark Reed have been giving me insight into the incredible possibilities of molecular electronics.
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The enabling breakthrough to assemblers seems quite likely within the next 20 years. Molecular electronics - the new subfield of nanotechnology where individual molecules are circuit elements - should mature quickly and become enormously lucrative within this decade, causing a large incremental investment in all nanotechnologies.
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11 Mar 09
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Pranesh PrakashOur most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
Bill Joy technology culture science ethics futurism genetics nanotechnology robotics
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Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
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Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
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annestfound myself most troubled by a passage detailing adystopian scenario: THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In
future science tech design evolution singularity people doomsday futuredoomsday
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Peter EddyWhile talking and thinking about Kurzweil, Kaczynski, and Moravec, I suddenly remembered a novel I had read almost 20 years ago -The White Plague, by Frank Herbert - in which a molecular biologist is driven insane by the senseless murder of his family.
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bob dolanWe only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines.
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29 Mar 08
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10 Mar 08
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Why the future doesn't need us.
Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
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Add Sticky NoteI was taken aback, especially given Ray's proven ability to imagine and create the future. I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me.
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He goes on to discuss how our main job in the 21st century will be "ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries" by passing laws decreeing that they be "nice,"3 and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be "once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot." Moravec's view is that the robots will eventually succeed us - that humans clearly face extinction.
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we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate.
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Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.
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at UC Berkeley in the mid-1970s, I started staying up late, often all night, inventing new worlds inside the machines. Solving problems. Writing the code that argued so strongly to be written.
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As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse:
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Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?
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Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the "gray goo problem." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.
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The new Pandora's boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed.
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24 May 07
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17 May 07
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Why the future doesn't need us
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10 Mar 07
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Why the future doesn't need us.
Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
By Bill Joy
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Ray saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots
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In > The Agony and the Ecstasy, > Irving Stone's biographical novel of > Michelangelo, > Stone described vividly how Michelangelo released the statues from the > stone, "breaking the marble spell," carving from the images in his mind. > 4 > In my most ecstatic moments, > the software in the computer emerged in the same way. Once I had imagined > it in my mind I felt that it was already there in the machine, waiting > to be released. Staying up all night seemed a small price to pay to free > it - to give the ideas concrete form. >
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I recently had the good fortune to meet the distinguished author and scholar > Jacques Attali, whose book > Lignes d'horizons > ( > Millennium, > in the > English > translation) helped inspire the Java and Jini approach to the coming age > of pervasive computing, as previously described in this magazine. In his > new book > Fraternités, > Attali describes how our dreams of utopia > have changed over time: >
"At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing more > than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via > their death, to the company of gods and to > Eternity. > With the Hebrews and > then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands > and dream of an ideal City where > Liberty > would flourish. Others, noting > the evolution of the market society, understood that the liberty of some > would entail the alienation of others, and they sought > Equality > ." >
Jacques helped me understand how these three > different utopian goals exist in tension in our society today. He goes > on to describe a fourth utopia, > Fraternity, > whose foundation is altruism. > Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of > others, affording the promise of self-sustainment. >
This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil's dream. A technological > approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the > most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should > rethink our utopian choices. >
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I realize now that she had an awareness of the nature of the order of life, > and of the necessity of living with and respecting that order. With this > respect comes a necessary humility that we, with our early-21st-century > chutzpah, lack at our peril. The commonsense view, grounded in this respect, > is often right, in advance of the scientific evidence. The clear fragility > and inefficiencies of the human-made systems we have built should give > us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles > me. >
We should have learned a lesson from the making of the first atomic bomb > and the resulting arms race. We didn't do well then, and the parallels > to our current situation are troubling. >
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The cause of many such surprises seems clear: The systems involved are > complex, involving interaction among and feedback between many parts. Any > changes to such a system will cascade in ways that are difficult to predict; > this is especially true when human actions are involved. >
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At around > the same time, I found Hans Moravec's book > Robot: Mere Machine to > Transcendent Mind. >
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Danny's answer - > directed specifically at Kurzweil's scenario of humans merging with robots > - came swiftly, and quite surprised me. He said, simply, that the changes > would come gradually, and that we would get used to them. >
But I guess I wasn't totally surprised. I had seen a quote from Danny in > Kurzweil's book in which he said, "I'm as fond of my body as anyone, but > if I can be 200 with a body of silicon, I'll take it." It seemed that he > was at peace with this process and its attendant risks, while I was not. >
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Specifically, robots, > engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: > They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can > become many, and quickly get out of control. >
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But while replication in a computer or a computer > network can be a nuisance, at worst it disables a machine or takes down > a network or network service. Uncontrolled self-replication in these newer > technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of substantial damage in > the physical world. >
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The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics > (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents > and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses > are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not > require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable > the use of them. >
Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but > of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely > amplified by the power of self-replication. >
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My life has been driven by a deep need to ask questions and find answers. > When I was 3, I was already reading, so my father took me to the elementary > school, where I sat on the principal's lap and read him a > story. I started school early, later skipped a grade, and escaped into > books - I was incredibly motivated to learn. I asked lots of questions, > often driving adults to distraction. >
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But genetic engineering technology is already very far along. As the Lovins > note, the USDA has already approved about 50 genetically engineered crops > for unlimited release; more than half of the world's soybeans and a third > of its corn now contain genes spliced in from other forms of life >.
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The many wonders of nanotechnology were first imagined by the Nobel-laureate physicist Richard Feynman in a speech he gave in 1959, subsequently published under the title "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." The book that made a big impression on me, in the mid-'80s, was Eric Drexler'sEngines of Creation, in which he described beautifully how manipulation of matter at the atomic level could create a utopian future of abundance, where just about everything could be made cheaply, and almost any imaginable disease or physical problem could be solved using nanotechnology and artificial intelligences
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It is most of all the power of destructive self-replication in genetics, > nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) that should give us pause. Self-replication > is the modus operandi of genetic engineering, which uses the machinery > of the cell to replicate its designs, and the prime danger underlying gray > goo in nanotechnology. >
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The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th-century > weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in > government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century GNR technologies > have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by > corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology > - with science as its handmaiden - is delivering a series of almost magical > inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are > aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the > now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial > incentives and competitive pressures. >
This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, > by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself - as well as > to vast numbers of others. >
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Now, as then, we are creators of new technologies and stars of the imagined > future, driven - this time by great financial rewards and global competition > - despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating what it may be like to try > to live in a world that is the realistic outcome of what we are creating > and imagining. >
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Where can we look for a new ethical basis to set > our course? I have found the ideas in the book > Ethics for the New Millennium, > by the Dalai Lama, to be very helpful. As is perhaps well known but little > heeded, the Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing > is for us to conduct our lives with love and compassion for others, and > that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal > responsibility > and of our interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical > conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali's > Fraternity utopia. >
The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is that makes > people happy, and acknowledge the strong evidence that neither material > progress nor the pursuit of the power of knowledge is the key - that there > are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do. >
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Similar difficulties apply to the construction of shields against robotics > and genetic engineering. These technologies are too powerful to be shielded > against in the time frame of interest; even if it were possible > to implement defensive shields, the side effects of their development would > be at least as dangerous as the technologies we are trying to protect against. >
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Clearly, we need to find meaningful challenges > and sufficient scope in our lives if we are to be happy in whatever is > to come. But I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative > forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has > largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but > it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between > the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and > technology and the clear accompanying dangers. >
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My continuing professional work is on improving > the reliability of software. Software is a tool, and as > a toolbuilder I must struggle with the uses to which > the tools I make are put. I have always believed that making software more > reliable, given its many uses, will make the world a safer and better place; > if I were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated > to stop this work. I can now imagine such a day may come. >
This all leaves me not angry but at least a bit melancholic. Henceforth, > for me, progress will be somewhat bittersweet. >
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So I'm still searching; there are many more things to learn. Whether we are to succeed or fail, to survive or fall victim to these technologies, is not yet decided. I'm up late again - it's almost 6 am. I'm trying to imagine some better answers, to break the spell and free them from the stone.
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Jim Greenbergfuture technology ethics
lecture future technology ethics nanotechnology technopoly Joy Postman CIT 2007
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07 Jun 06
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24 Apr 06
linkmessThis article touches on a lot of points that have been rattling around in my head this week. 1. The blind scientific search for Truth is dangerous, like Frankenstein, Godzilla, and the line in the Jimi Hendrix song -A Merman I Should Turn To Be- "the mach
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Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
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26 Nov 05
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07 Nov 05
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26 Sep 05
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Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
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Public Stiky Notes
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