Analysis of Why the Future Does Not Need Us Article by Bill Joy - Essay Example

? of article s Intricately written by Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, the article d “Why the future does not need us” is a well fabricated piece that gauges the pros and cons of technologies such as robotics, genetics and nanotechnology, which are the primary reasons of concern. The article explores all of the above mentioned technologies in great detail wherein the author takes care to cover all the possible dangers that these high-end technologies may be attached to. The style of writing is argumentative wherein at first it seems that the writer is dead against the rise of scientific advancement beyond what it is today because of his foresight that , the very technology that humans invent may be the primary reasons for human extinction in the coming centuries; however, as one diligently reads through the entire work, it becomes relatively clear that the article also embraces a certain extent of muted optimism, wherein the writer balances out his arguments with greater trust and hope based on ethical principles. This article is not merely based on the personal thoughts and arguments of the writer alone, the entire context takes into account ideas, words and thoughts of other well known scientists and researchers related to scientific fields and presents a few excerpts from books written by eminent authors on similar context. The article is a well thought out piece where each and every argument that has been neatly presented holds great value. Bill Joy has reasons to fear the power that man is now creating and his strong pessimism against the developing technologies is not without base. He first discusses about the robotic technology. In his article he presents an excerpt (the New Luddite Challenge) from a book written by Theodore Kaczynski which surfaces the fact that humans will create machines to make their tasks easier and to completely enable them to work independently sans human supervision, the robots will be enabled with the power to think and make decisions. The idea being that you should be able to give the robot a goal, a mission, and the robot should be able to take actions based on the mission and whatever information becomes available (Gupta, 2010), and the results of these actions are believed to be better than those of humans. Joy fears that humans would ultimately become so dependent on these machines that the very existence of human form will become questionable without the life support of robots. The case may reach such an extreme that exterminating the machines would just mean suicide for the human race. Reading Han Morovec’s book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Joy’s pessimism is enhanced because this book too believes in the fact that the human race would fade as a repercussion to vigorous competition among robotic industries. In fact even Darwin’s principle of survival holds true here. In the eyes of Bill Joy, the advancement in the field of genetic engineering is another major reason for his pessimistic attitude. The immense power that a genetic engineer beholds in manipulating microorganisms and using them to alter the DNA makeup of anything that catches his fancy may fall in the wrong hands. Good things in the wrong hands can never be good, because the power maybe exploited to only cause harm and his fears are not completely untrue because emerging bio-terror is a major concern today. “It will soon be possible to synthesize the genome for smallpox; preventing access to samples will then no longer be a protection” (Caplan & Magnus, 2002) and once again a bio-terror maybe initiated and the case maybe the same with all other diseases. His third and last pessimistic view is about nanotechnology, the science of manipulating atoms, the basic constituent of life which when used in a controlled manner could solve all major problems ailing humans ranging from curing diseases to low cost of technologies. But, obviously something this powerful can be used as a destructive weapon too.   The immense destruction caused by the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not new. “Some manufactured nanoparticles are more toxic than the same chemical in its larger form” (Sample, 2004) and once these particular nanoparticles are identified; it will become far easier to manipulate them.  Nuclear technology may be vehemently exploited by terrorist groups do cause harm and the ability to manipulate the nanobots to target a specific ethnicity or area is all the more reason to be wary of this advanced technological application. The major cause of concern about all the GNR technology is the simple but true fact that, they hold the ability to self-replicate. Joy’s pessimism is supported by the fact that if somehow humans lose control of his own creations and these potentially harmful creations self-replicate exponentially, the ultimate results can never be good and in fact lead to destruction of human life from Earth. Moreover, these technologies do not need huge infrastructure or instruments and knowledge alone is sufficient to exploit these scientific advancements. Thus these potential weapons of mass destruction synchronized with self-replication forms a great threat to life. However, Bill Joy has a muted optimistic approach too to the arguments which may not be evident but the presence of his optimism cannot be missed. He first finds optimism through his own life experience wherein he clearly says that during the time he designed microprocessor and software programmes he knew that fragile components of the hardware could become anything but super-intelligent and that they would always need human supervision and even then we should design with great caution. Therefore the apprehension about robots overpowering humans remains baseless. Joy is also aware of the fact that there are constraints on uses of genetic engineering tools especially on subjects of cloning. The writer says that human work direction is guided by ethical and moral values and analyzing correctly the dangers of a particular thing, humans would not head towards it. The writer’s hopes are high after the confirmation of BWC and CWC. The unilateral U.S abandonment of bio weapons is one fine example which shows that the mere realization that the threat posed by such advanced but dangerous technology is so immense that it is wise to not pursue such things. The writer agrees with the Dalai Lama’s view and agrees that humans can use their potential and channel their talents to bring good to the world. Advancement is not necessarily good. The writer’s optimistic attitude is spurred by the fact that humans care about everything and such dangerous issues can be discussed and resolved. I am an optimist by nature. I agree that advancements in technology may have a bad side but I try to look upon it as two sides of the same coin. I agree with the writer’s thought that humans are caring en masse, which means one single person might not care but when taken together, humans show a very caring attitude and they will not be blind to the problems which they may have to face owing to the unethical usage of technological advancements. However, some issues raised by the writer do not worry me. For example, he fears self-replicating machines but creations of machines that can self replicate are impossible (Neumann, 1966). I am aware that terrorists may exploit the advancements, but that is not a general approach, because these exploiters are just a handful of unethical people. These technologies have been a boon to humans and have helped upgrade the quality of life and just out of sheer fear of exploitation we must not move away from advancement. I agree with Bill Joy when he says that in order to control such technologies a national transparency must be kept. This way technology will just be used and not exploited. REFERENCES Caplan, A., & Magnus, D. (2002). New Life Forms: New Threats, New Possibilities. Hastings Center Report, 7. Gupta, S. (2010, October 9). We, robot: What real-life machines can and can’t do. Science news, 178(8), 32. Neumann, J. V. (1966). Theory of Self- Reproducing Automata. Illinois: Illinois University Press. Sample, I. (2004, July 30). The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jul/30/sciencenews.nanotechnology Read More