Thursday, April 16, 2015

Module 12: Rise of the machines!


         Wow, what a cool article! Bill Joy, who wrote the article about his fears on robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology, speaks about his fears for the future.  Bill starts off the article by talking about how ever since he began to be more involved with technology breakthroughs he has become more and more nervous for the future.  I really liked how he mentions that he really did not have that much fear until he read a little talk from a person he really respected-Ray Kurzweil.  Ray was the inventor of the machine that allows blind people to read.  Why did I think this was a very important part in the story?  Perhaps Bill had just heard rumors of technology advancements so far as intelligent robots, but none of them really stuck with him.  However, now he was hearing these talks about intelligent robots in the near future from someone he respected.  Not only did Bill respect him, but Ray had a solid track record of success.  Ray had proven his worth. 
         Bill accounts an excerpt from Ray’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines where Ray explains outcomes that he foresees in the future.  He assumes that machines take the place of humans because it is better at finding truth than we are.  Two outcomes will occur 1) They will make decisions without the guidance of humans or 2) Humans will be able to maintain power of the machines. 
          With the first outcome Ray explains a concept that I really liked.  He explains that for this to happen humans don’t necessarily need to voluntarily give up power to the machines in an overt way or even that the machines will seize power.  He suggests one of the ways this could happen is that the human race allows itself to drift into such a dependence on machines that every “decision” that a human would make would really be the outcome of a machine.  I think this is really cool because I see it happening today.  We think we have all the power, but I don’t think we have enough power as we think we do.  Hardly anyone that I see each day can put their phone down.  Who is in subjection?  Really cool concept he brings up!  We also rely on machines to make complex decisions for us that seem too complex for us to solve.  This is another way we allow ourselves to drift into a dependence on machines.
                With the second outcome he proposes that if humans can retain power of machines then it will eventually become only in the hands of the elite.  Then depending on the hearts of the elite they will either use the machines to replace the labor that humans provide rendering the human race purposeless and eventually only the elite would survive.  Or perhaps if they have a different heart they would use machines to create the “perfect” society.  But if this was the case life would be pointless and humans would not have things such as work to give them purpose.  Machines would give humans a hobby to keep them busy and they would go on in life, if it could be called that.  Honestly, the second half of the story was a little over my head.

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