Jim Abbott
Dr. Adam Johns
Seminar in Composition ENGCOMP 0200
8/26/08
Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us was powerfully written and extremely informative. He is clearly certified to discuss the matters of robotics and genetic engineering as he as much experience in the subjects. His work as a software engineer and education at the University of Michigan and UC Berkley suggest that he has the credentials to be deemed credible on the topic. A majority of Joy’s concerns and worries aroused fear in me, since I could relate to them. However, some of his thoughts and ideas seem farfetched and unrealistic. An example of this is when he discussed moving beyond earth and colonizing the galaxy. My initial reaction of this was that it was impossible, but I was forced to deem it credible due to his impressive credentials.
Joy brought up a long list of potential problems of Robots threatening human life, but one in particular caught my eye. “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 “ (Joy 5). This is an enormous problem as the obstacle of producing or searching for incredibly powerful technology is eliminated. People with brilliant but corrupt minds will have the capability to make a large and potentially dangerous impact on society. No longer would the arms dealers and large governments be the only people with control of weapons of mass destruction. In this situation, knowledge alone would be sufficient enough to inflict legitimate damage on society.
Due to the enormous potential danger of the situation, it is vital that there is a solution to the problem. In order to prevent this idea from becoming reality, it is absolutely essential that genetics, nanotechnology, and robots (GNR) are not programmed to self-replicate. If self-replication of GNR becomes easy and accessible, then a large facility or a large number of people is not necessary for people to become powerful and dangerous. Knowledgeable people with intent to cause harm would be capable of doing such with self-replicated GNR, since it would be easy to create a large force of GNR. By preventing GNR from self-replicating, this would make it much harder for a secretive group to construct a dangerous force of GNR under the watchful eye of law enforcement. Law enforcement would be able to supervise GNR more advanced and thoroughly if the numbers of GNR were smaller, and difficult to produce.
Another way to prevent dangerous individuals from possessing GNR is by making the rules more stringent, and making it more difficult to obtain GNR. A way to do this is by requiring a permit to buy or receive GNR materials. Understandably it would be difficult to police this with the existence of black markets in the world, but it would be a positive measure. An individual would have to prove that they are using the GNR material for science, in a positive way, in order to buy it. To increase the measures even more, the government could do background checks on all potential GNR customers to make sure there is nothing suspicious being constructed. If a potential customer has a criminal background, that person could be denied the purchase, and taken in for questioning. By policing GNR strongly and thoroughly, it would prevent criminals from producing potentially dangerous weapons.
In conclusion, Richard Joy brought to the surface many capable problems if robotics becomes too powerful. A few ideas seemed outrageous and unbelievable, but his impressive credentials made them conceivable. One of the most dangerous problems that could be faced is if robotics could self-replicate. In this situation, only a small number of knowledgeable people would be necessary to create a dangerous force of weapons involving GNR. It is this situation that evokes the most fear, and needs to be prevented.
1 comment:
Your introduction is a little on the vague side - also, it’s strange to focus early on his brief discussion of the colonization of space, because he is *dismissing* that possibility, more than anything - *he* doesn’t take it terribly seriously (reread the passage to see what I mean).
Then you find a focus, zeroing in, accurately, on what Joy sees as the single greatest problem with GNR technologies: self-replication. You’re reading Joy well here. But here’s the problem: you are asserting that self-replication should be stopped, without saying anything about how that should happen. Obviously it’s a hard, complicated topic, but you’re not going to get anywhere with it unless you propose *something*, if only as a starting point, regarding how self-replication can be stopped/avoided. You’ve found your focus, but it’s ultimately a weak and unambitious one - you are doing nothing to develop or push Joy’s idea, just accurately repeating what he sees as the core problem.
I find the section on permits for the purchase of materials to be less promising than the one on self-replication. The main problem with it, though, is it’s a different focus - you should have talked about permits *or* self-replication, rather than doing both and ending up producing something much vaguer and less ambitious than it could have been.
Post a Comment