Edward Woodhouse

What used to be called the military-industrial complex remains extremely dangerous. But university scientists and engineers, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and the "innovators" who they enable are rapidly changing the world without authorization from the rest of humanity.      Robotics and AI put at risk perhaps a billion jobs worldwide. Synthetic biology and human enhancement experts are creating potentials for pandemics, worsening inequalities, and other horrors -- cloaked in the rationale of helping amputees, the blind, and others with undeniable needs.    A relative handful of affluent, mostly young, mostly male, whites and Asians in the U.S. and a few other countries are a new oligarchy riding roughshod over existing cultures and ways of life.    How to design political-economic incentives and institutions capable of governing technological civilization less unwisely and less unfairly? Many have given up hopes for intelligent democracy, but what if political scientists and other thinkers have been too timid, have lacked design imaginations up to the challenge?    Present practices in so-called democratic societies are a prescription for unnecessary suffering: It is a grave mistake to allow scientific, military, governmental, and business elites to innovate at breakneck speed, without built-in precautions, without strong incentives for error correction, and without patient deliberation and assent from those affected. The specifics will vary, but the general pattern of outcomes is predictable.    I have worked mostly on nuclear power, toxic chemicals, and other risky technologies. I have also been interested in overconsumption by the affluent, and by technoscientists who abet such consumption. My current research focuses on the coming age of Androids, on barriers to desirable innovations such as green chemistry, and on institutions for governing market economies more sensibly.
Phone: 518-276-8506