Why the world does
not need
GEC07us?
WEEK 10-11
Hi
Hi! I’m Mam
Maricor M Gener
Your instructor in GEC07- Science Technology and
Society
Why the future does
Tpic: not need us?
LLearning Outcomes:
● Evaluate contemporary human
experience in order to strengthen
and enlighten the human person
functioning in society.
“Our most powerful 21st century technologies-
robotics,genetic engineering,and nanotech are
threatening to make humans an endangered
species .”
-Bill Joy
About the Author:
Bill Joy: Co-founder of Sun
Microsystem
Dubbed the “Edison of the Internet” by
Fortune Magazine, Bill Joy is one of
luminaries of technology.
Years before personal computers were
being widely used, he created software
that would enable the rise of the
modern internet.
● Joy began making his mark as a graduate
student in Berkeley’s electrical engineering and
computer sciences department during the mid-
1970s. Here, he played an integral role in
developing the Berkeley Software Distribution
(BSD) of UNIX — the first open source
operating system to have built-in TCP/IP.
● This work helped lay the foundation for
popular use of the internet and made him a
legend in computing well before he received his
degree in 1979
● In 1982, Joy was brought into Sun
Microsystems to build software for a cheap but
powerful system, called the SUN workstation,
to take UNIX beyond academia and make it
available to industry.
● Six months later, Joy was made a co-founder of the
company. During his time at Sun, Joy was a key
contributor to the SPARC microprocessor, which
was the backbone of the company’s billion-dollar
server business for decades. He also inspired the
development of the Java programming language and
Solaris operating system.
● He also conceptualized an internet-friendly
language that could connect consumer-
electronics and portable gadgets that weren’t
as powerful as personal computers, which
became the popular programming language
called JavaScript.
● As his longtime friend Eric
Schmidt, the former executive
chairman of Google and
Alphabet, said, “Bill is the finest
computer scientist of his
generation, he can see the
future.
● In April 2000, Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun
Microsystems) published an article in Wired
magazine entitled “Why the Future Doesn’t
Need Us.” In it, he argues that "Our most
powerful 21st-century technologies—robotics,
genetic engineering, and nanotech—are
threatening to make humans an endangered
species."
● At the time, his thesis and accompanying
forecast were alarming, coming from such a
credible source.
● Joy left Sun Microsystems in 2003 and,
two years later, joined the venture capital
firm Kleiner Perkins, where he helped make
decisions about green technology
investments. He left that firm in 2014, and
is now the principal investigator and chief
scientist at Water Street Capital.
● Over the last three decades, Joy’s work on
BSD and at Sun Microsystems have earned
him several honors. He was inducted as a
Fellow of the Computer History Museum in
2011 and received ACM’s Grace Murray
Hopper Award in 1986. He is also a member
of the National Academy of Engineering and
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
as well as a lifetime trustee of the Aspen
Institute.
https://engineering.berkeley.edu/bill-joy-co-founder-of-sun-microsystems/
Why the future does not need us?
The underlying message in his article was
clear: the rate and direction of technological
innovation over time will lead to a world where
humans are unnecessary and machines will be
able to do without us.
Instead of interacting with them in the
way we historically have—
programming them to execute the
tasks we instruct them to perform—we
will cross a threshold where we
unwittingly relinquish the
responsibility of making important
decisions that we as a society need to
make.
It’s now twenty years since the publication of
his article, and we have indeed experienced
tremendous technological advancement. It is
well-deserved that we marvel, celebrate, and
appreciate how these advancements are
adding or contributing to our experience of
life as human beings.
With artificial intelligence and machine
learning in particular, however, one could
argue it is vital that we take a moment to
pause and look at what is happening
through the lenses of Joy’s article.
Reflections on Bill Joy Does the
future need us?
● In the year 2000, Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun
Microsystems, wrote a provocative article for Wired
magazine entitled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,”
arguing that human beings face the realistic possibility
of extinction because of competition from intelligent
robots, which are made possible by technological
advancements in artificial intelligence.
● Furthermore, 21st-century
technologies – genetic
engineering, nanotechnology and
robotics – have the potential to
significantly extend the average
human lifespan, but they are so
powerful that in them also lurk
grave dangers.
● Joy locates these dangers in the
potential (or actual) ability of robots,
engineered organisms and nanobots
to self-replicate. If these technologies
go out of control, this amplifying
factor can lead to substantial damage
in the physical world, not unlike the
potential of computer viruses to do
harm.
● Worse, unlike conventional “weapons
of mass destruction,” 21st-century
technologies are much more readily
available to individuals or small
groups, and having knowledge alone
is sufficient to enable their
deployment.
● Joy’s article is a goldmine for those
who, in a triumphant spirit, want to
continue championing technological
progress as an unmitigated good:
many of the worst-case scenarios
about which he worries have not come
to pass.
● But is he really that far off? The
thought that humans may become
economically redundant at some point
may appear less and less of a fantasy
if we continue along the trajectory of
unbridled technological progress
outlined by Joy, and enabled by a
combination of the logic of capitalism
and our human hopes and fears.
● The frightening possibility is that the
future economy is one that has no
need for us, if 21st-century
technologies can do everything better,
cheaper and faster than humans can.
As Joy notes:
● “…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… And if our own
extinction is a likely, or even possible,
outcome of our technological
development, shouldn’t we proceed
with great caution?”
● This raises pressing questions about
human life and society. Here I wish to
offer another extreme possibility for
us to consider. An alternative to Joy’s
dystopian picture, a comparatively
sanguine outcome, was outlined by
Karl Marx in The German Ideology:
● “…in communist society, where nobody has
one exclusive sphere of activity but each can
become accomplished in any branch he
wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for
me to do one thing today and another
tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in
the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind,
without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
herdsman or critic.”
● For Marx, what follows machines making
human beings redundant is a scenario in
which we can be freed from being mere
appendages of machines; we then have the
leisure to realize possibilities formerly
impossible, finally being able to focus on
attaining self-realization and not needing to
work more than what is necessary.
● Machines will take care of repetitive and
toilsome labor on our behalf. The division of
labor and narrow specialization gives way to
the free choice of whatever interests the
individual, not just for the few, but also for
the many.
● But why should this scenario obtain (and
how can we ensure that it does), and not
Joy’s alternative of human extinction? To
view human beings merely in terms of
economic value is to not view them as
having intrinsic worth, and if so, we may be
overtaken by machines sooner than we
think.
● Lacking an understanding of our essence
and identity, of what makes us human, we
may be unable to articulate what makes us
worth keeping around. This is not to say
that such an understanding is easy, or even
possible to achieve. But in its absence, we
may go the way of the dinosaurs, if we are
unable to stop this process.
● In one of the many memorable quotes from
Joy’s article, George Dyson warns, “In the
game of life and evolution there are three
players at the table: human beings, nature,
and machines. I am firmly on the side of
nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side
of the machines.”
● There is good reason to believe that at many
points in world history, good sense and the
human spirit have prevailed. But even if
extreme possibilities are unlikely to come to
pass, we should still proceed with caution
and a sense of moderation. At any rate, it is
not too early to start pondering strategies,
policies and legislation, because the future
is almost here.
Nicholas Cai is Research Assistant at the HEAD Foundation. His research and teaching interests are chiefly in the
areas of ancient and modern political philosophy, and he recently completed an M.A. thesis on Rawls and toleration.
• Why the future doesn’t need us?(2000)- Bill Joy, Chief Scientist and Corporate Executive
Officer of Sun Microsystems http:/www.cc.gatech.edu/computing/nano/documents
• Movie: “A I”Isaac Asimov, “I Robot”
• Nicholas Cai is Research Assistant at the HEAD Foundation. His research and
teaching interests are chiefly in the areas of ancient and modern political
philosophy, and he recently completed an M.A. thesis on Rawls and toleration
Look into my eyes
This activity will build your student’s
trust and they will connect with each
other. It goes like this: they have to be
set in pairs and then stare at the eyes of
their partner for a whole minute. They
might not like it at first, but it will be
very enriching for their relationships.
60’
Time is running out!
Greetings, your
majesty
You can enter a subtitle here if you
need it
Start!
Greetings, your majesty
Take a chair Close your eyes
Take one student and sit them facing This student has to close their eyes
away from the rest of their and the rest must stand behind them
classmates
Say “Hi!” Who said it?
Now, the students say “Greetings, After that, the student in the chair
your majesty” imitating different must guess who the speakers were
voices
Rock, paper, scissors
tag
You can enter a subtitle here if you
need it
Start!
Rock, paper, scissors tag
Two teams! Shoot! Run!
For this game, you need a lot of The winners will chase the
The teams choose rock, paper
room: your students must run opponent team and try to tag
or scissors and will play against
freely! First, establish a base for them while the losers run back
each other at your signal.
each team. to their base.
Birthday
line up
You can enter a subtitle here if you
need it
Start!
Birthday line up
With this activity you’ll foster communication The goal is for them to communicate and
between students. They have to line up develop number sense. They need to figure
depending on their birthdays: the younger out who comes after who only by asking the
come first, then the older. This might take a person next to them. It’ll be fun!
while.
Birthday line up
The players:
05-03 12-11 11-07
Leonor Miller John Johnson Carolina Moore
24-02 18-06 03-10
John Smith Marie Patterson Marc Williams
Birthday line up
24-02 05-03 18-06
John Smith Leonor Miller Marie Patterson
11-07 03-10 12-11
Carolina Moore Marc Williams John Johnson
Let's travel!
You can enter a subtitle here if you
need it
Start!
Let's travel!
Describe the picture to your team. When you have
guessed the monument, put it in its place on the
map!
Venus Mars Jupiter Neptune
Venus is the second Mars is actually a very Jupiter is the biggest It’s the farthest planet
planet from the Sun cold place planet from the Sun
Let's travel!
Solve it!
Let’s travel!
Quick quiz
You can enter a subtitle here if you
need it
Start!
Quick quiz
Choose a question:
01 02 03
Question 1 Question 2 Question 3
Question 1
According to their way of
eating, we consider the pigs
are...
Herbivores Carnivores Omnivores
Question 1
Try again!
Question 1
Omnivores Pigs are omnivores, they eat food of
both animal and vegetable origin.
Next
question
Question 2
What kind of animals are
bats?
Mammals Birds Reptiles
Question 2
Try again!
Question 2
Bats, although they fly like birds,
Mammals are mammalian animals. In fact,
they are the only mammals that can
fly!
Next
question
Question 3
How many legs do all
arachnids have?
6 legs 8 legs 10 legs
Question 3
Try again!
Question 3
8 legs All arachnids have eight legs and
lack antennae.
Great job!
Scoreboard
Games Team 1 Team 2
Look into my eyes 10pt 5pt
Greetings, Your Majesty 20pt 3pt
Rock, Paper, Scissors Tag 3pt 2pt
Birthday Line Up 5pt 20pt
Let’s travel! 3pt 2pt
Quick quiz 20pt 10pt
TOTAL 61pt 42pt
A picture is worth a
thousand words
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