MIT’s Dertouzos replies to Bill Joy
from the relinquishment-regarded-as-harmful dept.
MIT computer scientist Michael Dertouzos responds to Bill Joy in Technology Review , on the call for relinquishment. Excerpts: I donít buy it…So limited is our ability to assess consequences that itís not even helped by hindsight: On balance, are cars a good or bad thing for society?…We are unable to judge whether something we invented more than 50 years ago is good or bad for us today. Yet Joy wants us to make these judgments prospectively, to determine which technologies we should forgo!…Just because chips and machines are getting faster doesnít mean theyíll get smarter, let alone lead to self-replication…Should we stop computer science and AI research in the belief that intelligent machines someday will reproduce themselves and surpass us? I say no. We should wait to find out whether the potential dangers are supported by more than our imagination…We shouldnít forget that what we do as human beings is part of nature.
October 23rd, 2000 at 7:01 PM
Faith in Technology
I've heard the phrase "faith in technology" before, but never have I seen it so explicitly espoused. Excerpts:
This is clear advocacy of irrationality.
If you ignore the faith-in-technology message, then you're left with his denial of our ability to predict the future, What troubles me with this argument [Bill Joy's argument for relinquishment] is the arrogant notion that human logic can anticipate the effects of intended or unintended acts, and the more arrogant notion that human reasoning can determine the course of the universe. He offers no real argument for this claim aside from some made up assertions about earlier predictions about technology (whoever claimed that that radar would only be used for military applications?).
This denial in our ability to predict the future is strangely at odds with faith in technology – perhaps he means We can't predict the future, but whatever we do will turn out well. But that would be inconsistent with his decision not to fly with a particular aircraft carrier because of their lousy safety record (surely this is an arrogant use of human logic to anticipate the effects of intended or unintended acts). I really can't tell what he means here – he seems quite inconsistent.
Whatever is being said here, it's not useful to either side of the argument over relinquishment.
October 24th, 2000 at 5:27 PM
Huh?
What does this response have to do with Joy's article? Joy wrote about how the future was going to be a dystopia and the only way to stop it would be to stop technology, since the status quo can't get anyworse (actually, it can (e.g. social security, if it continues as it has, will get worse as time progresses), but this is Joy's logic). This guy writes about having faith (as in lets forget about reason and just trust that everything is going to aokay) and that whatever happens, happens, so there is no way to stop it. This guy just goes on like Joy does, making little sense, only he has different ideas than Joy.