A rchive Date
[ 16-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Science & Technology ]
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[No joy in computers, says Joy
Robots may learn to clone themselves
By ED FEUER -- Winnipeg Sun
March 16, 2000
The world of information technology is dynamic. No doubt about that.
Witness these headlines yesterday: Yahoo May Ally With EBay, Murdoch's News Corp., Nine Out of Ten Dot.coms Will Not Survive, warns L&G fund manager, Controversial date-rape Web site Appears in Canada and Hundreds of Hacker attacks hit Ottawa.
But it was End of Humanity is Nigh, Warns E-tycoon that stood out from the pack. Writing in the London Times, correspondent James Bone quotes Bill Joy's article in Wired magazine. Bone says the piece is being compared to Albert Einstein's 1939 letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning him of the possibility of the atomic bomb.
It's not easy to simply dismiss Joy who has solid credentials in our information age as co-founder and chief scientist of software colossus Sun Microsystems. Watch those people who put more and more information on things that are smaller and smaller, he says. They are playing with fire, warns this harbinger of doom.
If what he predicts can happen will happen, it won't really matter whether nine out of 10 high-tech companies fail or who Yahoo! manages to find as a merger partner.
"Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots (microscopic robots) share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate," says Joy.
"A bomb is blown up only once, but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control."
Genetically engineered viruses are a peril as is nanotechnology, which would let scientists use molecules as circuit elements. The two would allow the creation of smart machines small enough to fit in blood vessels and able to reproduce like computer viruses, he says.
A generation of super-intelligent machines could even make humans superfluous, he says. "Once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species -- to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.
Joy's forebodings should remind us of the second thoughts of Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos laboratories where the first atomic bombs were made.
It was easier to understand Oppenheimer's doubts about what his team of brilliant physicists had wrought. The power and horror of the bomb were plain to see.
But the "forebears" of what Joy is talking about are everywhere. They have become a major part of our lives. They are your computers that have become indispensable for your job. They amuse our kids with Nintendo games and let us surf the Net.
So what can save us from this rapidly approaching apocalyptic world?
"The only realistic alternative," says Joy, "is relinquishment: To limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge."
But when has that genie ever been put back in the bottle?
There has been much debate over the potential dangers that come with cloning technology. But nearly every day, we read of a new species the scientists have been able to replicate. All the predicted science-fiction perils aren't going to stop human cloning.
Joy even states he agrees with some of the fears of anti-technology Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. While Joy says Kaczynski's murderous actions were criminally insane, he says that certain parts of his anti-technology manifesto have merit.
That is a scary revelation coming from the former co-chairman of a presidential commission on the future of technology and one of the designers of the Unix operating system.
Joy says he always believed making software more reliable would make the world a safer and better place.
"If I were to come to believe the opposite, then I would be morally obligated to stop this work," Joy says. "I can now imagine that such a day may come."
And that should bring the rest of us no joy.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com]
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