Joy Article

In Bill Joy's article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", Joy warns the human race about the potential dangers of technology in the 21st century. The thing that he appears to be most afraid of is the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He is afraid that with it technology will eventually become more intelligent than humans which could effectively end the human race. He thinks that machines will grow a mind of their own and make decisions independent of humans. And to better society to the best of their knowledge they will have no choice but to let the human population lose all purpose and eventually die out. Our downfall will happen when we either become completely reliant on machines or overtaken. Either way artificial intelligence will be our downfall if it's not carefully experimented with. To set up these problems he gives examples of other works and scenarios of machine takeovers or potential problems caused by technology. He tells stories of a tiny elite controlling all the machines either killing the people or having machines do all their tasks making human existence meaningless. He also is afraid of machines growing a mind of their own and banding together to take control of society leaving the human race at their mercy. His example that frightened me the most and seemed realistic was the potential scenario of the super-virus. With the ease that any scientist could acquire powerful technology it would not be surprising to see something go wrong. If a scientist was experimenting with diseases he or she could accidentally create a super-virus and spread it worldwide. One careless mistake by one person could hurt the entire world with the powerful technology that is being developed. Looking back on his article 11 years later I feel as though the same article could be written today. Every generation has new technologies that frighten people and make them worry about what it could lead to. So far it appears that we are fine and no one is more worried now than they were in 2000. Although Joy's predictions haven't formulated in a negative way yet it doesn't mean that he doesn't have a point. If technology continues to advance and AI becomes commonly used his prediction can come true. So far AI hasn't developed enough to truly think on its own but in the coming years it will be an interesting thing to watch.