Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
So then, who controls the technology, and saves us from ourselves? An international body? Scientists?
Well, the problem is that there are at least seven ways in which this technology differs from the nuclear technology of the 20th century, all of which makes the problem of regulation harder.
What are those differences?
The first thing is that everything's happening so fast. Moore's law is happening so fast. We don't think things are possible, but in fact they're already going to happen, for sure. The second is this amplification, where self-replication lets an individual do something that has a wide impact. For example, [in February's denial of service attacks] one person probably brought down the Web; that's an example of replicated code. Then there's the irreversibility of the actions. Even if you create a nuclear [war] winner who blows up the cities, it's not the end [of all life on Earth]. But if you release something deadly into the environment, you probably can't call it back. And they are commercial technologies, not military, so they're really loose in the commercial sector, and they have enormous value. These things are going to create millions of dollars in wealth. It's no surprise that the NASDAQ is going crazy. The technologies are very democratic: If it's information, all you need to design it is a PC -- maybe one that's 10,000 or a 100,000 times faster than we have today. But it's not like having a nuclear, plutonium and uranium refining facility -- that's not something everyone's going to have. The information revolution fundamentally democratizes access to the tools.
The other thing is that these things really blur the lines between machines and life. We understand biology and we understand machines, but these things that these technologies are making are different. Say in nanotechnology, it's machines that reproduce. They're living. And if we mess with genetic engineering, we have to understand [cells] at a mechanistic level. And the last thing is, these things are so powerful ... we really can't foresee what the outcome will be. We can know where there's a situation of great danger, but to predict anything with specificity is extremely difficult because there's so much progress being made in parallel on so many fronts. It's like Dolly -- that was a complete surprise. The motto of the age has to be, expect to be surprised; forget fiction, read the newspaper. So each of these seven things makes the problem more difficult.
Couldn't companies simply limit access to dangerous products, thus keeping them from the "crazy people"?
Companies clearly have to behave, but I don't think companies can prevent individuals from getting the technology. An example of something we might have is some kind of secret patent. We may decide that it's good to study some virus, in the hopes of coming up for a cure for something. But maybe we don't want everyone to know everything about it. And yet we want the company to have intellectual property rights. So we need some kind of patent that isn't published.
I'm not suggesting that's the solution. We'd have to think that through. That could actually make the situation worse. I'm not sure how you'd have the patents be largely secret and still enforce them. It's scary because it sounds like some of these trials where you don't know what you're accused of; it sounds like Kafka.
But see, the problem we have here is that if we're trying to protect against something that's so extreme, we can't rule things out. If we want to have all this incredibly powerful technology, we may have to give up some other things. Fundamentally, individuals can't be free to use anything that's that powerful. Therefore, something has to be restricted: their actions, the information itself, the tools to do it.
Haven't you spent most of your life pushing technology to its boundaries? Given your new apocalyptic views of nanotechnology, robotics and genetics, how has your own work been affected? Has your relationship to technology changed?
I've become more troubled about the progress in these fields because while there's tens of thousands of good things we can do and enormously wonderful wealth creation, longer lives, all these things -- I don't think we've dealt with the downsides, and aren't on a course to deal with the risks. So that's obviously a depressing thing to believe. It's kind of strange to write a piece, and have your fondest wish be that someone would stand up and tell you that you're totally wrong. It's not a message that's a fun message to be delivering.
Did anyone come forward and allay your fears?
No. In terms of the analysis of the problem, there isn't much dispute. I think some people say we can't do anything, let's just go faster -- the fatalist approach. Other people say it's all Darwinism, whatever happens happens. That's really the same argument. The other thing people say is that we have to seek truth at all costs -- that's the Classical thing. But then, if you start looking at the ethical consequences, and try to say what you can do if you believe that something should be done, it isn't easy. Because it involves people. Management would be easy if it didn't involve people, right?
