Ray Kurzweil explains why the Bush administration's close-your-eyes-and-maybe-it-will-go-away approach to emerging technologies and accelerating change simply won't work:
The calls for broad relinquishment of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and AI research because of future dangers "are effective because they paint a picture of future dangers as if they were released on today's unprepared world," Kurzweil said. "The reality is that the sophistication and power of our defensive technologies and knowledge will grow along with the dangers.
"The surest way to prevent the development of the defensive technologies would be to relinquish the pursuit of knowledge in broad areas. Abandonment of broad areas of technology will only push them underground, where development would continue unimpeded by ethics and regulation. In such a situation, it would be the less-stable, less-responsible practitioners (e.g., terrorists) who would have all the expertise.
"We will need to place society's highest priority during the 21st century on continuing to advance the defensive technologies and to keep them one or more steps ahead of destructive misuse. In this way, we can realize the profound promise of these accelerating technologies, while managing the peril."
More good information on the Extropy Institute's Vital Progress Summit can be found here.
Posted by Phil at February 18, 2004 08:43 AM | TrackBack
You'd think that conservatives (I include myself) would understand this.
Remember the "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" bumperstickers?
Or you can think of it as an arms race. But now its the conservatives that are talking unilateral disarmament. Strange times indeed.
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