Emerging Trends in Science and Technology Policy

Lecture 8

Paradigm Busters

Paradigms are concepts and assumptions that define the manner in which humans view the reality within which they live.

• Genetic engineering/biotechnology

• Robotics/artificial intelligence

• Nanotechnology (GRN)• Interferometry

No one can say for certain whether certain technologies will become widespread –

• Nanotubes• DNA nanobots• Smart dust• Full emersion virtual

reality

Ray Kurzweil suggests that nanotubes can be used to build complex circuits and that “one cubic inch of nanotube circuitry would theoretically be a million times more powerful than the human brain.” From Albert Teich, Technology and the Future, 11th ed.: 138.

– but be assured that they will change society profoundly if they do

Utopias in human thought• Social

– Plato’s Republic

– Sir Thomas More (1516)

• Religious– Paradise (Earth as a “labyrinth

of pain” Jacques Attali)

– John Winthrop’s “city on a hill”

• Industrial– Worker’s paradise (socialism)

– Consumer society (markets)

• Post-industrial– Transhumanism

What is transhumanism?

• Through the use of GNR technologies, humans will overcome disabilities and slow the aging process.

• Humans will merge with machines, achieving near immortality.

• The organisms to emerge will be so different as to constitute a new species.

• The movement has a strong utopian quality.

One person’s utopia often turns out to be another’s dystopia.

Critics of transhumanism suggest that the homo sapiens who remain after the singularity occurs will have the status of domesticated animals.

What would society and culture be like in a transhumanist world?

• The printing press gave us nationalism and Reason.

• The industrial revolution gave us bureaucracy.

• The rocket and atomic power gave us Big Science.

• The computer gave us globalism and markets.

• Will ultra-intelligent machines expand our freedom and life spans or will they insist on controlling any beings less intelligent than they?

The Honda Motor company developed ASIMO, a computer controlled robot that can complete tasks performed by intelligent beings.

The Debate Takes Shape:The Last Invention

• “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.”

• Irving John Good, 1965. “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,”

Is it feasible?

• “Some people say that computers can never show true intelligence whatever that may be. But it seems to me that if very complicated chemical molecules can operate in humans to make them intelligent then equally complicated electronic circuits can also make computers act in an intelligent way. And if they are intelligent they can presumably design computers that have even greater complexity and intelligence.”

Stephen Hawking, “Science in the Next Millennium,” March 3, 1998.

The readings

• David Kay worries that bioweapons are more difficult to control than nuclear weapons.

• Alvin Weinberg believes that technological change proceeds much faster than the ability of human beings to voluntarily change their behavior (that’s why capitalism triumphed over socialism).

• Lovins and Lovins argue that a world sharply divided between rich and poor will encourage the latter to strike at the “brittle technologies” of the privileged class.

• Ray Kurzweil believes that the benefits of GNR technology will far outweigh their social costs and that the technologies are inevitable anyway.

– readings continued

• Bill Joy worries that GNR technologies are far more dangerous than weapons of mass destruction because the former are within the reach of individuals and small groups and far more difficult to control. He notes that lesser civilizations rarely survive encounters with advanced technologies.

• Brown and Duguid suggest that as technology advances so do the institutions necessary to control it.

Two videos

• The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil, youtube.com

• The Matrix, scene 12 (“The Real World”)

Should certain types of research be outlawed?

• Above-ground nuclear testing

• Satellite intercepts• Underground nuclear

tests• Cloning humans• Embryonic stem cell

research• Genetic hacking• Biological warfare agents

(smallpox, anthrax)• Robotics/artificial

intelligence

Back to space: the Mars of our imagination is not the planet of our dreams.

Percival Lowell, Canals on Mars (1909); Chesley Bonestell, Surface of Mars; Mars as seen from Earth.

Searching for the “new Mars” – an extrasolar planet with earth-like characteristics.

Earth as photographed from Voyager 1 (1990); Earth from Mars photographed by Mars Global Surveyor (2006); artist’s vision of an extrasolar planet (Don Dixon 2007).

How the discovery of an earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star might alter space exploration.

The Old Paradigm• Rockets to space• Earth-orbiting satellites• Selection of astronauts• Winged spaceships• Large space stations• Space observatories• Lunar bases• Mars colonies• Extraterrestrial life

The New Paradigm• Rockets to space• Earth-orbiting satellites• Exploration of solar system

using robots and some human expeditions

• Space telescopes, including terrestrial planet finders

• Discovery of earth-like planets• New propulsion systems• Autonomous, self-replicating

nano-spacecraft and humans modified for long-duration space travel

• Exploration of extra-solar planets

Summary:How the next wave may affect public policy

• Old models of policy control may be outmoded in a GNR world– Printing press– Industrial revolution– Big science (the rocket and

the nuclear power)– Internet and market forces

• Smart systems– Organizations as brains– Vastly expanded human

capabilities with machines that prevent errors

– Examples: nuclear test verification, GPS air routes Robert McCall, Floating City Over Arizona