Does mankind control technology or vice versa? We had better figure out an answer to that question pronto.
I remember, as a kid, a very interesting episode in American technological development. It was around the time of Jimmy Carter, and the US described a new nuclear weapon, which was colloquially known as the “neutron bomb”. Essentially, a traditional thermonuclear explosion could be modulated to cause less blast destruction of buildings while killing the same or more people via greater neutron release. The overall response to the invention in Europe was one of revulsion: there is a greater likelihood of war if we can just wipe out the armies and leave the buildings for our use after the war. The US did produce neutron bombs under Ronald Reagan, though European leaders refused to let them into their countries.
It is rare that we step back from technological progress. In Judaism, there are lots of things we give up on because they don’t fit in with religious requirements. Unless some creative chef gets a kosher restaurant with a Michelin star, I may well never have the unique opportunity of eating at such a prestigious restaurant. There are some debates about electric cars and the Sabbath, that even if it technically did not violate the spirit of Torah law, the Sabbath would never be the same again. We’d just drive all over the place on autopilot and we would forever give up on sitting around the table with family and truly taking a day of rest. In the larger world, most inventions and improvements are incorporated into our lives with very little thought as to the implications or outcomes.
When Caller I.D. was invented, fewer people called anonymous hotlines, such as those run by the police and suicide prevention groups. Caller ID Blocking came in response. We as humans are still trying to find the right balance between being absorbed in our phones and interacting with people and things around us. In England, they put crosswalk warnings on the sidewalk, as people tend to look down at their screens, so maybe they’ll see the warnings not to get run over and have the street named after them. Technological progress has increased our life expectancy, helped us to accomplish more, and made our work lives generally easier and more efficient. Our forefathers might have spent hours preparing food, whereas we just whip into the supermarket and in half an hour have food for the whole week.
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What happens when technological progress and human well-being do not go hand-in-hand? We got a taste of it with Covid. By all measures, the virus was the product of a natural virus modified by human researchers. Mike Benz claims that the key furin cleavage site in the spike protein was engineered by scientists at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana. They received the virus samples from Wuhan, modified them and shipped them back to the Bat Lady, where sloppy methods apparently led to researchers getting ill and the virus getting out. Those Rocky Mountain Labs are run by NIH, the same outfit run by Dr. Collins and his key colleague, Dr. Fauci. Should those experiments have been performed? For decades now one can synthesize nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) and site-specifically integrate them into some host material: does that mean that under all circumstances one should do so? There is an infamous clip of Dr. Fauci telling the folks in Congress years before the pandemic that the risk of a virus release was worth doing the kinds of experiments they did in Wuhan, after they became banned in the US. Hubris plus technology led to over seven million dead worldwide. Incompetence and dubious mRNA vaccines probably made things worse rather than better. Still, would it have been better if Fauci and his colleagues had calmly said: “You know, we can do these experiments, but we’re going to back off. The risk of escape and pandemic is too great.” Ostensibly, they could have, but these were aggressive people who thought that they had replaced God. “I am Science!” thundered the little man.
While Covid is mostly behind us, though I have a cough that I cannot shake for a couple of weeks now, AI is in front of us. Bill Gates and others tell of a future where there will be little to nothing for us humans to really do. Oh, they’ll keep some of us around, but virtually everything we do today will be done by some combination of AI, robotics, computing, and internet communication. The fundamental question, assuming that these less rosy predictions were to come true, is this a good path to take? Should we be like the generation of the neutron bomb and say, “You know what, that we can do it does not mean that we should”? While AI/robots might take over in parallel with lower birth rates, in which case the disruption would be smaller, the scenarios discussed have AI taking over everything we do. Between the power of AI, the greater use of robots outside of factories, quantum computing, and ubiquitous fast internet, maybe we don’t need construction workers or doctors or pilots or cooks. Maybe everything could be done by automation and computing, and we will be like the folks in the movie Wally, fat as can be to the point of being unable to move ourselves. What would be the basis for putting some brakes on these developments? Whereas a rabbi can tell a Jew that something is forbidden to eat or do on the Sabbath, what body has the authority and respect to say that we should keep our workers, even if AI and robots could replace them? What will people do when they have nothing to do? Will we all be on permanent retirement plans?
For over forty years, my father was a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois. He got up early, took the train to work, did his business and came home. In the last few years of his life, after nearly twenty years in retirement, he might get up at 11. He would ask me what day of the week it was and sometimes what month we were in. People need a reason to live. They need a reason to get out of bed. So while our Fauci-wannabees plan a world without us, where AI and robots do everything we do and maybe even do it better, what about us? Do we want to play golf every day for the rest of our lives? How often can we window shop in the mall? A world in which we have nothing to do sounds horrific; it sounds less like progress and more like the end of humanity. Discussions should be taking place at the highest levels of government and industry to determine the best ways to use our newly-developed tools to enhance our lives, rather than simply replace us. People need to decide the place for technology and not just let technology dictate how our lives are lived.
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