5 Why the Future Doesn't Need Us

When this article by Bill Joy was first published in 2000, it caused a good deal of rumbling in scientific, engineering, and public policy circles. Joy was an extremely well-respected and accomplished computer scientist who had been a major player in the IT revolution. Yet in this piece, he raises questions and expresses doubts about the long-term implications of research that echo many of the concerns that critics of artificial intelligence research voice today. Joy does something parallel to the authors of the previous readings in that he takes certain research and development trends and extrapolates out to where they might take us. He is struck in particular by the possibilities of the convergence of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics and especially the potential of this convergence to lead to self-replicating entities that might effectively take over the world because of their superior-to-human capacities. He insists that he is not antitechnology; he is not advocating that we stop developing the technologies at issue. Rather, he is concerned about the direction of development. Joy struggles with the negative vision to which his extrapolations lead and in so doing raises many of the questions that will be pursued in this book. His goal is to have us reflect on the technologies we are developing today to make sure they will help us create the future that we want.