I was talking with my wife’s grand-father this past weekend and the topic came up about the furture of technological societies. I remembered that Bill Joy had a great piece on this, so a little google-digging came up with his Wired article, circa April 2000. I still can’t get over the fact that he takes the unabomber’s precepts and extrapolates them with marvelous lucidity. It’s very scary reading if you’re up for it!
[ Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn't need us. (Bill Joy) ]
First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
As if we don’t have enough to worry about.