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Who’s Driving?
Talking with a Dominican University professor doesn’t lessen
concerns about technology and humanity. BY JIM WOOD
The development of
full artificial intelligence
could spell the end of
the human race.
number of tasks, Bower says, “Honestly, I don’t
know if we can do anything about it.” And as for
driverless cars, Bower rather embraced the con-
cept: “Driving along while chatting with friends
sounds nice,” he says, “or maybe reading a book.”
He does note that during this general surge
in technological advances we are — possibly
for the first time in recorded history — “see-
ing the present generation not doing as well
economically and socially as did the previous
generation.” But meanwhile, “automation
tends to improve our day-to-day lives, free-
ing people’s brains to do more regenerating
and rewarding endeavors.” Whether or not
humans will take advantage of that opportu-
nity for personal and cultural improvement is
yet to be seen; so far, Bower agrees, the picture
there has not been encouraging.
Regarding computers and artificial intel-
ligence someday causing vast unemployment,
Bower confirms, “Technology, primarily arti-
ficial intelligence, is taking people from the
workplace and rendering them, for the most
part, worthless. And that concerns me.”
Overall, what really troubles Bower (and me)
is the long-range fate of humanity, an issue that
even the eminent theoretical physicist Stephen
Hawking has raised. Few have benefited more
from technology than Hawking, who suffers
from Lou Gehrig’s disease: computers write and
speak for him. Yet he recently proclaimed, “The
development of full artificial intelligence could
spell the end of the human race.”
In Bower’s view, “it may not have malicious
intent, but someday artificial intelligence —
in the form of robots — could compete with
humans for the planet’s limited resources”:
water, energy, minerals, land. He has “no idea
who will win that battle,” he admits.
While we may be getting freed from mundane tasks such as driving through traffic, are
we taking advantage of that freedom by keeping our minds active and, in turn, bettering
ourselves and our society? We all must think
about that before celebrating technological
advances such as driverless cars. That’s my
point of view. What’s yours?
Email pov@marinmagazine.com.
I’M CONCERNED REGARDING something in the news, and this time it’s not ISIS, the drought or income inequality. My concern is driverless cars. Where will it all end? More than
550 years ago, the printing press was invented
amid fears it would stunt the brain; people
would no longer need to make up stories,
they’d simply read those written by others. Jump ahead four centuries and folks in
England were rioting over steam-powered
weaving looms. Young Ned Ludd personally
destroyed one of the new contraptions, resulting in his followers being labeled Luddites.
When I was a child, I no longer had to memo-
rize multiplication tables — you could buy a
calculator, press some buttons and there’s your
answer. Do you see where I’m going with this?
In his 2015 book Rise of the Robots, Bay
Area resident Martin Ford builds a strong
case that current unemployment is not only
caused by economic forces; it’s also a function
of robotics and automation replacing human
energy. “And those jobs won’t be coming
back,” Ford states repeatedly. Which brings
to mind conveniences now considered commonplace: ATMs, computer-ans wered phone
calls, Internet shopping, digital cameras and
Google maps. And now we’ll soon have robots
building driverless cars. Which begs the questions: will our brains atrophy from disuse?
And whose job is safe?
I took my concerns to Kiowa Bower, who
holds a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics from
Caltech and is a natural sciences professor
at San Rafael’s Dominican University. “The
human brain’s hard wiring has not changed
much in the last 100,000 years, but the world
around us is now vastly different and we
can only adapt to it as best we can,” Bower
assures me. “I think it is a natural aspect of
the increasing levels of technology and auto-
mation that humans will lose some skills that
were once an important part of our lives.”
As for technology eventually replacing
human beings in performing an increasing
POV
The vie ws and opinions expressed in this article are
those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
policy or position of Marin Magazine and its staff.
