Ideas

Consider the Future, Warns Scientist

Sun Microsystems’ Bill Joy has stirred up a debate by suggesting that molecular-scale computing could threaten the human race.

By DAVID MALTZ, MBA Class of 2002

BILL JOY GIVES THE HUMAN RACE a 50-50 chance of surviving the next 100 years. In an April 5 conversation with Wired magazine’s then editor-in-chief Katrina Heron, the chief scientist of Sun Microsystems sounded a clear and urgent warning against the unrestricted consequences of the rapid advancement and convergence of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics and cautioned against the hubris of scientists who see themselves as tool-builders and therefore absolved of responsibility for catastrophic consequences of the use of their tools.

Jointly coordinated by the School’s Futurist Club and its Healthcare & Biotechnology Club, Joy’s appearance at the GSB marked the first anniversary of the publication of his landmark essay, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” in the April 2000 issue of Wired.

The article, which touched off heated debate among scientists, ethicists, technologists, and policymakers, has been compared to Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s seminal book on the environment, and Albert Einstein’s letter to President Truman warning of the imminent dangers of the nuclear bomb.

Most reactions to the essay were bipolar, Joy said. Respondents either dismissed him as a “nervous Nellie” or took a fatalistic approach, arguing that advances in science are going to happen anyway, so we had better “step on the gas” and get there before our enemies do.

Joy said he felt that the most valid critical reaction came from those who accepted the two basic premises of his article: that the nature of the information age is transforming laboratory science into information science, and that information science is becoming increasingly democratized and powerful. Accepting these two premises implies there is a growing danger of abuse, intentional and accidental, that could quickly reach catastrophic scale.

“If we have a dangerous substance, such as smallpox, in a vial, nobody has any qualms about managing or restricting access to that substance. But if that substance is information or even speech, for God’s sake, then suddenly it becomes sacred in some way,” Joy said.

Among the problems Joy sees with this is that many small, seemingly positive steps can lead to a negative result, and evolution cannot prepare us for what has never happened before.

Joy traced the origin of his concern to a paper written by a friend who works in molecular electronics. The friend convinced him of the imminent possibility of the construction of molecular-scale computers that would extend Moore’s Law (which predicts the processing power of chips will double every 18 months) for another 20 years, an extra factor of 1 million in computing power. “If something is going to be a million times cheaper or not, or a million times more plentiful or not, that makes a big difference in your planning assumptions,” quipped Joy.

One of the most controversial of Joy’s positions has been his call to relinquish the pursuit of certain kinds of technological research. He urged fellow scientists to heed the medical profession’s Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.” Scientists need to move beyond accepting that something that works in the laboratory is “true” and understand how it will work in the world, to ensure that the result will make the situation better, not worse. Their “tool-builder defense” is no longer valid, he said, because “our tools have become too specific, too difficult to understand.”

“I don’t think we can predict the future, but we see signals,” he said. Ignoring those signals may lead to our extinction.