Will technology destroy society?
From the outset of life on earth all life has toiled to sustain themselves. Sleeping, hunting, foraging, and procreating has filled the hours of each day, a structured existence. The only deviation from that is modern man. Due to an evolving technology we have found we can survive and have a structured recreation period, but the majority of our waking hours are still spent toiling for the means of sustenance.

We have experienced the social catastrophe of unemployed cities such as in the USA, where mass unemployment brings total social dysfunction and is further eroded by substance abuse and crime.

We have lost millions of manufacturing jobs in the past 40 years due to technology and now service industry jobs are being eroded with the virtual service desk and robotic hamburger flippers. The current projection on robotic penetration will have over 60% of all jobs taken over by robotics in the next 20 years. What do we do?

We cannot turn our backs on technology, but technology will destroy the fabric of our society. Is there a resolution.

My dad died of a massive coronary in the 1970s.
Had this have happened today - he may possibly
have survived. Today, it's marvellous what specialists
can do both for heart conditions, broken limbs, and other
medical problems. Hopefully the cure for cancer is just
around the corner, as are other cures for the various
ailments that we suffer.

Having recently undergone quite a few operations myself
I have no complaints about the technology that was available
to me. Without it I would not still be here - and fingers-
crossed doing quite well so far.

And how long have robotics been around, since time began, it's just they are getting smarter now..

I could imagine a world were eventually none of us have to work because robots do everything for us. They could even maintain themselves and produce the materials necessary to do that.

But getting there could prove difficult given the mass unemployment and poverty that would inevitably happen before we got to that stage. Or could we skip that phase and have robots doing everything for us almost overnight with the development of artificial intelligence?

As artificial intelligence gets closer and closer to becoming a reality (with storage space currently being the biggest hurdle), that might even be a more immediate concern as to whether or not society will ever be “destroyed” by technology.

Sam Harris does an interesting TED talk on whether or not we can ever live with AI without losing control of it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it

After thinking about this question myself, I propose three safeguard measures:

1. Don’t connect it to the internet;
2. Don’t give it limbs;
3. Don’t fall in love with it (otherwise it could persuade one of us to violate 1 or 2).

[Ooo, that sounds like the tagline of a great novel!]

But then, if we don’t at least give them limbs, they’ll never be able to work for us to the extent that they could do everything for us and we’ll end up losing jobs without the eventual benefit of never needing to work again. As soon as we give them limbs, however, they'll inevitably learn to override any hardware or software measures that we put in place to prevent them taking over.

So, yeah, it doesn’t look good no matter which way you look at it. But I find wondering about how we can utilise AI to our benefit, without the immense risks that it carries, an interesting thought experiment at least.

It is all business as usual and one thing that is certain there will be
no business as usual.
We are going to have a hard time keeping our current level of technology.
As we slide down the loss of various materials we will have difficulty
keeping sophisticated systems like the internet in operation on its present scale.
You can see the difficulties we are having with electricity supply.
There will be more technical difficulties along the way.

Dear Bazz,

I remember how different computers were when they first
came out. And look at them today. I have every faith
that changes will continue to occur, improve, and advance.
We may hope and trust that our ultimate choice will be to
enhance the life on the bright and lovely planet on which
billions of us share our adventure.