Technology(2)
Ethics
Ethics of Technology
The ethics of technology is an interdisciplinary branch of ethics that studies the moral implications of technology and looks into solutions to lessen any potential drawbacks. Technology raises a wide range of ethical concerns, from narrowly focused difficulties impacting professionals who work with technology to more general social, ethical, and legal concerns about the place of technology in society and daily life.
Prominent debates have surrounded genetically modified organisms, the use of robotic soldiers, algorithmic bias, and the issue of aligning AI behavior with human values.
Technology ethics covers a number of important areas. Cloning, human genetic engineering, and stem cell research are only a few examples of the ethical concerns that bioethics examines in relation to biotechnologies and contemporary medicine. Computer-related issues are the subject of computer ethics. Cyberethics examines internet-related concerns like censorship, privacy, and intellectual property rights. Nanoethics investigates moral questions pertaining to the modification of matter at the atomic and molecular level in a variety of fields, including biology, engineering, and computer science. Engineering ethics, which includes software engineers, is concerned with the professional standards of engineers and their moral duties to the general public.
The morality of artificial intelligence is a broad area of technology ethics that includes both machine ethics, which is concerned with ensuring the moral behaviour of artificially intelligent agents, and robot ethics, which deals with moral issues related to the creation, construction, use, and treatment of robots. AI alignment (ensuring that AI behaviours are in line with the goals and interests intended by their designers) and the reduction of algorithmic bias are two key still unresolved research issues in the field of AI ethics. Some researchers have advocated for the use of AI capability control in addition to AI alignment techniques in order to prevent the potential threat of an AI takeover.
Other fields of ethics have had to contend with technology-related issues, including military ethics, media ethics, and educational ethics
Futures studies
The systematic and interdisciplinary study of social and technical advancement is known as futures studies. It seeks to integrate human values into the creation of new technologies and to investigate a spectrum of conceivable futures statistically and qualitatively. Researchers who study the future are more generally concerned with enhancing "the freedom and welfare of humankind". It bases its predictions on a careful examination of previous and present technological trends, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and makes a serious effort to extrapolate those patterns into the future. Science fiction is frequently utilised as an inspiration source. Modelling, statistical analysis, computer simulations, and survey research are some of the approaches used in futures research.
Existential risk
Researchers that study existential threats examine dangers that could result in the abolition of civilizations or the extinction of humans and seek to develop resilient societies. The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative are two relevant research institutions. Future technologies could increase the dangers of artificial general intelligence, biological or nuclear war, nanotechnology, anthropogenic climate change, global warming, or stable global totalitarianism, but they could also reduce the risks of asteroid impacts and gamma ray bursts. The idea of a fragile world was first articulated by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2019."one in which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets destroyed by default," noting the dangers of a bioterrorist-caused pandemic or an arms race brought on by the development of innovative weapons and the loss of mutual assured destruction. He asks decision-makers to consider whether they can afford to wait until a risky technology has been developed before preparing mitigations, if scientific openness is always preferable, and whether technical development is always helpful.
Emerging technologies
Emerging technologies are novel technologies whose development or practical applications are still largely unrealized. They include nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, 3D printing, blockchains, and artificial intelligence.
The next technological revolution, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil, will be driven by developments in genetics, nanotechnology, and robots, with the latter two being the most significant. Through the use of genetic engineering and a method known as directed evolution, human biology will be much easier to manipulate. Others worry that controlled evolution could result in eugenics or significant societal inequality. Some intellectuals worry that this may destroy our sense of self and have called for a fresh public discussion investigating the subject more extensively. We will be able to control matter "at the molecular and atomic scale" thanks to nanotechnology, which may allow us to fundamentally alter ourselves and our surroundings. The distinction between biology and technology may become more hazy if nanobots are deployed within the human body to eradicate cancer cells or regenerate new body parts. Autonomous robots are predicted to replace people in many hazardous tasks, such as search and rescue, bomb disposal, firefighting, and warfare, as they have advanced quickly in recent years.
Estimates on the advent of artificial general intelligence vary, but half of machine learning experts surveyed in 2018 believe that AI will "accomplish every task better and more cheaply" than humans by 2063, and automate all human jobs by 2140. This expected technological unemployment has led to calls for increased emphasis on computer science education and debates about universal basic income. Political science experts predict that this could lead to a rise in extremism, while others see it as an opportunity to usher in a post-scarcity economy.
Movements
Appropriate technology
Technological utopianism
The idea that technological advancement is a morally good that can and should lead to a utopia—a society where all of its members' demands are met by its laws, governments, and social conditions—is referred to as technological utopianism. Post-scarcity economies, life extensions, mind uploading, cryonics, and the development of artificial superintelligence are a few examples of techno-utopian objectives. The transhumanist and singularitarian movements are two prominent techno-utopian ideologies.
The foundation of the transhumanist movement is the "continued evolution of human life beyond its current human form" through science and technology, guided by "life-promoting principles and values." Early in the twenty-first century, the movement began to garner more and more support.
According to singularitarians, machine superintelligence will "accelerate technological progress" by orders of magnitude and "create even more intelligent entities ever faster", which could result in a pace of societal and technical change that is "incomprehensible" to humankind. The term "technological singularity" refers to this event horizon.
Major figures of techno-utopianism include Ray Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom. Techno-utopianism has attracted both praise and criticism from progressive, religious, and conservative thinkers.
Anti-technology backlash
Technology's central role in our lives has drawn concerns and backlash. The backlash against technology is not a uniform movement and encompasses many heterogeneous ideologies.
The earliest known revolt against technology was Luddism, a pushback against early automation in textile production. Automation had resulted in a need for fewer workers, a process known as technological unemployment.
Between the 1970s and 1990s, American terrorist Ted Kaczynski carried out a series of bombings across America and published the Unabomber Manifesto denouncing technology's negative impacts on nature and human freedom. The essay resonated with a large part of the American public. It was partly inspired by Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society.
Some subcultures, like the off-the-grid movement, advocate a withdrawal from technology and a return to nature. The ecovillage movement seeks to reestablish harmony between technology and nature.
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