"bill_joy_-_why_does_the_future_not_need_us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Joy Bill)

be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines
might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results,
because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human
race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish
enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would
voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do
suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines
that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems
that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let
machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results
than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system
running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the
machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so
dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average
man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but
control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two
differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human
work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is
ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda
or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct,
leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of
good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that
all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep
him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course,
life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove
their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby.
These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will
have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.1

In the book, you don't discover until you turn the page that the author of this
passage is Theodore Kaczynski - the Unabomber. I am no apologist for Kaczynski.
His bombs killed three people during a 17-year terror campaign and wounded
many others. One of his bombs gravely injured my friend David Gelernter, one of
the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time. Like many of my
colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber's next target.

Kaczynski's actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is
clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as
difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this
single passage. I felt compelled to confront it.

Kaczynski's dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well-known
problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to
Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will." (Actually, this is Finagle's law,
which in itself shows that Finagle was right.) Our overuse of antibiotics has led to
what may be the biggest such problem so far: the emergence of