“Everything will depend on the way in which we create it. Crafting these machines and the corporate laws that control them is going to be the most important thing humanity ever does. You know, each age has an activity in which the best minds get involved. Crafting the laws, and their implementation, will be the thing to do in the 21st century.” If the job is done right, he predicts a world of comfort, health, and boundless plenty – at least for a while. Human beings will be like slave owners whose servants never complain, need no supervision, and are constantly eager to please.
Predictor: Moravec, Hans
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Charles Platt, author of “The Silicon Man,” interviews Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and the author of “Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence.” Platt writes: ”[When robots are doing all the work, as Moravec predicts they will be by the year 2040,] won’t they try to exploit loopholes in their instructions, just as present-day businesses try to evade federal regulations? Isn’t there a real risk that autonomous robots will steal from each other and cheat on their taxes? ‘There is always the possibility that some kind of malfunction will produce a rogue corporation,’ Moravec admits. ‘We’ll need police provisions so that legal companies will act to suppress rogues economically, or physically, if necessary. And among the inprogrammed laws we’ll need antitrust clauses to force dangerously large companies to divest into smaller entities.’ But this would be a second set of rules to solve a problem created by robots breaking the first set of rules. The system still seems fundamentally unstable. ‘It is unstable,’ he agrees. ‘Everything will depend on the way in which we create it. Crafting these machines and the corporate laws that control them is going to be the most important thing humanity ever does. You know, each age has an activity in which the best minds get involved. Crafting the laws, and their implementation, will be the thing to do in the 21st century.’ If the job is done right, he predicts a world of comfort, health, and boundless plenty – at least for a while. Human beings will be like slave owners whose servants never complain, need no supervision, and are constantly eager to please.”
Biography:Hans Moravec was a professor at Carnegie Mellon university’s Robotics Institute who caused a lot of consternation with the book “Mind Children: The Future of the Robot and Human Intelligence,” in which he predicted the rise of machines and extinction of humans. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Superhumanism: According to Hans Moravec, by 2040 Robots Will Become as Smart as We Are. And Then They’ll Displace Us as the Dominant Form of Life on Earth. But He Isn’t Worried – the Robots Will Love Us
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/moravec_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney