IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 28

trees a chance to grow. Artificial intelligence will eventually discover
a will of its own, and pose a global
catastrophic threat.
In the hands of the racists and
authoritarians these technologies
can be used for repression, to enforce
new forms of economic, gender, and
ethnic subordination. They will be
used as weapons of terror and war.
But the impacts of technology are
chaotic, and innovation will destabilize the old categories of power
and identity even more quickly.
What is the meaning of race, when
we now know that only Africans are
pure blooded homo sapiens, and
everyone in the future will want
designer genes? Sex is being electronically mediated, and the birth
rate is crashing globally. The army
of the unemployed will outnumber the employed, and a wholesale
renegotiation of our political economy will be on the table, with the
scapegoating of immigrants and
trade laid bare as lies.
We need to begin talking about
the nature of democracy and the
economy in that future, knowing that
we can at best tell useful stories; prediction is impossible. We have no
way of seeing more than a couple
years beyond the black swans, the
unexpected interactions, the chaotic
tumbles toward unseen attractors
in the possibility space. But part of
the story will involve our increasing capacity to design our world
with human intelligence, distilled
into cybernetic systems. Barring
the destruction of civilization by
war, asteroids, and super volcanoes, we will increasingly govern
the ecosystem, the economy, our
bodies, and even our brains and
our capacity for self-governance.
Self-governance will be a worm

Ouroboros, the Enlightenment
and governmental influence on the
finding its own ta il and gnawexo-cortical expert assistants ma ing, forcing us to update our libnaging our affairs, monitoring
eral individualist values for an
our political engagements, and
age of nudge algorithms, moral
advising us on our buying and
enhancement drugs, memory manipulation, and Borg
hive minds.
When we last faced the
seventy year rise and fall
Expectations of predictable lives
of tot a lit a r ia nism, the
of education-career-retirement
Soviets had a grand vision
of an abundant planned
are being destroyed by expert
economy, where waste had
been replaced by rea son,
systems, robotics, and electronic
and squalor by equality.
disintermediation.
It failed because economies were too complicated to track and plan, and
consumer desires too difficult to
voting. Did I just buy a Mandapredict. Today Walmart, with an
rin language plug in because the
internal economy equal to the top
CCP is triggering my dopamine
nation-states, tracks billions of proddrip when I think about Chinese
ucts through 70 countries, using
food? Did I just vote for a Robot
expert systems to predictively move
as God Emperor because the latest
things where they will be most profAndroid Mindware encourages an
itably used. The Internet of Things,
antihuman bias?
predictive analytics and Big Data
The night may be long and full of
are building our future planned
terrors. But the Winter will be followed
economy inside the drying chrysaby Spring, and it will come sooner
lis of 20th century capitalism. The
if we hold up a vision of a complex,
question is not whether we will have
challenging, abundant, secure future
a planned economy, but how demthat is worth living in. The accomplishocratically accountable it will be
ments of scientists, engineers, and
and how widely its abundance and
technologists will last longer, shaping
opportunities will be shared. Will we
our descendants more profoundly,
create new feudalisms, with the enthan those of strongmen. As we build
hanced rich monopolizing wealth, or
that future, we need to spread the
will all share in expanding rights to
good news of its advent, and help preeconomic security and technologipare for its new challenges.
cal enablement?
Author Information
Today we attempt vigilance
James J. Hughes is Executive Direcagainst the sur veillance state
tor of the Institute for Ethics and
reading our emails, and hackers
Emerging Technologies, 35 Harbor
tampering with our electronic votPoint Blvd, #404, Boston, MA 02125;
ing. Tomorrow the communications
email: director@ieet.org.
we encrypt will be brain-to-brain,
and we will be wary of corporate

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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June 2017

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