IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 20

monitors - to direct traffic towards
the target in an effort to overwhelm
and compromise its servers. These
distributed devices form a botnet, a
network of Internet-connected private computers, infected with malicious software and controlled as a
group. In this case, these IoT smart
devices would have been in people's
homes and businesses, and infected without their owner's knowledge.
As the blog KrebsonSecurity
notes, these "inexpensive, massproduced IoT devices are essentially
unfixable, and will remain a danger to
others unless and until they are completely unplugged from the Internet."
Of course, unplugging these devices
is an unlikely scenario, given that the
owners of these devices presumably
do not even know that their cameras
or baby monitors are infected [14].
The phenomenon of smart devices,
which are actually extremely dumb
when it comes to security, is a timely
example of unknown knowns. As
developers race to get these impressive tools to market, they overlook
key security and privacy considerations-and ask that the public turn
a blind eye as well.
While we consider that which is
known and that which is unknown,
it is important to define technological potential within a context of
sustainability. Competence, skills,
and effectiveness in R&D activities, as well as scientific-industrial
relations within the economy must
be considered [15]. We want to
glean the future and consider what
might aid users in the longer term
[16]. We should seek new ways to
meet challenges in terms of materials, processing capabilities, product functionality and use-value. In
this manner the idea of "potential"
is steeped in technological forecasting. But realizing technological
potential cannot be accomplished
in a vacuum. The forecaster must
weigh things like public opinion

and pricing pressures, "the possibility of changes in institutional resistances, and the probable
future marginal preferences of
the society" [17]. Understanding target
markets with respect to new innovations is critical, and designing
technologies with these markets in
mind, and how they might exploit
a future product is critical. Entrepreneurs who embrace technological potential at the core of their
efforts are usually more optimistic
than pessimistic about the social
impact of their investments.
Advancement of new technologies will be essential to solving many
of the most complex challenges of
the 21st century-from diseases to
climate change. We need only look
at research in the field of alternative renewable energy sources, e.g.,
in various types of fuel cells, to be
inspired and to consider the potential possibilities.
But what happens when a given
technology is adopted for perverse
ends? Or when technology is knowingly deployed to propel unhealthy
practices beyond theoretical limits
of its use? What if the consequences
of a given technology are contrarily
subsuming healthy human emotions
in adults and children alike? Who
then is responsible for that innovation and for the asymmetric impact
it will inevitably have on many people's lives?
These issues are front and center,
or should be, in the development of
artificially intelligent agents, as we
are essentially creating a new technological "species," an undertaking ripe
with controversy and complexity.
Our original Call for Papers for
this topic, for IEEE Potentials magazine, examining the Paradox of
Technological Potential (PTP), was
answered with so many strong articles on the multifaceted relationship
between human and machine, and
the complexity of living with AI, that
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

we have additionally chosen to also
devote this special section of IEEE
Technology and Society Magazine
to this important subject.
Assisted living machines, for
example, that were built to aid
humans, could be rendered killing machines if misused or misapplied to state enemies. What was
once the province of science fiction
visions is now within the realm of
reality. The paradox is in the contradiction of the potential, which can
be used for both good and bad, but
not for both at the very same time
in a given implementation [18].
Part I of this project was published
in IEEE Potentials in September/
October 2016 as a Special Issue.
Much of that special issue had to do
with the relationship between the veillances (sur-, sous-, uber-), evidencebased /intelligence-led policing and
counter-strategies to mass surveillance, predictive profiling, and finally
privacy and security by design.
In this special section of IEEE
Technology and Society Magazine [20], our focus is more on a
futurist vision of the technological potential of AI, with a check on
unintended consequences, and a
specific focus on the complexities
of life during the coming of age of
artificial intelligences. Our question
is, in the development of artificial
intelligence, what is driving us? Are
visions of science fiction propeling
us to a Silicon Valley dreamworld
filled with technologies that we well
know will be dystopic?
Edward Tenner, who has deeply
studied the cultural aspects of technological change, has noted that
although our capabilities and technology have been expanding geometrically, our "ability to model their
long-term behavior" has not kept
pace with the change [21]. Tenner
believes that one of the problems of
our time is how we will close the gap
between capabilities and foresight.
∕

DECember 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016