IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 5

president's message

Greg Adamson

Listening To Our
Technologies

ccording to one theory of innovation,
scientific discovery
is followed by technological innovation
leading to new technologies. This
temporal sequence of development
applies for some technologies, but
trying to find a causal relationship
between scientific discovery and
technology development is challenging. In some cases, the scientific
basis of a technology, such as the
steam engine, is not understood until
decades later. In others, scientific
discovery creates the possibility for a
technology to emerge, but which one
emerges is shadowed in uncertainty.
Take artificial intelligence (AI).
After half a century of development,
it remains unclear how the first significant breakthrough will occur. Will
the breakthrough AI mimic the brain
in its processes, or in its outputs?
Will the sheer weight of brute force
calculation combined with probabilistic simplification be enough for
a conceptual leap of a machine, or
not? With such uncertainty about
which path will lead to success, when
success is achieved we will only have
a hint of how that success works.
In these circumstances it would
be dishonest to claim to the public that the result is "safe," as we
won't know. Rather, we should
appeal for acceptance of the technology on the basis of precautions

we are taking. If we can't describe
those precautions and argue for
their effectiveness, then we probably shouldn't be trusted at all.
In addition to taking appropriate
precautions, we also need to be looking to our technologies for hints that
something may not be right. I became
aware of areas of uncertainty regarding brain feedback devices while listening to a presentation in Boston at
the 2014 IEEE Conference on Norbert
Wiener in the 21st Century, by Tamara
Bonaci, who was at the time completing her Ph.D. at the University of
Washington. (Dr Bonaci is now SSIT's
representative to the IEEE Brain Initiative.) Bonaci's presentation sensitized me to the issue of electrodes
and gaming. Electrical stimulation
of the brain has been used in medical treatments for decades. Gaming
devices, however, are used as experience enhancement tools.
The voltages and currents used
in these devices are orders of magnitude higher than those found
in the brain. Their pathways are
poorly understood. Can we say at
this stage that there will not be any

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2634718
Date of publication: 12 December 2016

DECember 2016

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

long-term effect on the users? No,
because there is no long-term data.
But for large numbers of gamers to
self-administer relatively large currents and voltages to their brains to
stimulate a feedback response in an
entirely uncontrolled environment
creates many areas of uncertainty.
This is my last column as SSIT
President. It has been an enormously satisfying two years, and
I am pleased to see Paul Cunningham take up the reins as 2017-2018
SSIT President. This is a good time
to be considering the relationship
between technology and society,
because the technology community
is so open to informed discussion
of issues such as the environment,
development, ethics, social inclusion, and future impacts. In this,
SSIT has an important role to play.

Author Information
Greg Adamson, 2015-2016 IEEESSIT President, is with the Melbourne
School of Engineering, University
of Melbourne, Australia. Email:
g.adamson@ieee.org.

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