I agree with him. If artificial intelligence (AI) was finally to catch up to its hype and be the basis of the robot’s brain (and mind?), we humans with our ailing body and mind might become redundant at some point.

With clever robots, fast computers and generally more sophisticated technology, we would cede more and more control of machinery and infrastructure necessary for running our lives to them since their decisions are faster and more accurate.

Two scenarios on how the ceding of control might happen. First, humans cede complete control to machines. They make all decisions and we are at their mercy. You might say that we would never be so foolish as to cede total control to them.

But this ceding may not be voluntary. It would happen in a creeping manner: a little more control ceded each time, each ceding an innocuous act in itself, but overtime, it becomes more complete.

A point may be reached when the running of the machinery of life is so complex, the number of variables to consider in making any decision so enormous, that even if we realised we have lost the power of decision making, we cannot just turn the switch off. It would be suicidal. At this point we live depending on the good will of our creation.

Okay, we might be more vigilant than that. We decided before hand that the final decision will always have human intervention. With efficient running of the system the elites in charge will have complete control over the masses and now we are at their mercy.

Whatever their intentions might be it does not bode well for human freedom. These two scenarios are quoted by Bill Joy from the ‘Unabomber’s Manifesto’.

Automatic bugging

The Unabomber was Theodore Kaczynski, formerly a mathematics professor from Princeton. He became disillusioned with technology and its impact on society and environment. He took to living a hermit’s and spartan life in the mountains of Montana and to bombing university laboratories and airlines – hence Unabomber, – presumably blaming them for building up technological capability.

Joy is implicitly agreeing to the possibility of the Unabomber’s scenarios even though not his methods for combating the rise of the machines. How soon would intelligent robots be ready? Joy thinks by 2030. He might be overly optimistic but the point is, the day could come.

I always say that without fast and intelligent computers, robots and sophisticated technology, Orwell’s Big Brother will not manifest itself in his full glory. To keep track of the population Big Brother will make use of the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Parents find it useful to keep track of their brats. So, it is becoming a standard in handphones. Big Brother need not institute new control technologies. He can pick them off the shelf because we find them useful for our more innocent purposes.

Artificial intellegence’s natural language understanding system will make it easier for automatic bugging of any language-based communication.

This is one reason for the father of computer natural language understanding, Joseph Weizenbaum of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to oppose further research in this field, as he stated in a talk given at Imperial College London that I attended.

But once someone in the field gets going, it creates a momentum of its own.

Price of freedom

Under the guise of war against terrorism, the US Patriot Act and other similar acts make bugging private communication even easier. As Hitler’s supreme propaganda chief, Goebbel, put it, it is very easy to terrorise the population to accept any suspension of human rights and freedom.

Just create some fear about security, repeat it over and over; the people will always go for security at the price of their freedom. It works every time in every society. What is happening in the US clearly illustrates the process.

Data on individuals are being compiled into computer databases. A credit card database keeps track of what, where, and when we purchase things, from which our preference and whereabouts can be compiled; money withdrawals through the automatic teller machines record when and where we draw out money and again can build a profile of where we have been and conjecture on doing what with the money.

The GPS tracking profile, together with camera surveillance- terrestrial or satellite based – will be even more detailed. Electronic banking and e-purchasing further build on our profile.

Traveling and paying electronically tracks our whereabouts too. Our individual databases keep growing, and are being integrated into giant databases.

The new identity card, Mykad, already introduced in Malaysia will be able to store loads of an individual’s data.

The ability of some rogue hacker or some National Security Agency type’s ability to control an individual’s identity or even make him a complete non-entity is stuff of sci-fi horror but nevertheless is not totally absurd. We are getting there.

When our dependence on technology is complete, when every aspect of living requires doing things electronically, when every move is stored in a database, there will be no dissent possible in a non-democratic system.

Even a democratic system can easily be compromised, per Goebbel’s. There is no where to run. A brave new world awaits indeed.

Ring tone of extinction

The handphone, the very symbol of modern technology, can become an instrument that contributes to our extinction. The New Scientist magazine reported on Feb 19 that it affects sperm health. The possibility of cancer is always there.

Other effects are beginning to show, such as on fertility in nematode worms. The third generation handphone and infrastructure, 3G, with even more powerful radiation emitted from the phone and transmission towers, will bath us with electromagnetic radiation even more. Already effects such as headaches and nausea from 3G towers are found in people exposed to them that are not present from the GSM ones.

Before these results were known, phone manufacturers, service providers, even academics, scientists and government safety and health authorities had vehemently denying any health impacts, as had been done in cases where much economic value was at stake, such as the mad-cow disease outbreak and genetic engineering, as noted in a New Scientist editorial.

For Joy, to escape the perils of technology, the only realistic alternative is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.

Sounds good but that is easier said than done. With the direction of research, and definitely the application of research, and thus the source of research funding, determined by big business and the military – even university research is largely set by them – there is little hope of researchers saying no when the search for profit and glory are the bottom line.

With universities watching their position in the university league tables, any funding from any source is welcome. And beware those who dare to speak of such tiresome subjects like ethics and conflicts of interest. The university authority, and even their colleagues, will come down hard upon them.

As we have noted, change creeps in slowly. When a change or a technology is already in place, people get use to it. They can’t do without it even if dangers are known. The handphone is an example. The pace of life requires it.

Work ethic, every day living, is premised upon being in touch 24 hours a day seven days a week any time any where. Those without it will be out of the loop, as I found to my cost. I have since succumbed.

To paraphrase the great physicist Luis Alvarez, we are very bright guys with no common sense.

ROSLI OMAR is an academic interested in the impact of science and technology on society and environment, being bred on the white-heat of technology creed himself.

For this article, he referred to the following sources:

1. Joy, B, (2000) ‘Why the future doesn’t need us’, Wired Magazine , issue 8.04, April 2000

2. New Scientist , ‘Sperm damage claims over phone radiation’, Print edition issue 2487, Feb 19, 2005

3. Graham-Rowe, D (2002b), ‘Cancer cell study revives cellphone safety fears’, New Scientist Online News, Oct 24, 2002

4. Graham-Rowe, D (2002a), ‘Mobile phone emissions increase worm fertility’, New Scientist Online News , Feb 6, 2002

5. Graham-Rowe, D (2003), ‘3G base stations may cause headaches’, New Scientist Online News , Oct 2, 2003

6. New Scientist , (2001), ‘You asked for advice, now act on it’, Editorial, Sept 15, 2001,