A Dangerous Master
How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
We live in an age of awesome technological potential. From nanotechnology to synthetic organisms, new technologies stand to revolutionize whole domains of human experience. But with awesome potential comes awesome risk: drones can deliver a bomb as readily as they can a new smartphone; makers and hackers can 3D-print guns as well as tools; and supercomputers can short-circuit Wall Street just as easily as they can manage your portfolio.
One thing these technologies can't do is answer the profound moral issues they raise. Who should be held accountable when they go wrong? What responsibility do we, as creators and users, have for the technologies we build? In A Dangerous Master, ethicist Wendell Wallach tackles such difficult questions with hard-earned authority, imploring both producers and consumers to face the moral ambiguities arising from our rapid technological growth. There is no doubt that scientific research and innovation are a source of promise and productivity, but, as Wallach, argues, technological development is at risk of becoming a juggernaut beyond human control. Examining the players, institutions, and values lobbying against meaningful regulation of everything from autonomous robots to designer drugs, A Dangerous Master proposes solutions for regaining control of our technological destiny.
Wallach's nuanced study offers both stark warnings and hope, navigating both the fears and hype surrounding technological innovations. An engaging, masterful analysis of the elements we must manage in our quest to survive as a species, A Dangerous Master forces us to confront the practical -- and moral -- purposes of our creations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New technologies offer the lure of potentially improving human lives, but this thoughtful polemic convincingly argues that "In striving to answer the question can we do this?' too few ask should we do this?' " Wallach (Moral Machines), of Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, admits that while no one immediately understood the dangers of such items as X-rays or asbestos, in other instances obvious dangers were brushed aside because proponents assumed that the benefits exceeded the risks. He emphasizes that every new technology passes through an "inflection point" where the general public, policy planners, and scholars can reflect on its impact before it enters the marketplace and develops a momentum of its own. Unsettling chapters describe what we should be but mostly aren't discussing about transformative technologies such as genetic manipulation, radical life extension, killer robots, and computer-guided medical care. The obligatory how-to-fix-it conclusion urges legislators to ignore ideology, the lay public to use common sense, and engineers to design for responsibility as well as performance. Readers will admire this astute analysis while harboring the uneasy feeling that the barn door seems stuck open.
