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SNS: Special Letter SOCIETAL FUTURES: Technologies, Issues, and Concomitant Projections By Dennis M. Bushnell Adapted and edited for the SNS Global Report from the just-released NASA report "Societal Futures to Inform Space and Aero Planning: A Technological Projection," by Dennis M. Bushnell and Lois E. Macklin. (See link for full report with references.) Register for Future in Review now to take advantage of Summer Earlybird pricing. FiRe returns live at the beautiful Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, CA, November 6-9. Join old friends and new - including Dennis Bushnell - at this life-changing event. _______ Why Read: SNS members who attend our FiRe conferences will remember the 2018 opening-night speech given by NASA chief scientist Dennis Bushnell, which led to one of the longest standing ovations I have seen in a long string of amazing opening sessions. To that end, we are excited to note that Dennis has agreed to be one of the very few brilliant speakers to be invited back for a return presentation, this coming FiRe 2023, on opening night. There are many interesting and impressive things about Dennis's knowledge and intellect, but I can now say with some certainty that he combines at once the general and the very detailed, the 200k-foot view with the ground truth necessary to make sure the integrated vision holds together. Very few people have this gift, and, in my opinion, it is priceless. The value of Dennis's insights is their combination of being future-oriented, detail-checked, and integrated into scenario views that we can not only all understand, but can also choose to adopt for our own, act on, and make a real impact on our preferred futures. Read on, and enjoy. - mra Humans have invented, developed, and deployed a vast and increasing array of revolutionary and disruptive technologies. These technologies are altering human society - and, increasingly, humans themselves - and are currently binned under the broad categories of information technology (IT), bio, nano, quantum, and energetics. These technologies all have potentially significant impacts, both favorable and adverse. The world has experienced this with fossil fuels, which powered the Industrial Age but have caused increasingly adverse climatic change. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one emerging technology that similarly has the potential to revolutionize human society but with adverse impacts on human employment. This time is different with regard to machines taking jobs; humanity has never before created additional intelligent species with intelligence apparently different from human. The projected capabilities of artificial general intelligence (AGI) include machines providing lower costs and much greater capability across the jobs spectrum than humans, especially now that AI can ideate/create. Three human-engendered, nearer-term societal issues are most worrisome: solar storms, which could destroy much of the IT upon which society is now wholly dependent; climate change; and issues around AGI/technical singularity. Of these three, the first two have solution spaces. AGI issues, however, are not yet fully formulated, with extant projections ranging from "No problem, we will accommodate" to the demise of humans - and many variations in between. Many other issues beset society, as well. Some are natural, but most are human-engendered, the latter adjudged as more serious nearer-term threats than natural vulnerabilities. Overall, humans have up to now been too successful as a species, "working themselves out of a job" and out of a planet. Extant projections indicate a 19% probability of human extinction before 2100, due to anthropogenic technological causes, deployed both purposefully and by accident. In general, tech developments have outpaced society's capability to adequately study and regulate them for the good of society. There is a need for more study / evaluation regarding combinatorial longer-term impacts of technologies. Tobacco is another obvious example, in addition to fossil fuels, for which longer-term consideration would have been extremely efficacious. And there are many others. In the current situation of tech-development hyperdrive, the latency for societal consideration of technology impacts has increased from a decade or so to a situation where we are "winging it." The early and quintessential treatise on the emerging societal changes from the now-developing techs was the turn-of-the-millennium article by Bill Joy titled "Why the Future Does Not Need Us," in which he writes: "Our most powerful 21st century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species." His words were a wakeup call that spawned many books and much commentary but little definitive evaluative and regulatory action. This article assumes the "technological completion conjecture" put forth by Nick Bostrom," stating: "If scientific and technological development efforts do not effectively cease, then all important basic capabilities that could be obtained through some possible technology will be obtained." If one region tries to halt a technology, it proceeds in another region, unless there are obvious major downsides and/or enforced worldwide regulations. Whatever can be done technically will be done, if it is in some sense "useful" and worth the investment. In the Hunter-gatherer Age, nature provided. In the Agricultural Age, humans controlled nature. In the Industrial Age, humans mechanized nature; and in the IT Age, we automated nature. Now, in the Virtual Age, we are robotizing / intelligizing nature. However, we are increasingly relying on complex systems whose risks we do not or cannot calculate. This discussion is an attempt to consider the developing future societal context, including the ongoing evolution "of the humans, by the humans," by summarizing some of the multitude of revolutionary technologies now under development, societal threats and serious issues, and their combined interactive impacts upon society going forward, from a technological prospective.
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