"Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man"

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
New York Times (07/25/09) Markoff, John
TECHNEWS@LISTSERV.ACM.ORG


This was a headline on a recently received email and it spurred my thoughts as many things often do. Machines will outsmart man because man has reached a social stagnation in his evolution/advance. We have the power to change our environment in almost any way we decide to take it. We have the knowledge to end most of the causes of human suffering in the world. We have the means to expand beyond our one tiny world if we just set our minds to it.

Instead of doing the things we can and should do to improve ourselves, we find ways to impoverish each other, to kill each other for no reason other than pride, and to impose our wills on others just because they’re weaker. Greed is the driving force of humanity. Greed is in fact the vilest of human weaknesses because it is too easily rationalized away in our minds. Greed is a corruption of our animal instincts in that it has connections deep within us to our survival instincts. Intelligence should be the human strength that controls greed. Far too many of us allow our greed to control our intelligence. This will be the root cause for the eventual collapse of human civilization worldwide. We could use our collective intelligence to see the future path to our destiny. Instead we work as individuals pulling in directions of personal interest. The strength that brought humans to the top of Earth’s heap of life has devolved into a misdirected cancer that erodes our future. I can see this but I do not have the solution. Do you?

DRP