Wendell Wallach predicts that crises in public health and our economy will increase dramatically in the next 20 years, likely a result of our rush to adopt new technologies before we've prioritized the risks we're willing to tolerate against the benefits we might gain.
For example, hydraulic fracking technology can extract an abundance of inexpensive oil and gas and offer the long-sought independence from foreign oil America seeks. But it also releases methane into the air, uses copious amounts of precious water and contaminates the groundwater that's been linked to illness.
The demand for complex technologies is fueled by our dependence on the technologies that came before - creating an upward spiral where demand begets technology begets demand, resulting in new technologies being deployed faster than we can safely oversee and regulate.
Every technology has a trade-off. There are lots of hard questions about the technologies on which we increasingly rely, like who's responsible when something goes wrong, and how bad could it be.
Wendell Wallach says it's not too late to take advantage of "inflection points" along the way, but it will require a hard look and a healthy dose of regulation and oversight. If we lose our ability to control our own destiny, technology can be A Dangerous Master, indeed.
GUEST:
- Wendell Wallach - Scholar at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, the co-author with Colin Allen of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong and the author of his new book, A Dangerous Master: How To Keep Technology From Slipping Beyond Our Control
Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.
