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Wendell Wallach is the go-to person for informed and level-headed insights and ideas about the contemporary technological condition of humanity. For the last decade I have had the privilege of sitting in on his working group at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center and observing his tireless efforts to address every facet of our sociotechnical situation. Scores of experts, recruited by Wallach on his continual travels to conferences in the U.S. and abroad, have introduced us to the marvels and dangers, the dreams and realities, the problems and possible solutions engendered by the ever more rapidly proliferating products of science and engineering. This book represents the full flowering of Wallach’s project.
What is distinctive about “A Dangerous Master” is not only its comprehensive survey of such a vast terrain, but also its critical take on the risks and speculations that surround this topic. On the one hand Wallach does surely want to stress the omnipresent hazards that lurk in every corner of this brave new world. On the other hand he wants to bring our thinking about them down to earth by separating science-fiction-and-film-fueled myth from laboratory fact.
By this means Wallach wants to impress upon us that we humans still can be, and should be, in control. We need not, and should not, surrender to a supposed inevitability of machine dominance, not to mention, transformation of our very nature into something machine-like. No matter how magical the prospect seems to some (I will never forget the moment in one of our meetings when the speaker’s mention of technological magic moved several of us to reach into pocket or purse and hold up our new smartphone for the group’s awed admiration), or dystopian to others, neither the state of the art (and science) nor the inherent complexity of the issues need reduce us to ineffectual indulgence in fantasy or else utter hopelessness.
To this end Wallach highlights the notion of an inflection point, which is a brief interval at the cusp of a new development, in this case technological, where a real opportunity exists for society to assess and affect that development, sometimes even unto halting it in its tracks if it is deemed too dangerous. The book gives a case study of Wallach’s attempt to seize such a moment that now exists for the creation and global dispersal of autonomous weapons. At the same time Wallach does not want society to squelch promising and even essential new technologies due to unwarranted fears.
The book concludes with various practical suggestions for how humanity might try to achieve wise governance of our mechanical creations so that they will remain our “good servants” rather than become our “dangerous masters.”
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The map of our future contains vaste areas marked "Here Be Dragons".
If you care about your personal future, your family's future, your nations future, the future of the human race, the future of the entire body of living things, and the future of the planet Earth itself, you must read this book.Wendell Wallach has done a most admirable job of mapping the "Here be Dragons" of our future, in this sensitive, scholarly, and most clearly written work of personal commitment, A DANGEROUS MASTER.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2016
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2015
Wendell Wallach has done a most admirable job of mapping the "Here be Dragons" of our future, in this sensitive, scholarly, and most clearly written work of personal commitment, A DANGEROUS MASTER.
The map of our future contains vaste areas marked "Here Be Dragons".
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2015
If you care about your personal future, your family's future, your nations future, the future of the human race, the future of the entire body of living things, and the future of the planet Earth itself, you must read this book.Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2015
Wendell Wallach has done a most admirable job of mapping the "Here be Dragons" of our future, in this sensitive, scholarly, and most clearly written work of personal commitment, A DANGEROUS MASTER.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2015
