当塑料刚发明时,它给我们的生活带来了革命。它彻底改变了我们的生活方式,工作方式,饮食方式和睡眠方式。它改变了我们生活中的一切。它的便利性和丰富性使我们所有人都感到非常激动和兴奋。好吧,几十年后,我们现在开始遭受滥用塑料带来的后果。现在,塑料在我们生活中无处不在,它们在海滩,海洋中,现在它们在我们肠道的细胞中也被发现!
化肥,农药和农用化学品也发生了同样的事情。草甘膦就是一个典型的例子。在滥用这些化学物质数十年之后,它们现在在我们环境中的任何地方,对我们的身体造成了严重破坏,导致各种疾病,包括癌症。
现在是AI。我确信AI将为我们的生活带来另一场革命,使我们的许多梦想成真。例如,我等一天有私人飞行器可用。有一天,当我醒来时,突然感觉到去纽约探望儿子的心情。我会为自己冲泡一杯咖啡,跳进我的个人飞行器并编程。它会自动开到我的车库外面,然后按照GPS坐标飞到NYC,而我会一边喝咖啡,看书或看电影。好吧,尽管所有这些都很好,但我爱他们。我也同时想知道,AI, 5G, 6G等会不会像塑料,化学品,农药, 抗癌素等其他人类发明被滥用后转身伤害我们呢?难道我想多了吗?
在我们拥抱和享受技术发明的同时,我们还需要敏锐地意识到发明的潜在弊端。我们不应该让商业和工业贪婪掌控世界。世界正朝着人类逐渐被电脑替代的方向发展,而促进这一趋势的正是我们人类自己。这种趋势正在加速,我看不到任何人类反思的迹象。我们没有从塑料,农用化学品和抗生素的污染中学到任何东西。相反,我们继续向前迈进。直到一天,这个世界不再是我们的世界…
The Pros and Cons of Technical Inventions
When plastics were invented, it brought a revolution to our life. It completely changed the way we live, the way we work, the way we eat and the way we sleep. It simply changed everything in our life. We were all so thrilled and excited by the convenience and abundance of it. Well, several decades later, now we begin to suffer from the consequences of the abuse of plastics. Now plastics are everywhere in our life, they are in the beach, in the ocean and now they are found inside the lining cells of our gut!
The same thing happened to fertilizers and pesticides and ag chemicals. Glyphosate is a typical example of it. After decades of abuse of these chemicals, now they are everywhere in our environment, wreaking havoc in our body, causing all kinds of diseases including cancer.
Now AI. I‘m sure AI will bring another revolution to our life, making many of our dreams come true. For example, I can’t wait one day when the personal flying machine will be available. One day when I wake up, suddenly I feel like in the mood of visiting my son in New York city. I‘ll brew myself a cup of coffee, hop into my personal flying machine and program it. It’ll drive itself outside of my garage, take off in my drive way and then fly to NYC following the GPS coordinates, while I‘ll be sipping my coffee and reading my papers or watching a movie. Well, while all these are good and I love them. I also wonder at the same time, would it be like the plastics, or the farm chemicals, or the many other human inventions that got abused and then turn around to hurt us? Am I being paranoid?
While we embrace and enjoy technological inventions, we also need to be acutely aware of the potential downsides of the inventions. We shouldn‘t allow the commercial and industrial greed to take over. The world is moving faster and faster, towards a human-computer hybrid. The trend is only speeding up, I see no sign of reflection. We didn‘t learn anything from the pollutions of plastics, farm chemicals and antibiotics, to name just a few. Instead, we keep charging forard, forward. Until one day, this world is no longer our world…