William O. Douglas Quotes
if we make technology the predestined force in our lives, man will walk to the measure of its demands. We know how leveling that influence can be, how easy it is to computerize man and make him a servile thing in a vast industrial complex. ... This means we must subject the machine -- technology -- to control…
William O. Douglas, 1898-1980, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Chairman, Security & Exchange Commission, Points of Rebellion (1969
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He made this quotation in a discussion about nuclear weapons, but the principle is valid for many areas from the Internet to pharmaceuticals. In the nuclear weapons case there have been a number of accidents – including fatal ones – over the years and on several occasions a nuclear weapon came close to detonating near populated areas. In one case, radiation damage from a crash of a nuclear weapons equipped bomber have made an area in Spain unusable for years into the future.
Musk was one of the very few technilogical leaders who had great fear about the potential danger of artifical intelligence and thought that it should be regulated.
Many of the major new technology companies of America initially wanted nothing from government and didn’t want government to interfere with their efforts. They initially did no donate to political campaigns or hire lobbyists. But because of their amazing success, they transformed American and world society, threatened and damaged vested interests and became the focus of government attention. And soon the began to play the game but unlike their technologies at which there were masterful, they were not as skilled and adroit at politics. In a number of c cases they challenged the United States government both directly and indirectly by changing facts on the ground in America, and when government was most needed to work out new rules of the road for the nation with the new technologies, the U. S. Congress was gridlocked and totally dysfucntional.
Musk is one of the very few and earliest technological leaders who spoke out about the potential danger of artificial intelligence and thought it should be regulated.
William Orville Douglas was an American jurist and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40, one of the youngest justices appointed to the court. His term, lasting 36 years and 211 days (1939–75), is the longest in the history of the Supreme Court. In 1975, Time magazine called Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court."
