McCrary 1

Michael McCrary

Mrs.Thomas

UWRT 1103

11 April, 2018

Effects of Future Technology

How do you think the future of technology will look like? Will our advancements

of technology keep at advancing at the same rate it is now? Having a good idea on how

future technology will affect us could be a key part in making sure there are not any

harmful effects. Knowing this will help prevent future generations from using their

current technology in a less efficient way then what it was meant for. The future of

technology occurs every day coming sooner rather than later. Sustainable energy once

was thought to be unachievable, but now the time of sustainable energy is coming

rapidly.

Generations that live through the advancement are sometimes not able to keep

up with the rate at which technology is advancing compared to the generations that are

born during this time of rapid technological advancement. Generations that are brought

up using the new technology are usually more capable to keep up with the

advancement of the technology, but this could also cause negative effects on the

generations as well. If the acceleration of the rate at which technology is advancing then

the outcome could be the same as the previous generations. By Moore's law, which

states that the number of microprocessors in a system doubles every two years, this

suggests that the advancement of technology will keep going at a fast rate.
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In the article​ ​Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade To Stop The A.I. Apocalypse​,

Maureen Dowd talks about the negative and positive effects of technological

advancements. She talks about how Elon Musk wants to prevent artificial intelligence

from taking over and how Mark Zuckerberg wants A.I. to thrive. Elon Musk says things

such as, ​“Musk’s alarming views on the dangers of A.I. first went viral after he spoke at

M.I.T. in 2014—speculating (pre-Trump) that A.I. was probably humanity’s “biggest

existential threat.””(Dowd n.p). “Zuckerberg has moved his A.I. experts to desks near his

own. Three weeks after Musk and Altman announced their venture to make the world

safe from malicious A.I., Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that his project for the year

was building a helpful A.I. to assist him in managing his home—everything from

recognizing his friends and letting them inside to keeping an eye on the nursery. “You

can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,” he wrote.”(Dowd n.p). ​Having this

controversy between two idols of the technological industry of today has people in

conflict. Having something like Jarvis from iron controlling could be problematic such

that someone could hack your whole house, but on the other side of things it could

make everyday life easier. This leads us to the question of is advancing A.I. going to be

better or worst for our future?

In the advancement of technology there are things that are realistic and thing that

are not realistic. ​In the Ted talk video ​What Will The Future Look Like? Elon Musk

Speaks at TED 2017, ​Chris Anderson speak with Elon musk on what is expected for the

future of technology. Elon Musk talks on what he thinks will be practical and what will

not be inthe future as of present day. ​“Using only passive optical cameras and GPS, no
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LIDAR, the Model 3 will be capable of autonomous driving.”(Anderson n.p.)​ Elon musk

talks about how cars and transfer truck will be fully autonomous very soon. The positive

aspects of removing a human driver is that humans are faulty. By going fully

autonomous could bring car incidents to a minimal. At first of course there will be many

bugs in fully autonomous driving, such as the recent accident that the company Uber

experience with one of their fully autonomous cars causing a passenger to pass

away..Over time it could be better than humans being in control of the wheel. We

already see autonomous driving being implemented into society. The Tesla roadster is

fully autonomous. Other car brands have mechanisms that keep drivers in their lane

and begin the breaking process to stop that car so it doesn’t hit another car. Elon Musk

even talks about the chances of the invention of flying cars. He says in his opinion that

flying cars wouldn’t be practical due to it would a lot of noise to have one fully operation

with today's technology. ​“Sustainable energy will happen no matter what, out of

necessity, Musk says.”(Anderson n.p.). The advancement of being able to create

sustainable energy would solve a lot of problems and there is already working being

done to achieve this. We as humans will not stop till we achieve this because it is a

“necessity”.

Humans use an exorbitant amount of energy everyday especially with high use of

today's technology. Types of sustainable clean energy have already been created such

as solar power, hydropower, wind power, geothermal, and nuclear. Most of these still

have negative or inefficient effects. Solar power energy can only acquire energy when

there is sun. Hydropower work by turbines spinning in dams and also effects the natural
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environments around it. Wind power can only acquired energy when wind is active.

Geothermal acquires energy from the heat produced in the earth, but can cause

emissions of greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy creates energy from the radioactive

decay of atoms from elements, such as uranium. Using this kind of power source

produces a lot of waste that is dumped into bodies of water that can affect surrounding

environments. The one source that has the least amount of harmful drawbacks is solar

power. The sun produces an immense amount of free energy that could cover the

amount of energy that humans use everyday. Another problem of solar energy is having

to have a lot of land. North Carolina uses this it’s advantage by using its vast landscape

that gets a lot of sun to use as an energy. The article ​Transparent Solar Panels Could

Harvest Energy From Windows And Eventually Replace Fossil Fuels​, by Anthony

Cuthbertson​ ​talks about how this could become less of a problem to other states due to

the invention of solar panel window that are slowly being integrated in new house for

their windows. These solar power windows function just like regular windows,but these

take in energy to lower your power bill. “Rooftop solar panels typically have an efficiency

of between 15 and 18 percent, whereas the see-through solar cells record efficiencies

of around 5 percent. However, Lunt says he expects to see a three-fold improvement in

efficiency of the transparent solar cells.”(Cuthbertson n.p.). One things that keeps states

from going totally solar power energy is the fact that it is very expensive at the

beginning but over time it would pay for itself. Could the future have a more efficient of

sustainable source of energy than what we have today?

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While the advancement of technology can bring great things to this world it can

also have some negative effects to it as well. ​In the Ted talk video called​, A Funny Look

at The Unintended Consequences of Technology​, Chuck Nice talks about some ways

that the advancement of technology has caused some harmful effects on current

generations and possibly future generations. He talks about how the current generation

should be utilizing today's technology in a different way. He also talks about how we

should fix these problems for future technological advancements. In the video Chuck

Nice says, ​“We are actually teaching machines how to think, how to understand our

behavior, how to defend themselves and even practice deception. What could possibly

go wrong?”(Nice n.p.). Having an A.I. system in the future that can act the same way as

a human could have negative effects, and could be a bit scary. He also says

“Remember when you thought robotics were cool? I remember when I thought robotics

were cool, until I figured out that they were going to take everybody's place, from the

delivery guy down to the heart surgeon.”(Nice n.p.). This aspect has already been

implemented into today's industry since it is cheaper to have a robot do the work in

factories rather than hiring humans. Another everyday aspect of this is self checkout

lines in retail stores such as target and walmart. Having self checkout lines allows for

store to not have to have as many employees on payroll. The economical advantages of

using robots are phonominal to economic growth. There wouldn’t be any point in time

where robots take over all the jobs that humans have to offer. There will always be jobs

for working on the robots and also jobs that robots just are not capable of doing at this
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time. Implementing new technology and robots into industry is a slow process

considering the cost of it and making sure it would be more profitable.

I have conducted a survey that was given out at random, through google forms,

to 40 students and teachers

here at UNC Charlotte that

asked yes or no questions

about concerns of future

technology. The first

question that was on the

survey was Do you think it

will help to have a better understanding on how future technology will affect future and

previous generations? Almost everyone said yes to this question which makes since

that people would want to know how future technology will affect us. The second

question that was on the

survey was Do you think we

should regulate the speed at

which technology is

advancing so we have a

better understanding of it?

This suggest that people think that the rate at which technology is advancing should not

be regulated. Not having technology regulated could lead to more technology that could

be helpful to the world. The third question that was on the survey was How afraid are
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you of the possibility of A.I. systems will take over the world? Almost three-quarters of

the people said yes. Heading

what Elon musk said that we

should make sure to protect

ourselves from advancing

A.I.’s. The fourth question that

was on the survey was Do you

fully understand today's technology? Over half said they do not fully understand today's

technology. The current

generation at a college level

does not fully understand of

technology operates, but that

doesn’t mean they would be

willing to learn as technology

advances. The fifth question that was on the survey was Do you think generations that

grew up with advanced

technology adapt better to future

technology? Almost all said they

would. Having pre knowledge of

how to interact with technology

might allow for upcoming

generation to interact with technology more efficiently.

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In conclusion technology affects us in many ways and as technology keeps

advancing it will affect generation differently. ​How do you think the future of technology

will look like? Will our advancements of technology keep at advancing at the same rate

it is now? Having a good idea on how future technology will affect us could be a key

part in making sure there are not any harmful effects. We might not know exactly how

the future of technology will look like, but we do know the future of technology will affect

the whole world in many different ways.

Work Cited

Cuthbertson, Anthony. “New Solar Windows Could Meet ‘Nearly All’ of U.S. Electricity
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Demand.” ​Newsweek​, 24 Oct. 2017,

www.newsweek.com/fossil-fuels-transparent-solar-panels-harvest-energy-windo

ws-msu-691308​.

Dowd, Maureen. "Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse." The

Hive. May 26, 2017.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-s

pace-x​.

Greene, Brain. "What Will the Future Look Like? Elon Musk Speaks at TED2017." TED

Blog. May 01, 2017.

https://blog.ted.com/what-will-the-future-look-like-elon-musk-speaks-at-ted2017/​.

Nice, Chuck. "A Funny Look at the Unintended Consequences of Technology." TED:

Ideas worth Spreading. April 2017.

https://www.ted.com/talks/chuck_nice_a_funny_look_at_the_unintended_conseq

uences_of_technology​.