LESSON 9

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND SOCIETY
Why the Future Doesn’t
Need Us
LESSON OBJECTIVE:
❏ evaluate contemporary human experience
in order to strengthen and enlighten the
human person functioning in society
 BILL JOY
● born November 8, 1954
● an American computer
engineer co-founded Sun
Microsystems in 1982
● In April of 2000, Bill Joy
ignited a heated discussion
concerning the role of
technology in modern society.
 BILL JOY
He argues that the 21st
century technologies such as
genetic engineering,
nanotechnology and
robotics (GNR) are a great
threat that they might wipe
out the human race from face
of the Earth.
What are the common
concerns about the
effects of technology?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
Artificial intelligence
(AI) is wide-ranging
branch of computer
science concerned
with building smart
machines capable of
performing tasks that
typically require
human intelligence.
Some Uses of Artificial Intelligence
Email filtering: Email
services use artificial
intelligence to filter
incoming emails.
Users can train their
spam filters by
marking emails as
“spam”.
Some Uses of Artificial Intelligence
Personalization: Online
services use artificial
intelligence to personalize
your experience. Services, like
Amazon or Netflix, “learn”
from your previous purchases
and the purchases of other
users in order to recommend
relevant content for you.
Some Uses of Artificial Intelligence
Fraud detection: Banks
use artificial intelligence
to determine if there is
strange activity on your
account. Unexpected
activity, such as foreign
transactions, could be
flagged by the algorithm.
Some Uses of Artificial Intelligence
Speech recognition:
Applications use artificial
intelligence to optimize
speech recognition
functions. Examples
include intelligent
personal assistants, e.g.
Amazon’s “Alexa” or
Apple’s “Siri”.
The advancement of artificial intelligence
and robotics poses challenges on its
socio-economic impacts, transparency, bias
and accountability, new uses of data,
security and safety, ethics and new
ecosystems. With this, adoption of ethical
standard is needed to promote ethical
considerations in innovation policies.
Why the future does
not need us?
 ACTIVITY
1. Is technology making people dumber or smarter?
2. Will the development of artificial intelligence harm or benefit
humankind?
3. Does the use of technology changing people for the better or worse?
4. Has social media benefited or harmed people’s social lives?
5. Is technology going to save the world or kill it?
6. Should a person’s social media be considered by school admissions,
police investigations, and potential employers?
7. Vaccination should be mandatory.
8. What are the benefits and drawbacks of fully automated cars?
9. Should children have smartphones?
10. Should all cars be electric?
CLASS DEBATE
1. Choose a topic.
2. Assign the Affirmative and the Negative.
3. Keep Track of Time.
PROCESS
1. The affirmative group receives two minutes to present their case to the
audience.
2. The negative group then receives two minutes to present their case.
3. Other members of both groups may present their rebuttal alternately
within two minutes.
4. The negative side presents their rebuttal and summary for the first two
minutes.
5. The last to speak is the affirmative team who then presents their
rebuttal and summary for two minutes. The debate is now concluded.
AFFIRMATIVE GROUP PRESENTING THEIR
CASE
NEGATIVE GROUP PRESENTING THEIR
CASE
REBUTTAL OF BOTH GROUPS
NEGATIVE GROUP PRESENTS THEIR
REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY
AFFIRMATIVE GROUP PRESENTS THEIR
REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY