When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the potential risks of creating machines that can replicate themselves by following programmed instructions, making them vulnerable to exploitation.
Richard Dawkins warns about the inherent dangers associated with developing machines that strictly follow and execute instructions. When such machines are designed to reproduce or duplicate themselves, they create opportunities for misuse by individuals or entities that may exploit these systems for harmful or selfish purposes. This commentary on technological advancement urges caution and awareness of the ethical implications of automation and self-replication.
In practice
In a tech conference discussing ethical AI, this quote can remind developers of their responsibilities.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch.
You can get it in any color, as long as it is black
We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.
I am not anti-technology; I am pro-conversation.
Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.
Any new technology, if it's used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that's more a question of the politics of the technology.
The fuel cell is just a fundamentally inferior way of delivering electrical energy to an electric motor than batteries.
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