The idea of progress: should we fear progress or, rather, should we encourage it?

The idea of progress

I’m going to talk about « The idea of progress ». Foremost, I’d like to state a definition of progress. The notion of progress is the idea that the world can be better in terms of science, technology and quality of life. Progress implies change and evolution. However the rhythm of progress seems to have accelerated over the last few decades and the technological breakthroughs and scientific developments are causing some people to question this progress. During this year, we studied the notion of progress in the scientific field with genetic manipulation and also with artificial intelligence.

Firstly, we will focus on genetic manipulation, and then secondly, we will also focus on artificial intelligence like robots, in order to answer to this question: Should we fear progress or, rather, should we encourage it?

Nowadays, the scientific progress allows improving life condition. Indeed, scientifics dream to eradicate all illness possibility, with all possible means. For instance, we studied in class a text called “DESIGNER BABY”, in this story, the main character is Anna, it is a child who is born to save his sister: Kate, who is affected with a fatal disease. In a other text, called: “Saviour Sibling” The child: Jamie, is conceived in through in-vitro fertilization and PGD “pre-implantation genetic diagnosis” for save his brother: Charlie who suffered extremely rare genetic condition.  In this article, the Jamie’s mother said: “I really like the term saviour sibling because that is what he is.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Some people object to the designer baby for moral reasons. On the one hand they‘re afraid that the children became a commercial production because with the genetic manipulation we could choose cosmetic characteristics in order create a human model of perfection. Of course the principal Scientifics’ interest is to cure genetics diseases, but we know the human can be able to do terrible thing like the atomic bomb or Nazism.

These articles show the advantage of the scientific progress, indeed the medical benefits allow saving life but the designers babies are disputed.

Now, I’m going to speak of artificial intelligence.

Nowadays robots are real, but they’re above all machines which purpose is helping us by making our lives easier, they have replaced us in many sectors for example in factories where they realize difficult and dangerous tasks. But today, Scientifics want “play” with artificial intelligence. For instance, Michio Kaku introduces to us the Japanese robot Asimo  whose revolutionary particularity is its ability to walk. Asimo can interact with humans; It can imitate emotions such as pain, distress or joy. Machines are assistants for us, they can clean, help during sensitives surgeries, or they can just distract us.                                                                                                                                                                                           Even since the XXth century scientists and people have been afraid of the huge potential of robots. An article was published about it in the American news website The Huffington Post. It’s entitled “Man VS Machine” and was published in 2011. In this article, the narrator said that an artificial intelligence called: Watson, has won the game “Jeopardy!”. It’s impressive due to the fact that this TV quiz show requires general culture, there are also puns and riddles. Before Watson no machine could answer these kinds of questions.

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