Techno-Doom Panics Are Wired Into Our Brains

Remember Y2K? For you youngsters, this was a looming global technology crisis. Early programmers had formatted calendar dates using only the last two digits of a year to save computer memory (e.g., "98" for 1998). As December 31, 1999, approached, the fear was that computers would misinterpret the year "00" as 1900 instead of 2000, causing critical software systems to malfunction or crash completely.

People predicted that pacemakers would stop, elevators would fall to the ground, prison doors would spring open, planes would crash, and, of course, nuclear missiles would launch.

It wasn’t just the crazies saying this. Peter de Jager, a computer engineer and tech consultant, warned in Computerworld, "We're accelerating toward disaster." Warnings also came from U.S. senators, political appointees, and leading economists like Ed Yardeni. To hear the doomsayers tell it, a global crisis was practically inevitable.

Governments and businesses went to work, spending billions checking and repairing computer systems. The predicted global catastrophe never materialized. Awkward for the prophets of doom. But fixing software is one thing; predicting civilization’s collapse is another.

Today we face yet another techno-panic over AI. These kinds of panics are not new. In the late 1880s, during the "war of the currents," Edison supported animal electrocutions to portray alternating current as deadly and promote his own direct-current system.

Let’s not forget the panic over cell phones and brain cancer, fueled by David Reynard's lawsuit and 1993 appearance on Larry King Live. Yeah, sorry… but that’s bogus. There’s no established connection between cell phone use and brain cancer.

A few years later, Bill Joy's 2000 Wired article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" was immensely popular and influential. Joy, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, bundled genetic engineering, nanotech, and robotics as powerful technologies that he believed threatened “to make humans an endangered species.” Consequently, he floated abandoning entire lines of transformational research.

The nanotechnology fears drew on an earlier warning. In his 1986 book, scientist and engineer K. Eric Drexler warned that self-replicating nanobots could cover the entire world in gray goo. As The Guardian described the scenario:

It offers a nightmare vision straight out of science fiction - the destruction of the environment, perhaps even of the world, by robots smaller than viruses, able to share intelligence, replicate themselves and take command of the planet.

In 2003, ETC Group, a watchdog organization for “socially responsible” tech, called for a mandatory global moratorium on the development and use of synthetic nanomaterials in the lab and in new commercial products. ETC said, “Governments have failed to act responsibly,” and urged industry and the scientific community to back the moratorium, warning that nanotechnology’s future could otherwise be irreparably damaged.

After reading ETC’s work, King Charles (then Prince Charles) expressed concern about the possibility of gray goo. He reportedly warned about the “enormous environmental and social risks” of nanotech.

Sound familiar? Why is there no reputational harm for crying techno-wolf? Maybe influencers and organizations like ETC Group should have a banner at the top of their websites listing their failed scare predictions? “Caution: We attempted to scare the crap out of the world in 2003 and were completely wrong.”

After World War II, people also panicked about industrial automation technology, especially the prospect of total job elimination. Such concerns entered into the popular imagination of the day, with TV shows, news documentaries, and reports worrying about the loss of work.

One particularly telling episode of The Twilight Zone, predating the movie The Terminator, depicted a dystopian world in which a manager replaces all his workers with machines and, in the final scene, ends up being replaced himself by Robby the Robot.

In 1964, President Johnson created the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress. With the Great Depression still within living memory, the commission recommended a guaranteed minimum income. Again, sound familiar? Others at the time even floated schemes proposing that the U.S. encourage net out-migration if the domestic demand for labor contracted.

So why are these panics so common? Some of it is surely due to fame seekers wanting to capitalize on fearmongering. But there appears to be a deeper cause: Our brains are wired to react to uncertainty with fear before reason catches up.

As neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux wrote in his book The Emotional Brain, “It is better to have treated a stick as a snake than not to have responded to a possible snake.” In other words, uncertainty can make us see snakes even when we’re looking at a valuable piece of wood. Psychologist R. Nicholas Carleton explains that fear of the unknown involves an individual’s “propensity to experience fear caused by the perceived absence of information.”

Well, we aren’t going to change the human brain. But we can do two things.

First, we can develop a culture and a narrative that encourage people to see “sticks,” not “snakes,” when they learn about new technology. In other words, we need to foster a positive narrative about technological innovation. However, I am not very optimistic about this given how much fear “sells.”

Second, I know this sounds simple, but those of us whose job it is to be rational—or at least as rational as a human can be—should use our brains and logic to avoid being triggered. I don’t care how: Do some deep breathing, read a book, have a gin and tonic, or go for a jog. Whatever.

Just stop giving in to techno-doom panics. At a minimum, it’s unprofessional. More importantly, it’s bad for the human race.