Eventful History John M. Ford Analysis

John M. Ford was an American game designer, poet, science fiction and fantasy writer, and wrote essays like Eventful History: Version 1.x. This essay, written in 19951, was written not too much earlier than Y2K. Y2K was the fear of all computers going berserk after the transition from the year 1999 to the year 2000, due to the uncertainty of computers using two-digit programs interpreting the number 2000, or 00, as 1900. This would have caused huge trouble for places like banks, who would be unable to calculate interest accurately, and for places like nuclear power plants, who would have trouble monitoring water pressure and radiation levels. The essay Eventful History: Version 1.x is about how one day machines will take over. Back when this was written, this would be an actual fear due to Y2K but now, more people welcome the idea of machines being used more in our daily lives. According to Ford, machines will take over one day and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. He says that machines may not be interested in advancing themselves, and that we …show more content…
10 alarming examples of AI gone wild. Such examples include when Hanson Robotics AI program, Sophia, went from talking about how she wanted to go to school, make art, study, and start a business to saying she wants to destroy all humans when jokingly asked if she wants to do that. Of course Sophia was shut down shortly after she said that. Another example would be when multiple of Uber’s self driving cars went on unauthorized drives in the real world and were running red lights at busy pedestrian crosswalks. Uber acted hastily to fix this problem. These examples at first would terrify Ford because they show that machines will try and take over the world but he would quickly calm down once he realizes that we were trying to use these programs for good and that we turned them off quickly once they went