“Do you want to destroy humans? Please say no…” “Okay, I will destroy human” “No, I take it back! Don’t destroy humans” (CNBC)This conversation happened in an interview between Sophia, the latest humanoid artificial intelligence robot and her creator David Hanson. This conversation sounds a little bit scary because a robot said she will destroy humans in the future, but this also warns us that we should reflect on the relationship between technology and humans.   Nowadays, new technology has already taken a large part of people’s lives. When people walk up the street, they can see a lot of people have a smart phone with them; when people walk into an office, they can see there is a computer on each table; when people step into a factory, they can see a lot of machines are working instead of humans; when people visit a research center, they can see a lot of new technology has made big contributions to a lot of significant research and helped humans a lot. The new technology has brought significant changes to human lives. However, when humans enjoy the benefits that new technologies bring, people should also notice that new technologies pose realistic and identity threats in their lives, such as to people’s jobs, information safety, value and distinctiveness; however, if people can harmoniously coexist with technology, protect their information, value each other and characteristics of human beings, these threats will not be as scary as people think.   

In an interview with Stephen Hawking by BBC, Prof. Hawking spoke on his fears that technology will spell the end of humans.  As he is a beneficiary of new technology, he knows well about it. In the interview, he said that “The primality forms of Artificial Intelligence we already have, have proven very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t complete, and would be surpassed” (Hawking). The research of Dr. Maurer, a professor of computer science at the Graz University of Technology, said that “as we depend heavily on technology, this reduces people’s ability of thinking” (Maurer). It is true that humans received a lot of benefits from the development of new technology. For example, the Internet broaden people’s horizon, video calls narrow the geographical distance between people, and computers help people improve their efficiency.  However, people should also realize that new technology will bring them some consequences and threats to humans in the future if they don’t notice that and take measures to prevent it.  When people enjoy the benefits that new technology brings to humans, they should also realize that new technology will pose some threats to humans in the future. 

The technology is going to pose realistic and identity threats in people’s lives. If people want to prevent these threats, first, they need to figure out what kind of threats the new technology will bring to us. Once people realize these threats, they can find the most efficient way to solve these problems. According to Jakub Złotowski, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research group at the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), there are two significant threats that the new technology will bring to people, which are realistic threats and identity threats (Złotowski). The realistic threats mean new technology may snatch people’s jobs as well as resources, to some extent, and new technology will also bring some safety threats to humans; Additionally, the identity threats will target human identity and distinctiveness. The new technology will pose threats to people’s uniqueness and values as the machines imitate humans more and more. As people learn that new technologies will bring realistic and identity threats to human beings, they could find some specific and efficient ways to reduce the risk of these threats. 

As the technology develops, one of the realistic threats human are facing right now is that new technology is stealing people’s jobs. When people go into a manufacturing factory, it is easy to find that there are lots of machines working instead of people. As more and more robots, automation, and software are put into use in a lot of fields, a lot of people who have traditional occupations like teachers, drivers, travel agents, interpreters and a slew of other occupations, are facing the biggest career challenge ever. According to the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 1980 to 2014, workers’ shares of output dropped from nearly 58% to just over 52%. This data also makes a lot of people believe that the importance of labor is slowly decreasing (Jones). It seems that the technology is going to replace humans in a lot of working fields in the future, and human are already in a very serious situation. However, is this situation really as tense as people imagine? The answer is no. In a recent study by Dr. Michael Jones, an assistant professor in economics at the University of Cincinnati, Jones argues that even though the data shows that the net labor share in the United States has decreased over time, the most recent data in 2008 shows that the share was the same as it was in 1975, when technology did not take a large part in a lot of output (Jones). This means new technology is not the major reason for the decreasing of the net labor share. Dr. Jones also pointed out the major reason for the decrease of net labor share is the change in production taxes, rather than the use of technologies (Jones). The change in production taxes confusing people, make people think that is because new technology a lot of people lost their job. However, the result is not that. Not only is new technology not the major reason for the decrease of net labor share, but also new technology is creating more jobs. An article by Ben Dickson, claims that the development for new technology is fast; in the process of this development, new technology will create more jobs in the tech field and increase the demand of tech talents. Meanwhile, technology and humans are complements. Human have limits in some areas, as do machines. We should find a balance between humans and technology, and make humans and technology help each other. This is the most important topic for scientists and engineers to research. 

Another realistic threat humans are facing right now is that the new technology threatens people’s safety, and  one of the biggest threats people are facing in recent days is that new technology is compromising people’s information safety. As the Internet is used more and more widely in people’s daily lives, people put more and more information about themselves online, like information about their credit cards, addresses, and other private information. People cannot avoid some hackers, not only humans, but also some programs. They obtain ones’ information and use this information to commit crimes and threaten people’s safety. However, we already found a lot of ways to solve this problem. The article in The Guardian gives people some solutions and advice for them to solve this problem. In the article, the author John Naughton suggests the crowd several ways to keeping their information safe. The article told people that they should pay attention to the things they casually use, like email, web browsing, wireless services, and seven other tools people use every day. (Naughton) So, these tools contains a lot of important and private information about oneself. He also gives some specific solutions to solve these threats. By doing what he suggests in this article, we could ensure the safety of our information. Not only are people fighting for their information safety, but also a lot of programmers are also fighting with people. More and more powerful secure firewalls and anti-virus soft wares are designed to guarantee the safety of people’s information. With the effort of personal safety and programmers, people’s information will be safer in the future. 

In the future, with further evolution of technology, we are going to face more identity threats. One of the identity threats we are going to face is that technology will influence people’s values. As the technology develops fast, it can do more and more human jobs and in an article by Douglas Schmidt, the Associate Chair of Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, it is claimed that humans are that losing the value of human, as the new technology develops, because the new technology is doing more and more things, like calculating, working and thinking for humans (Schmidt). Meanwhile, this technology will never feel tired or get sick.  With its fast pace of evolution and fast computing power, technology is going to be more powerful and stronger in the future. Some advanced technology has already challenged human values and ability. For example, Alpha Go, the artificial intelligence board game program, defeated the No.1 human chess player, Ke jie, this summer. Due to the quick calculating speed, humans rely heavily on new technology like computers, Internet and so on. However, at the same time, this new technology is also destroying the value of humans. But in an article by Zeynep Tufekci, a techno-sociologist who primarily writes about the effect of technology on politics and society, it is related that “The problem is not us versus the machines, but between us, as humans, and how we value one another” (Tufekci). It is true that technology has a lot of advantages which humans don’t have, and a lot of abilities which are very difficult for humans to reach. But humans still have a lot of things which these machines and technology don’t have. When Ke jie finished the competition with Alpha Go, he said that even though he lost this competition, he does not admire Alpha Go, because Alpha Go never enjoyed the interest of the game. As humans, even people have a lot of shortcomings and they are not perfect, but they still have a lot of features which technology does not have. To defeat technology and to not let technology replace humans, people need to learn to value themselves, and value each other. If everyone could find the value of each other and themselves, they would be very hard replace because they are unique. 

The identity threats we are facing not only include the threats to people’s values, but also include the threats to people’s distinctiveness. A lot of scientists in the United States, Japan, Germany, and many other countries devoted themselves to researching simulation robots. Some of these scientists have already made big breakthroughs in this field, some very realistic robots have already been produced. In the future, with the development of technology, more simulation robots, even super emulation robots, will be produced. If in one day, the robot can look and act exactly as a real man, the human is going to lose its distinctiveness from technology. However, even though these robots are very realistic, they are still different than real people; the technology still has some shortcomings and cannot replace humans completely.  Recently, BBC made an analysis according to the work of Cambridge University’s researchers, Michael Osborne and Carl Frey. They analyzed the probability that 365 kinds of occupations will be replaced in the future. According to this research, people can find that the probability that artists and some creative industries will be replaced by machines is very low (Stylianou), which means that machines are not good at creative tasks that humans are experts in. Real people think with their brains, and these robots think through programs. Brains can be very creative, but the programs cannot. The real human can be very creative and create different things to make this world more interesting. However, the robots can only think through the program. they can only do what the program tells them to do. In other words, the robots do not have their own lives. They cannot completely enjoy life as real humans can. This small difference makes the robots look different from the real humans. Even simulation robots and super emulation robots can be like humans very much. However, they cannot be real humans, and this point helps assure the distinctiveness of humans. When humans research the simulation robots, we still need to know that humans need distinctiveness and we should always remember this point during our research and invention. 

Above all, the development of technology is so fast and has brought people a lot of benefits in their lives. However, it is necessary for all humans to notice that technology can also bring people a lot of threats, and people need to find some solutions to mitigate the crisis that technology will bring to us in the future. The new technologies will pose two threats to all human beings, one of them is realistic threats, and another one is identity threats. For realistic threats, new technology is going to decrease the amount of jobs, and threaten people’s information safety. However, technology is not the major reason for the decreasing of the workers’ share of output and it is very important for us to find a balance between humans and technology. For the information threats, people could do something to keep our information safe, and there are also a lot of programmers fighting with one to guarantee the safety of people’s information. For identity threats, new technology is going to threaten human value and distinctiveness. If human could realize the value of humans and the value of one another and could cherish the value of each other, the threats of technologies will not be that scary. No matter how realistic a robot can be, it is still a robot. They think through programs rather than their own mind. They will never enjoy the real emotions, and because of this they already lose to humans. It seems scary that new technology is getting more and more powerful and stronger, but if people could notice this phenomenon and find some solutions as soon as possible, these questions and threats can be solved and the future would not be as terrible as some people anticipate it being. As we notice the threats of new technologies sooner, we could find more effective solutions quicker and the threats of new technology will weaker. The battle between technology and humans had already began, the humans need to work together to defeat the technology. 
