Friends Today, Foe Tomorrow: 10 Technological Threats To Human Life

Technology has a tendency of captivating us, and exciting us, but also possibly destroying us, too. Most tech claims to make our lives easier and make the world a better place, but could there be some that pose a bigger threat than we thought possible? Here is 10 future tech that could possibly kill us.

1. Lasers
The gap between what lasers can actually do in real life and what they do in films is quite huge. This gap is poised to become smaller now, with the US Navy deploying laser weapons aboard the USS Ponce. These laser systems will be used initially for the destruction of drones, but who knows what the future might hold?

2. Drones
Drones are quite a reality in today’s day and age (Gaza, anyone?), and have been flying and fighting for years now. It has been close to a decade that the US drones have been attacking targets in Pakistan, resulting in an estimated death toll of between 1,969 and 3,461. Drones are, currently, being used for law enforcement, with Vanguard's Shadowhawk, which is fitted with automatic shotguns, tasers and grenade launchers. Could it just be a matter of time that it gets into the wrong hands?

3. Driverless cars
While the term ‘driverless cars’ may conjure up images of car crashes of an abysmal nature, these automated machines seem to be quite a reality. They are being poised at being not only safer but also more environmentally friendly than human-controlled ones. Most people have genuine concerns about driverless cars. It is hard to imagine a robotic car give someone right of way, use a turn signal, or shoot red lights.

4. Geoengineering
Initially geoengineering was considered to be a weapon of war, but now it is being used as a possible cure for climate change. It is being assumed that certain geoengineering techniques such as disposing things into the ocean in huge proportions, covering large areas with mirrors, or filling the atmosphere with chemicals might change the weather to cause more drought and floods, may damage wildlife and generally cause more devastation.

5. 3D printers
3D printers aren’t just great additions to workspaces, but will probably be used to make the very first ‘Wiki Weapon’ in the world. The Wiki Weapon is a fully functional, 3D-printed gun which almost every citizen might have access to. If this doesn’t make you shudder, we don’t know what will.

6. Robot doctors
Robotics in the healthcare field are quite a reality today, with them assisting human doctors on complex surgeries. The 2,500 units of the Da Vinci robot surgeon which is operating worldwide perform over 200,000 procedures every year. These robotic surgeons tend to offer additional accuracy, and have smaller margins or error. While systems such as the Da Vinci aren't fully autonomous, the eventual goal is that exactly. The Watson by IBM is being trained to identify symptoms and offer diagnoses. While the margin for error may be low, could this accuracy truly replace the human, compassionate element that only a human doctor can bring to the table?

7. Nanobots
Nanobots have been wrecking theoretical havoc since the 80s and 90s, when there was a fear that the self-replicating nanobots, which were built to clean up oil spills, started to consume all carbon-based life forms due to errors in their programming. This idea, that self-replicating microscopic organisms may lead to the end of the world as we know it was called grey goo. Today however, the risks that nanobots pose aren’t related to the Apocalypse, but to those they pose to human life. For instance, cadmium selenide “quantum dots”, which are used to detect diseases, have also been known to be the possible cause of cadmium poisoning.

8. Artificial Intelligence
If you have seen Terminator, you know what artificial intelligence is. There will come a time when artificial intelligence may become smarter than humans, and when that happens, the plot of Terminator will play out, according to certain futurists. In the film, the artificial intelligence unit at Skynet decided to eradicate human life-forms as they were destroying the planet. In reality, futurists claim that machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence by the year 2045. Let’s hope John Conner comes to our rescue.

9. Cyber-attacks
With the arrival of Stuxnet, traditional malware took on a whole new form. Stuxnet was a worm that targeted specific machines in the nuclear facilities of Iran. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, which are used for tons of different purposes like monitoring oil and gas pipelines, controlling electricity substations, controlling traffic lights and monitoring water supplies were targeted by Stuxnet. This points to the fact that more advanced Stuxnet system could pose a threat to other SCADA system as well.

10. Google Glass
If a driverless car doesn’t wham into your, the head-mounted goggles from Google possibly will. As soon as Google opens Glass up to advertising, you can be sure to be spammed by unscrupulous marketers who will bring out the big guns and try everything in the book to make sure your attention is on them. This might go from the point of being mildly irritating when you’re catching up on world news, to being potentially life-threatening if you are driving or operating heavy machinery.
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