Abstract
Bill Joyâs deep pessimism is now famous. Why the Future Doesnât Need Us, his defense of that pessimism, has been read by, it seems, everyoneâand many of these readers, apparently, have been converted to the dark side, or rather more accurately, to the future-is-dark side. Fortunately (for us; unfortunately for Joy), the defense, at least the part of it that pertains to AI and robotics, fails. Ours may be a dark future, but we cannot know that on the basis of Joyâs reasoning. On the other hand, we ought to fear a good deal more than fear itself: we ought to fear not robots, but what some of us may do with robots