Academician Ioan Dumitrache: "Humanity creates its own pitfall"

Technology can be a very good friend to humanity, but it can easily turn into an adversary. Academician Ioan Dumitrache has raised an alarm about the danger of human extinction due to the rapid development of technology and advanced systems. He has called for responsibility in scientific research. According to the academician, "The evolution of scientific research and technology cannot be stopped, so people will seek to research. The warning we need to sound - and this is the reason for the title of this conference - is that we must be careful not to lead to the extinction of humanity. (...) So, be careful that through technology and the systems we ask to be as efficient as possible, we do not gradually eliminate humans from the system. This way, we find ourselves in a completely paradoxical situation: humanity creates its own pitfall. I have this fear that technologists will be preoccupied, and businessmen will have an interest in developing such artifacts that make their lives easier, without realizing the impact it could have on humans." In a series of public events organized monthly by the Cultural Foundation of Dalles of the Romanian Academy, Academician Ioan Dumitrache, Secretary-General of the Romanian Academy and coordinator of the National Center for Brain Research, presented a conference last week titled "Man and the Super-Technologized Society." The academician discussed various aspects related to human evolution, information technology, the relationship between artificial intelligence and humans, collaboration between humans and machines, machine-to-machine interaction, and machine learning. He emphasized the need to analyze the quality of human life, stimulated by the presence of robots as human assistants while continually stressing the importance of not putting humans at risk. Ioan Dumitrache also stated, "We still have many years ahead of us to understand the brain in a way that we can compare it with artificial intelligence. These are simple things that we do. The human brain is much more complex, much more difficult to understand, although, as you know, there are many major projects globally. But to say that we have managed to understand the human brain and have simulated it is a completely different matter. There is much work to be done in this direction." Ioan Dumitrache argued that the evolution of humans as intelligent beings, considering the capabilities for knowledge development, self-improvement, and the practical application of theories in science and technology, highlights the complexity and challenges of the final stages of the industrial revolution in a hyperconnected society. In this context, he mentioned job vulnerability, the relationship between humans and robots, and the lack of education adapted to future transformations in the global societal system. A graduate of the Faculty of Energetics at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Ioan Dumitrache became a lecturer immediately after completing his degree in the Department of Automation. In 1970, he earned a Ph.D. in Automation with a thesis on "Contributions to the Synthesis of Fluidic Numerical Systems and Circuits." He has been a university professor since 1982 and a Ph.D. supervisor in the field of Automatic Systems at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest since 1987. In 2017, he was elected as a full member of the Romanian Academy (corresponding member in 2003). He has authored more than 40 books and monographs in various engineering fields, including intelligent robot control, numerical control of processes, process optimization, automatic control engineering, electronic automation, and intelligent control systems. He has also published over 300 scientific papers.