The co-founder of DeepMind issues a terrifying warning about AI and synthetic biology – but how seriously should we take it?
On 22 February1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat stationed in Moscow, dictated a 5,000-word cable to Washington. In this famous telegram, Kennan warned that the Soviet Union’s commitment to communism meant that it was inherently expansionist, and urged the US government to resist any attempts by the Soviets to increase their influence. This strategy quickly became known as “containment” – and defined American foreign policy for the next 40 years.
The Coming Wave is Suleyman’s book-length warning about technological expansionism: in close to 300 pages, he sets out to persuade readers that artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology (SB) threaten our very existence and we only have a narrow window within which to contain them before it’s too late. Unlike communism during the cold war, however, AI and SB are not being forced on us. We willingly adopt them because they not only promise unprecedented wealth, but solutions to our most intractable problems – climate change, cancer, possibly even mortality. Suleyman sees the appeal, of course, claiming that these technologies will “usher in a new dawn for humanity”.
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