If you are already suffering from FOBO (Fear of Becoming Obsolete), do not read this book. If you read it, you’ll want to sell everything you have, join some crazy sect, live in the desert and live off photosynthesis. After all, according to Mustafa Suleyman, there is no way around it: THE NEXT WAVE is coming, and if nothing is done to contain it, it will take away all jobs, borders, and bring (even more) misinformation, cyber-attacksdiseases created in laboratories (did anyone think Covid?) and changes in all spheres of our lives.
If you’re not that pessimistic, it’s worth checking out the book. Not that he’s exactly optimistic; at several points it is even contradictory, but because it brings some proposals on how to contain this wave, slow down this development so that the benefits outweigh the risks.
According to the author, if there is demand, all technology becomes cheaper and easier to use over time, and thus proliferates. And without a doubt, from fire to writing, from agriculture to the combustion engine, from the press to the internet, the quality of human life has improved over time. Why then is this next wave so much more dangerous?
The book has 300 pages of reasons (ouch!) but I would summarize them in three:
- AIs work with neural networks (like a human brain) and machine learning: With enough data, it teaches itself how to perform tasks. How exactly? We do not know. And this is a great paradox: these are technologies that we don’t understand, but that we are capable of using. More than that: whoever invents it soon loses control over its impact. And democratizing access implies increasing the risk not only of technology getting into the wrong hands, but of unexpected consequences even for those who had good intentions;
- With AI also comes the wave of synthetic biology: the ability to read, create and edit genetic code. We will be able to eradicate diseases and prolong life; but we have already learned from history the terrors where this can lead when in the hands of the wrong person. And everything indicates that, in a few years, if nothing is done, not much more than a home laboratory will be needed to create a genetically modified being;
- Now add quantum computing to the equation: a technology capable of processing even more data, at an even greater speed? Quantum computing is still expensive and only accessible to large private companies. But does this mean that we will have power even more concentrated in the hands of a few private companies? With greater reach and power than governments? And, perhaps worse, if this power and control is solely in the hands of governments? The risk of us living in some reality even more dystopian than Orwell or Huxley imagined.
It’s all a bit scary, right? For these reasons, Suleyman says it is necessary to contain these technologies. Control, limit, and in some cases, even stop development. What calms the heart? It brings ten solutions on how to achieve this containment, from legislation to bottleneck management, all intertwined. What gives you butterflies in your stomach? How complex they are. And the fact that he goes off on a tangent and does not address some definitions that were perhaps fundamental in relation to what is moral, ethical and “aligned with our values”.
The book is excellent, not only for laypeople on the subject, but for anyone who wants to know more so they can discuss, with data and critical thinking, what is coming. It’s worth reading, if only to avoid suffering FOBO during conversations.
* This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the vehicle
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