The Coming Wave Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma

The widespread emotional reaction I was observing is something I've come to call 'the pessimism aversion trap'

Containment is not possible

The coming wave represents the greatest economic prize in history

AI is more autonomous than any other technology in history

Containment must be possible

He has a new book out called The Coming Wave, Technology, Power and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma.

And that's in your book, The Coming Wave.

I hope everyone reads The Coming Wave.

In your new book, The Coming Wave, you explore the next wave of technology that you believe will alter our conception of intelligence and life.

These two new technologies that is synthetic biology, the ability to engineer new synthetic compounds or life itself and artificial intelligence, the ability to engineer software systems that can learn their own strategies to perform well at new types of prediction problems.

And so my book is really trying to predict what that might look like over a five, 10 and 20 year period and then what we might do about it.

His new book, The Coming Wave Technology Power in the 21st Century is Greatest Dilemmas out now.

And I read your book, The Coming Wave.

When I was writing my book, I read about this amazing story of the first passenger railway train that took a trip in Liverpool in 1830.

And he's like one of the top guys who's written a book on the dangers of AI.

I have to say your book really puts AI into I hate saying things like this puts it into perspective, but it really does put it AI into a unique perspective because it's clearly not a book where someone who wants to be relevant is like let me throw some buzzwords. AI is really trending right now. Let's do something on that you've really been immersed in this field and the repercussions of what this is going to bring to us on a global level and a super deep way.

I mean, it's been almost 15 years in the field now thinking about the consequences of AI and trying to build it so that it delivers on the upsides and it's just a surreal time to be alive.

I think it's particularly an issue in the US where there's such a desire to believe that the future is going to be better and the kind of bias towards optimism that I think it leads people to just be afraid of potentially talking about dark outcomes like we have to talk about the potential ways in which things can go wrong so that we can proactively manage them and so we can actually start putting in place checks and balances and limits and not just have a bias towards optimism that leads to us missing the boat when it comes to the consequences that affect everybody.

You've coined this term ACI as separate from AGI tell me a little bit more about that and what maybe the none of his right term road map for that is and what this looks like over the next five years or so.

I proposed that a measure of an ACI an artificial capable intelligence would be one that could go off and make a million dollars with a hundred thousand dollar investment by creating a new product promoting it online creating a website for it marketing it getting it manufactured getting it drop shipped etc etc that to me seems very doable with the next three to five years and I think that would be a much more sort of profound test a modern cheering test if you like though it actually tell us something material about what it means for labor and at the economy.

Because in your book, The Coming Wave, and in a piece you wrote about the same time for Foreign Affairs, you were quite clear on how much governance was needed.

In your book, The Coming Wave, and in a piece you wrote about the same time for Foreign Affairs, you were quite clear on how much governance was needed. In fact, you said like you wanted three different kinds of governance regimes modelled on climate change and financial stability and arms control.

there are many books, including The Coming Wave, that really talk about the risks of AI that's unbounded.