Top Highlights

• burned down, swaths of classical learning lost forever. But eventually the wisdom of antiquity was rediscovered and revalued. Aided by a lack of modern communications tools, China kept the secret of silk making under wraps for centuries, but it got out in the end thanks to two determined Nestorian monks in 552 CE. Technologies are ideas, and ideas ...
• The coming wave is defined by two core technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. Together they will usher in a new dawn for humanity, creating wealth and surplus unlike anything ever seen.
• AI has been climbing the ladder of cognitive abilities for decades, and it now looks set to reach human-level performance across a very wide range of tasks within the next three years.
• AI is everywhere, on the news and in your smartphone, trading stocks and building websites. Many of the world’s largest companies and wealthiest nations barrel forward, developing cutting-edge AI models and genetic engineering techniques, fueled by tens of billions of dollars in investment.
• They open pathways to immense AI-empowered cyberattacks, automated wars that could devastate countries, engineered pandemics, and a world subject to unexplainable and yet seemingly omnipotent forces.