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Superconvergence
Book

Superconvergence

How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World

Jamie Metzl
Hachette Book Group USA, 2024
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Scientific
  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

Recommendation

As advances in biotechnology, genetics, and AI endow humanity with unprecedented powers, humans must embrace the responsibility, as well, to safeguard the good of people and the planet. Futurist and biotech expert Jamie Metzl offers a deep dive into the ways health care, industries, and private life could look radically different in the future, and the threats new technologies could pose. He balances hope with a healthy concern for the potential risks of new powers becoming increasingly democratized and decentralized, and calls on readers to work together to build a future that promotes the good of all.

Summary

Advances in AI, genetics, and biotechnology are giving humanity “godlike” powers.

A new epoch began in Earth’s history 530 million years ago, when the emergence of new types of bacteria boosted the atmospheric availability of oxygen and triggered the evolution of complex new forms of life. Today, humanity again stands on the cusp of a new epoch, but this time humans are driving the change: Advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence — which may one day evolve into “machine superintelligence” — could radically transform the relationship between humans and the biological world. At the same time, developments in biological engineering and genome editing are already endowing humans with the power to create new life forms and soon, perhaps, life itself.

Scientists have already made headway in synthesizing life: In November 2023, researchers collaborating across universities announced that they’d synthesized 16 chromosomes found in baker’s yeast and successfully inserted these genes into living cells, which then replicated. Scientists have also been working to create new amino acid sequences and implant them into cells, which then would...

About the Author

Futurist Jamie Metzl is founder and chair of OneShared.World, a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert. He has served in the US National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a human rights officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. In 2019, he sat on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing. His books include the best-selling Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity and two thrillers set in the near future.

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