Hey readers,
I've long been worried about the danger that new biotechnologies could make it easier for someone to purposefully create a deadly pathogen and then unleash it upon the world. Our roundup from the internet this week includes a sobering Q&A on that topic, as well as stories about the mysteries of quantum computing, the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, and a playbook for understanding why advanced AI might see humans as an obstacle to be removed. Enjoy!
—Kelsey Piper
How to prevent the next pandemic [Asterisk]
One of the most fascinating interviews I've read this year was in Asterisk, a new effective altruism-inspired magazine (digital and physical) whose inaugural issue happens to include a great piece by Future Perfect's own Kelsey Piper. But the article in question features an interview with Kevin Esvelt, a biologist and bioterrorism expert. With clear and incisive answers, Esvelt explains how the next pandemic could come about through mere accident or sinister intention — how someone with the right expertise and resources could unleash something much worse than Covid-19 upon the world (think cult member and graduate-level virologist Seiichi Endo, who helped orchestrate the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995). Esvelt also provides wonky, concrete actions governments can take to prevent the next pandemic and answers a simple question I've been pondering since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2: Why aren't there more pandemics?
—Kenny Torrella
The world-changing race to develop the quantum computer [The New Yorker]
As someone who occasionally tries to write about quantum computing, I can tell you there's nothing more difficult to write about than ... quantum computing. Take classical computing — which is far from simple to understand on its own — and then add in the esoteric theories of quantum physics, and you end up with something like Einstein squared. But as this blessedly clear piece by Stephen Witt demonstrates, a workable quantum computer would be world-changing, resetting the boundaries of what computers can do, and with it, the frontiers of our future.
—Bryan Walsh
Why would AI "aim" to defeat humanity? [Cold Takes]
One of the most common forms of skepticism I hear from folks when I express my fears about advanced AI being a threat to human survival is skepticism about motives. AIs are just tools, after all. Why would they want to hurt humans? The sci-fi writer Ted Chiang memorably argued that this was mere projection: it's what Silicon Valley types would do as AIs because it's what they do to others now.
Holden Karnofsky, co-CEO of the grantmaker Open Philanthropy and a very vocal AI safety advocate, makes the clearest response to this objection I've seen yet. The key is that AIs will not, ultimately, want to kill us, but in pursuing their actual ultimate goals, they'll formulate a number of intermediate goals, many of which could be harmful to humans.
This isn't hard to imagine if you just think about humans, Karnofsky notes: "An AI developer named Natural Selection tried giving humans positive reinforcement (making more of them) when they had more reproductive success, and negative reinforcement (not making more of them) when they had less. One might have thought this would lead to humans that are aiming to have reproductive success. Instead, it led to humans that aim — often ambitiously and creatively — for other things, such as power, status, pleasure, etc., and even invent things like birth control to get the things they're aiming for instead of the things they were 'supposed to' aim for."
—Dylan Matthews
Why does Africa import a lot of food? [BBC's The Food Chain]
In this podcast interview, the BBC's Ruth Alexander speaks to two African women, Monica Musonda of Zambia and Yvette Ansah of Ghana, who are adjusting the way their businesses work due to inflation and increasing prices of imported goods. Ansah, who owns two restaurants, has had to take things off the menu, reduce portions, and switch to local goods to offset high costs to her customers. Musonda notes that Zambia is actually self-sufficient in wheat, which she uses for her noodle company, but rising input costs have raised wheat prices by 30 percent in the past year.
High inflation has greatly affected the African continent. Zimbabwe, which has long been experiencing hyperinflation, is topping global inflation rates at 269 percent. Ghana is at 40 percent, and Zambia is at 10. Raw materials are often exported out of the continent, processed elsewhere, and then imported back to African countries, explains Nkechi Onyinyechi Ogbonna, a BBC business correspondent based in Nigeria. The effects are profound: Children's cereal, for example, is no longer an affordable option for breakfast in some households, Ogbonna reports.
There's hope that things like the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which aims to mitigate barriers to trade among African countries, will help the continent look inward to developing more production infrastructure.
—Julieta Cardenas
Why the age of American progress ended [The Atlantic]
It's tempting to think of progress as the accumulation of breakthrough discoveries. But these "eureka moments," the Atlantic's Derek Thompson writes, "are typically incomplete, expensive, and unreliable." Tracing the story of the smallpox vaccine from discovery through to the disease's eradication, for example, Thompson argues that "implementation, not mere invention, determines the pace of progress — a lesson the U.S. has failed to heed for the past several generations." Indeed, the US often lags behind other countries on implementing the very technologies it invents, from nuclear reactors to solar cells. Discoveries make progress possible, but without a focus on deployment — and all the messy bureaucratic, political, and cultural challenges that entails — progress merely flickers, until the light dims for good (or someone else builds a better bulb).
—Oshan Jarow
10 years after Sandy Hook, Moms Demand Action volunteers are turning activism into political power [The 19th]
This week marked the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting that killed six adults and 20 children. In the decade since that tragedy, activists, politicians, and researchers remain divided over what policies to prioritize in the fight to end American gun violence.
On one hand, gun-reform laws, though polarizing, appear to be a straightforward path to addressing the crisis. In this piece, reporter Mel Leonor Barclay writes about how Moms Demand Action, an anti-gun-violence organization, turned "activism into political power" through its support of policies like universal background checks and "red flag" laws. On the other hand, while gun reform policies are important, Jennifer Doleac, an associate professor of economics at Texas A&M University, told Vox's Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg that "our attention and time and energy could be better spent" on alternatives. Doleac believes youth summer job programs, curfews, and mental health care access, among other policies that have better political prospects than gun reform, should be prioritized.
"It's very likely that changes in gun laws are correlated with changes in other things, like preferences, sentiment, or other local priorities that themselves could lead to changes in gun violence," said Doleac, one of those featured in this year's Future Perfect 50.
—Rachel DuRose
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