The Coming Wave - Mustafa Suleyman & Michael Bhaskar  ## Metadata - Author: **Mustafa Suleyman & Michael Bhaskar** - Full Title: The Coming Wave - Category: #articles - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/fd/90486973 ## Highlights - never be guaranteed. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph so peo- ple could record their thoughts for posterity and to help the blind. He was horrified when most people just wanted to play music. Alfred Nobel intended his explosives to be used only in mining and railway construction. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadg0dfgw40nj3dp6f91y108)) - Gutenberg just wanted to make money printing Bibles. Yet his press catalyzed the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation, and so be- came the greatest threat to the Catholic Church since its establishment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadg0x6sfkbj8dzpf60kswf5)) - Fridge makers didn’t aim to create a hole in the ozone layer with chlo- rofluorocarbons (CFCs), just as the creators of the internal combus- tion and jet engines had no thought of melting the ice caps. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadg1aj1433p3z78c0vh3b99)) - Think of the way that prescription opioids have created dependence, or how the overuse of antibiotics renders them less effective, or how the proliferation of satellites and debris known as “space junk” imperils spaceflight. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadg2p5435fwmyzs7m78z5n8)) - Technology’s problem here is a containment problem. If this aspect cannot be eliminated, it might be curtailed. Containment is the over- arching ability to control, limit, and, if need be, close down technolo- gies at any stage of their development or deployment. It means, in some circumstances, the ability to stop a technology from proliferat- ing in the first place, checking the ripple of unintended consequences (both good and bad). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadg59hzx15bkzsxgs2fd9jh)) - Containment shouldn’t be seen as the final answer to all technology’s problems; it is rather the first, critical step, a foundation on which the future is built. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadg9dar8wy6nwgdtrhdqpgj)) - Technical containment refers to what happens in a lab or an R&D facility. In AI, for example, it means air gaps, sandboxes, simulations, off switches, hard built- in safety and security measures— protocols for verifying the safety or integrity or uncompromised nature of a system and taking it offline if needed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadgcskwwk6pvgenqt13z0gb)) - They illustrate a key truth about Homo technologicus in the twenty- first century. For most of history, the challenge of technology lay in creating and unleashing its power. That has now flipped: the challenge of technology today is about containing its unleashed power, ensuring it continues to serve us and our planet. That challenge is about to decisively escalate. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hadgebfjy51aqgvjb4tpt045))