The Coming Wave.

Blue Bots.

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1. Wired magazine Q&A with Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of DeepMind and Inflection AI:

Wired Q: You're working on Inflection in the very near term of artificial intelligence, but you've got this book coming out, that starts out by talking about that near-term future of AI and ends up predicting the possible collapse of the nation-state. Do you want to give us a summary of the argument?

Mustafa Suleyman: With the wave of AI, the scale of these models has grown by an order of magnitude that is 10X every single year for the last 10 years. And we're on a trajectory over the next five years to increase by 10X every year going forward, and that's very, very predictable and very likely to happen.

Wired Q: And the premise of your book is that we're not ready for this?

Mustafa Suleyman: We are absolutely not ready, because that kind of power gets smaller and more efficient, and anytime something is useful in the history of invention, it tends to get cheaper, it tends to get smaller, and therefore it proliferates. So the story of the next decade is one of proliferation of power, which is what I think is gonna cause a genuine threat to the nation-state, unlike any we've seen since the nation-state was born. (Sources: mustafa-suleyman.ai, deepmind.com, inflection.ai, wired.com. Mr. Suleyman’s book on AI, The Coming Wave, will be released on September 5th)

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2. A Defense Department review of biological threats released yesterday said the U.S. military is at a “pivotal moment” in biodefense and must act urgently to address the potential of bioweapons and other catastrophic events, including pandemics. In particular, the review highlighted a growing threat posed by China as well as acute dangers emanating from Russia and persistent threats from North Korea, Iran and violent extremist organizations. The posture review — designed to set the tone for Defense Department strategy on biodefense through 2035 — singles out China as the key long-term threat, casting doubt on Beijing’s compliance with existing international rules on biowarfare and raising concerns over its accelerated plans to integrate civilian biological research programs into the military. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

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