2026-05-12
20 分钟The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Rosie Blau.
Today on the show, are there any safe assets left to invest in?
And why German bread is on a roll.
But first...
In recent decades, the list of existential anxieties has only mounted.
War, nuclear war, climate change.
Well, don't expect any reassurance from me.
Now with the rise of artificial intelligence, another potentially civilization-ending threat is gaining momentum.
For the past few decades, governments have worried that thanks to advances in synthetic biology,
it is easier than ever to develop biological weapons.
Arthur Holland Michel writes about emerging technologies.
Now AI is making it even easier.
Arthur, you're predicting the end of humanity here.
How might that happen?
AI has become exceptionally good at doing biology.
Leading language models have surpassed human virologists on things like bioinformatics and troubleshooting complex experiments.
The worry is these same capabilities could enable novices to access a level of capability
that previously only existed in the hands of a very small number of governments.