LEVER

Every once in a while, humanity discovers a new fulcrum.

The wheel was a fulcrum. On it rested the first levers of civilization: commerce, agriculture, and primitive industry.

The printing press was a fulcrum. A single idea could be multiplied many times over and become a steering force for the world.

The steam engine was a fulcrum. Its levers were railroads and steamboats and all manner of industrial machinery. Thus the industrial revolution; and for the first time in human history, part of the masses were lifted out of our short, brutish lives into a manufactured dignity.

Then everything, all at once. Electricity. Radio. Airplanes. Transistors.

With the Internet, we saw a fulcrum that enabled different types of levers. A hammer is a lever that can be used to build … or destroy. Some levers need to be used responsibly.

Now we stand upon a new fulcrum: Machine Intelligence. Will it build? Or will it destroy? And if it is to build, we must find the levers to rest upon it with which we can move the world.