full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Rob Reid: How synthetic biology could wipe out humanity -- and how we can stop it

Unscramble the Blue Letters


The number of people with actual ddosomay buttons has stayed fairly salbte since then. But I'm afraid it's about to grow, and not just to three. This is going off the charts. I mean, it's going to look like a tech buessins plan.

(Laughter)

And the reason is, we're in the era of exponential technologies, which routinely take eternal impossibilities and make them the actual superpowers of one or two lnivig geniuses and — this is the big part — then diffuse those powers to more or less everybody.

Now, here's a benign example. If you wnetad to play checkers with a computer in 1952, you literally had to be that guy, then commandeer one of the world's 19 copies of that computer, then used your Nobel-adjacent brian to teach it checkers. That was the bar. Today, you just need to know someone who knows someone who owns a teplhnoee, because computing is an exponential technology.

Open Cloze


The number of people with actual ________ buttons has stayed fairly ______ since then. But I'm afraid it's about to grow, and not just to three. This is going off the charts. I mean, it's going to look like a tech ________ plan.

(Laughter)

And the reason is, we're in the era of exponential technologies, which routinely take eternal impossibilities and make them the actual superpowers of one or two ______ geniuses and — this is the big part — then diffuse those powers to more or less everybody.

Now, here's a benign example. If you ______ to play checkers with a computer in 1952, you literally had to be that guy, then commandeer one of the world's 19 copies of that computer, then used your Nobel-adjacent _____ to teach it checkers. That was the bar. Today, you just need to know someone who knows someone who owns a _________, because computing is an exponential technology.

Solution


  1. living
  2. doomsday
  3. wanted
  4. business
  5. stable
  6. telephone
  7. brain

Original Text


The number of people with actual doomsday buttons has stayed fairly stable since then. But I'm afraid it's about to grow, and not just to three. This is going off the charts. I mean, it's going to look like a tech business plan.

(Laughter)

And the reason is, we're in the era of exponential technologies, which routinely take eternal impossibilities and make them the actual superpowers of one or two living geniuses and — this is the big part — then diffuse those powers to more or less everybody.

Now, here's a benign example. If you wanted to play checkers with a computer in 1952, you literally had to be that guy, then commandeer one of the world's 19 copies of that computer, then used your Nobel-adjacent brain to teach it checkers. That was the bar. Today, you just need to know someone who knows someone who owns a telephone, because computing is an exponential technology.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
suicidal mass 3
vegas shooter 2
mass murder 2
tiny group 2
gene editing 2
al capone 2
ghost stories 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
suicidal mass murder 2

Important Words


  1. actual
  2. afraid
  3. bar
  4. benign
  5. big
  6. brain
  7. business
  8. buttons
  9. charts
  10. checkers
  11. commandeer
  12. computer
  13. computing
  14. copies
  15. diffuse
  16. doomsday
  17. era
  18. eternal
  19. exponential
  20. geniuses
  21. grow
  22. guy
  23. impossibilities
  24. laughter
  25. literally
  26. living
  27. number
  28. owns
  29. part
  30. people
  31. plan
  32. play
  33. powers
  34. reason
  35. routinely
  36. stable
  37. stayed
  38. superpowers
  39. teach
  40. tech
  41. technologies
  42. technology
  43. telephone
  44. today
  45. wanted