How Do We Stop Cutting-Edge Technology Falling Into the Wrong Hands?
Technology offers gigantic upsides — diagnosing cancer, catching serial killers — but algorithms designed for one purpose can be easily used for a sinister one
By Hannah Fry
As the Americans were flying over Hiroshima in the summer of 1945, Otto Hahn, the German scientist who first discovered that you could split a uranium atom in two, was being held captive in an English country estate by British forces.
As news of the bomb filtered through, the Brits surreptitiously recorded their prisoner’s reaction, catching on tape the moment that Hahn realised his work had been appropriated by the enemy and used in the most terrible show of force imaginable.
Hahn was shattered by the news. He confessed that when he first realised the potential of his discovery he had contemplated suicide. Now, witnessing the moment that his work had made the efficient annihilation of hundreds of thousands of people possible, he felt personally responsible.
There haven’t been many scientific discoveries in the intervening decades with the potential for such catastrophic consequences, but when I came first came across the transcripts of Hahn learning…
