As I read this WSJ piece (“The Hard-line Activists Ramping Up for the War With AI”) my mind kept drifting back to long-ago controversies during the early years of the biotech industry in Boston. Sure enough, I found this Harvard Crimson piece on initial activist fears of Recombinant DNA research, as summed up by a 1976 headline in the Boston Phoenix: “BIOHAZARDS AT HARVARD.” … Well, as we now know, those and related fears were more than a little overwrought, considering all the medical advances produced by biotech firms over the past half century and all the jobs and companies biotech has produced since the controversies of the ‘70s.

Then again, the subtitle of that Phoenix headline reads, as the Crimson article notes: “Scientists are on the brink of undertaking revolutionary genetic research which creates new life forms …” Hmmm. I suppose “mirror technology” and genetically altered human babies kind of fall into that new-life-forms-concern category, right? 

Just pointing all this out as I follow the old Hub Blog thought process, from dismissing overwrought crazies to conceding they may have a cautionary point or two. … 

Update — I forgot to mention that I stumbled upon this Atlantic article during my quick research for this post: “When People Feared Computers.” … No mention of Hal, in case you’re wondering.