Jamie Metzl
About Jamie Metzl
Speech topics
Superconvergence: How the AI, Genetics, and Biotechnology Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World
The rapid growth of new AI systems like ChatGPT and Google Gemini has helped us recognize that profound change is on the horizon. Although many of us still think of these capabilities as little more than improved internet search tools, the implications are far deeper. Like the agricultural, industrial, and computer revolutions before it, the AI revolution will transform nearly every aspect of how we live and work, including our economies, our healthcare, the food we eat, and our interactions with the world around us. In this visionary, far-reaching, and highly practical talk, leading futurist and bestselling author of Superconvergence, Hacking Darwin, and The AI Ten Commandments, Jamie Metzl explores the big-picture implications of this transformative moment in history when we are rapidly increasing our ability to engineer intelligence and re-engineer biology—and shows how individuals, organizations, and societies can ride this wave of change rather than be overwhelmed by it.
Speaking videos
Media coverage
A Fighting Chance
His father, a devoted football fan, was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. So writer Jamie Metzl went on offense, exploring every emerging treatment. Here, he shares what he learned about finding the most promising care for someone you love
Human Success in the AI Age
NEW YORK – Everywhere we look nowadays, we find warnings that artificial-intelligence algorithms are coming for our jobs. While Goldman Sachs estimates that two-thirds of all current jobs in the United States and Europe could be “exposed to some degree of AI automation” in the coming years, a report from Pew Research Center puts the figure at closer to one-fifth – with a special emphasis on jobs requiring a college education.
The Future, According to Jamie Metzl
At the highest levels of business and government, his counsel is sought on matters of science, technology, medicine, ethics, politics and history. Jamie Metzl has advised Walmart, a slew of biotech startups, and the World Health Organization. He served on the White House National Security Council and as an executive of the Asia Society. He led public discussion about the origins of the COVID-19 virus and founded an international movement to help address the world’s collective-action problem.
The Metaverse Could Become an Oppressive Dystopia. It Needs a Congress | Opinion
Facebook's recent announcement that it had changed its name to Meta in anticipation of the two-dimensional internet morphing into an immersive 3-D Metaverse has unleashed a boom in speculation about our digital future, along with investor interest. While no one can yet know exactly what the Metaverse will be, it's already clear that our personal and professional lives will increasingly be lived in interactive and communal virtual spaces that will sometimes feel more like multi-player video games than like searching today's web. But if we want to make sure our security, integrity, and freedom will be protected in these new worlds, we've got a lot of work to do.
Seven essential steps for thriving in our new world of social distance ...
Jamie Metzl writes that while most of us have already taken big steps away from physical proximity as the core of our human intimacy, the social distancing ...
Books by Jamie Metzl
“Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform our Lives, Work, and World” (2024)
New technologies have the potential to improve our health, feed billions of people, supercharge our economies, store essential information for millions of years, and save our planet. But if we're not careful, they can also do immeasurable harm. Luckily, in Jamie Metzl, we have a leading expert who integrates science, technology, history, politics, and international affairs to envision a future that most specialists, almost by definition, cannot see. In this bold and inspiring exploration of transformative human knowledge, Metzl gives us the definitive account of the technological precipice on which we stand and the map to where we go from here.
“Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity” (2019)
After 3.8 billion years humankind is about to start evolving by new rules...From leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist Jamie Metzl comes a groundbreaking exploration of the many ways genetic-engineering is shaking the core foundations of our lives ― sex, war, love, and death. At the dawn of the genetics revolution, our DNA is becoming as readable, writable, and hackable as our information technology. But as humanity starts retooling our own genetic code, the choices we make today will be the difference between realizing breathtaking advances in human well-being and descending into a dangerous and potentially deadly genetic arms race. Enter the laboratories where scientists are turning science fiction into reality. Look towards a future where our deepest beliefs, morals, religions, and politics are challenged like never before and the very essence of what it means to be human is at play. When we can engineer our future children, massively extend our lifespans, build life from scratch, and recreate the plant and animal world, should we? Passionate, provocative, and highly illuminating, Hacking Darwin is the must read book about the future of our species for fans of Homo Deus and The Gene.
“Eternal Sonata: A Thriller of the Near Future” (2016)
A few dead bodies are a small price to pay in the quest for immortality. In 2025 America, it’s hardly news when a renowned octogenarian scientist dying of cancer disappears from a local hospice, but when Kansas City Star reporter Rich Azadian begins to dig, he discovers that other elderly scientists around the world have also vanished recentlyall terminally ill and receiving the same experimental treatment from a global health company. His investigation leads him to the reclusive Noam Heller, a brilliant researcher exploring new technologies to reverse-age cancer and other cells. Using revolutionary stem cell treatments and snippets of DNA from rare, immortal Arctic jellyfish, his breakthrough promises the genetic equivalent of the fountain of youth.But when Heller is murdered and his lab destroyed, Rich and his girlfriend Antonia become targets themselves. With the local police and federal authorities failing to see the big picture, he realizes he must take matters into his own hands to survive and stop the killing. His only hope is to mobilize his network of brilliant misfits and infiltrate the vast and lethal raceamong cutthroat corporations, national intelligence services, rogue scientists, and a mysterious international organizationto control the new technologies and perhaps the secret of life itself.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fictionnovels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
“Genesis Code: A Thriller of the Near Future” (2014)
Blue Magic, the latest designer drug linked to a rash of overdoses, might explain the needle mark on the arm of a young woman found dead in her Kansas City apartment. But when Star reporter Rich Azadian digs deeper, the clues point to a far more explosive story: MaryLee Stock was a special protégée of evangelical megapastor and power broker Cobalt Becker, who is poised to deliver his followers and the presidency to a firebrand right-wing senator in the next election. When Azadian sets out to prove that MaryLee’s death was no accident and she may have been carrying Becker’s genetically enhanced baby, the stakes become life itself.
“The Depths of the Sea” (2004)
It's 1979 and Morgan O'Reilly, a dispirited CIA desk officer, is desperately trying to bury his memories. Sent to Cambodia as a Marine and then as a CIA operative during the Vietnam War, he had been given the unlikely task of pulling together a secret spy unit of orphaned street children. At the end of the war, he was only able to get one child out of the country, his surrogate son, Sophal. Years later, Sophal, now a CIA agent, disappears on a secret mission in the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand. Tom Dillon, the dashing young superstar of the White House foreign policy staff, asks O'Reilly to find Sophal and bring him home. O'Reilly's search takes him deeper and deeper into the politics of the Thai-Cambodian border and finally into the deadly Khmer Rouge zone - a place where all foreigners are forbidden from entering and where cruelty and death are omnipresent. Filled with the fascinating workings of the refugee camps, the life or death politics of Washington, DC, and the inner workings of the personalities that are drawn to such extreme circumstances, The Depths of the Sea is a thriller that both entertains and educates.
At a glanceJamie Metzl
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