Big story in technology is generative AI, and it is like riding a tiger

The past year has seen a number of newsworthy stories in science and technology and several of them may turn out to be of great significance. For instance the protein-folding smarts of Deep Mind's Alphafold and Meta's ESMfold may be a gamechanger in the creation of new molecules, specifically in drug discovery, although these drugs will take at least a decade to show up on pharmacy shelves. Lawrence Livermore Labs (US Department of Energy) made an apparent breakthrough in nuclear fusion, although a commercial reactor is still years or decades away. The James Webb space telescope captured extraordinary views of…