"The Coming Wave" by Mustafa Suleyman
Above: "The Coming Wave - Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma." Mustafa Suleyman - 288 pages.
For me this was a sobering, eye-opening read. The book helps me imagine what might be the fate, either risk or opportunity, of my progeny with respect to AI. I don't know whether to be fearful for their future or awestruck at the potential for their lives being better in some way that I can't now understand. This was an essential book to set the stage for me for a better understanding of scientific progress and it's coming radically transformational effects on mankind. Meanwhile, buckle up!
I completed reading the above book in September 2024.
Suleyman is co-founder of DeepMind, a pioneering AI company. He is currently CEO of Microsoft AI. His book is a warning about the unprecedented risks (the coming wave) that new technologies pose to our future and how they might be contained.
To quote: The coming wave is defined by two core technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. Together they will usher in a new dawn for humanity, creating wealth and surplus unlike anything ever seen. And yet their rapid proliferation also threatens to empower a diverse array of bad actors to unleash disruption, instability and even challenge that will define the twenty-first century: our future both depends on these technologies and is imperiled by them. (p.7).
In August of this year, I learned from reading "Elon Musk," by Walter Isaacson, that [AI] "is our biggest existential threat." Musk is concerned about the menace AI poses to human consciousness itself.
Suleyman says the wave cannot be stopped. Is it possible to create a system that could imitate and then eventually outperform all human cognitive abilities, from vision and speech to planning and imagination, and ultimately empathy and creativity? Even modest progress towards this goal would have profound societal implications.
Suleyman wonders, "what if the wave is actually a tsunami?" "[AI risks] could present an existential threat to nation-states-risks so profound they might disrupt or even overturn the current geopolitical order. They open pathways to immense AI-empowered cyberattacks, automated wars that could devastate countries, engineered pandemics, and a world subject to unexplainable and yet seemingly omnipotent forces.... Even a slim chance of outcomes like these requires urgent attention."
Popular fiction now speculates on the implications of the AI wave. Do nation states lose power as the AI wave advances? Last month I read "Read Sky Mourning," Jack Carr's latest novel in his James Reece series. A central theme in that novel was the race by China to capture Taiwan before the US obtained fully functioning autonomous warfare capability. In the novel, China decides to stand down from its intent to destroy the low orbit satellite-based communications infrastructure on which the US depends... the Kessler effect. But the Silicon Valley based tech wizard with his own supercomputer, in charge of building China's own autonomous warfare infrastructure, goes rogue and on his own sets in motion a missile takedown of US communications. My review of "Red Sky Mourning" here: "Red Sky Mourning" by Jack Carr | Stephen DeWitt Taylor
Suleyman is worried about our ability to contain the coming wave. "Our species is not wired to truly grapple with transformation at this scale, let alone the potential that technology might fail us. I've seen many, many others have the same visceral response. Confronting this feeling is one of the purposes of this book. To take a cold hard look at the facts, however uncomfortable. Properly addressing this wave, containing technology, and ensuring that it always serves [ie. doesn't compete with and eventually replace] humanity means overcoming pessimism aversions. It means facing head-on the reality of what's coming."
"The Coming Wave," is divided into four sections
1. The history of past technological waves. What were the intended and unintended consequences? How were the unintended consequences contained? Examples include, fire, the railroad, the assembly line.
2. The coming wave itself. Suleyman posits that the scope of the impact of AI and synthetic biology is still often understated. This section describes why the new technologies are difficult to contain. Suleyman notes four reasons why this wave is different. AI and synthetic biology are inherently general and therefore omni use, they hyper-evolve, they have asymmetric impacts, and, in some respects, they are increasingly autonomous (voire Carr's novel cited above).
3. This section explores the political implications of a colossal redistribution of power engendered by an uncontained wave. What is the future of the nation state. This topic, nation state power giving way to AI power, was the theme of Jack Carr's recent novel, "Red Sky Mourning" referred to earlier in this book review.
4. What can we do about it? Is there even a slim chance of containing the potentially dark effects of AI? This section outlines ten steps, working out from the level of code and DNA to the level of international treaties which form a hard, agreed upon set of constraints... a plan for containment.
For most of us, AI is at best a welcome tool to enhance personal productivity at our home or workstations. At worst, and this is the case for far too many, we haven't a clue of what AI is or how it will affect our lives.
This blurb from Jeffry D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University: "The Coming Wave makes an eye-opening and convincing case that advanced technologies are reshaping every aspect of society: power, wealth, warfare, work, and even human relations. Can we control these new technologies before they control us? A world leader in artificial intelligence and a longtime advocate for governments, big tech, and civil society to act for the common good, Mustafa Suleyman is the ideal guide to this crucial question.
Says Suleyman: "Containment is not, on the face of it, possible. And yet for all our sakes, containment must be possible."
For me this was a sobering, eye-opening read. The book helps me imagine what might be the fate, either risk or opportunity, of my progeny with respect to AI. I don't know whether to be fearful for their future or awestruck at the potential for their lives being better in some way that I can't now understand. This was an essential book to set the stage for me for a better understanding of scientific progress and it's coming radically transformational effects on mankind. Meanwhile, buckle up!