The Coming Wave

AI, Power and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma

Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar

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English

Bodley Head
10 October 2023

Impact of science & technology on society; Technology: general issues

Cofounder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind sounds the alarm on the unprecedented risks to global order posed by a wave of fast-developing technologies like artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change.

Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks - operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability.

We are not prepared.

Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution - one poised to become the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. Driven by overwhelming strategic and commercial incentives, these tools will help address our global challenges and create vast wealth, but also upheaval, on an unimaginable scale.

In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces threaten the grand bargain of the nation state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma - unprecedented harm arising from unchecked openness on one side, and the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?

In this groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider, Suleyman establishes "the containment problem" - the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies - as the essential challenge of our age.

By: Mustafa Suleyman
With: Michael Bhaskar
Imprint: Bodley Head
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 425g
ISBN: 9781847927491
ISBN 10: 1847927491
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 10 October 2023
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI. Previously he co-founded DeepMind, one of the world's leading AI companies. After a decade at DeepMind, Suleyman became vice president of AI product management and AI policy at Google. When he was an undergraduate at Oxford, Suleyman dropped out to help start a non-profit telephone counseling service. He lives in Palo Alto, California. He tweets @MustafaSuleymn and can be found online at www.inflection.ai.

Reviews for The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma

Thoughtful and persuasive * Sunday Times, *Books of the Year* * Unusually thoughtful, expansive, historically rooted and engagingly written * Washington Post * A genuinely mind-boggling read, setting out the ineluctable forces soon to completely transform politics, society and even the fabric of life itself over the next decade or two * Guardian * Deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing * Stephen Fry * A fascinating, well-written and important book * Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens *