BookBrowse Reviews The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

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A startling warning from the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI lays out the dark side of unfettered technological progress.

Throughout history, technological progress has come in rolling waves, but the next "great wave"—embodied in the high-speed advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology—threatens humanity with as many dangers as opportunities, according to AI insider Mustafa Suleyman in The Coming Wave.

Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, is not chary with his words of warning regarding these history-shaking technologies, which makes The Coming Wave a timely (if not very reassuring) treatise on why and how containment should be the watchword of the day. The warning is well taken, as Suleyman outlines how AI and synthetic biology (defined as the ability to design and engineer new organisms or redesign existing biological systems) are "unleashing the power to engineer these two universal foundations: a wave of nothing less than intelligence and life."

From the outset, Suleyman establishes his terms clearly (even including a helpful glossary) about the dilemma these emergent technologies pose: the proliferation of AI systems and evolving applications of synthetic biology can "usher in a new dawn of humanity," marked by an unprecedented increase in economic progress, but if put in the wrong hands, can unleash instability, disruption and even catastrophe. In other words, he says, the future both depends on these technologies and is imperiled by them.

Broken into four parts, The Coming Wave begins with an enlightening primer on the long history of technology and how it spreads, as well as what containment looks like. Then Suleyman digs into the weeds of AI and synthetic biology (and their associated technologies, like robotics and quantum mechanics) and outlines the four key properties of these technologies that make them so hard to contain: asymmetric, omni-use, hyper-evolving and autonomous. Proliferation of these extremely valuable technologies, especially as they get cheaper and spread faster than at any time in history, requires a firm, human grip, he claims: "Existing AI systems still operate in relatively narrow lanes. What is yet to come is a truly general or strong AI capable of human-level performance across a wide range of complex tasks."

This, he writes, should alarm us. Creating something "smarter than us" implies that a more intelligent entity could dominate us. AI today works in practical ways, with systems running retail warehouses, writing communications (with the advent of ChatGPT [see Beyond the Book]), simulating climate change scenarios and even diagnosing rare medical conditions, although according to the author, AI is "far from done." With continued strides in the fields of deep learning and machine learning, AI is getting smarter every day and could potentially give its human creators the proverbial slip. Recalling his own experiences creating artificial intelligence systems and developing large language models (LLMs), Suleyman's authoritative insights are crucial to grasping the breathtaking scope of AI. As a "transformative meta technology, the technology behind technology and everything else … not just a system but a generator of systems of any and all kinds," AI has brought about a turning point in the history of humanity, he cautions. "The risk isn't in overhyping it; it's rather in missing the magnitude of the coming wave."

But it is not just AI that should concern governments and societies: synthetic biology is advancing at a blistering pace as it rewrites DNA itself to direct outcomes in agriculture, food production, medicine and even manufacturing processes. Suleyman makes this complex and science-heavy topic accessible to even the most unversed. What is noticeably clear is that the bio-revolution is "coevolving with advances in AI … two waves crashing together, not a wave but a superwave." With the future of human intelligence and life itself now intertwined with these powerful technologies, the genie is out of the bottle. What is Suleyman's solution to this unstoppable progress?

The ability to regulate the adverse effects, or what Suleyman calls "revenge effects" of technological progress, is where his core message of containment steps forward. In his cogent analysis of global political implications, the nation-state plays a critical role in this containment calculus. Perhaps the most consequential portions of The Coming Wave are the third and fourth parts, as he clearly lays out how nation-states—particularly liberal-democratic ones—can weather the coming wave, in part by avoiding the "pessimism aversion trap" that encourages tech industries and governments to look away from "potentially dark realities." Already under "immense strain," the current political order is threatened with destabilization by the very forces it helped create. Standing athwart a small but influential minority in the tech industry who think governments get in the way of technological process and are "best jettisoned," Suleyman takes a brave stance in stating "such an outcome would be a disaster" and unspools a nightmare-fueled catalog of potential catastrophes (bad actors wielding AI-powered weaponry, growth-of-function viruses engineered from any home, etc.) that warrants the worry. But too much oversight could also lead to dystopian authoritarianism. The dilemma is real.

To navigate the narrow path "between the poles of catastrophe and dystopia," Suleyman concludes with "ten steps toward containment" that move from the raw technical details and ascend "the ladder of interventions" to broader actions that "add up to new business incentives, reformed government, international treaties, a healthier technological culture, and a popular global movement." Including such prescriptions as improved technical safety, audits, governmental regulations and international alliances, Suleyman is cautiously optimistic about the ability of the collective "we" of humanity to fundamentally change society. However, Suleyman's recurring mantra that containment might not look possible but must be inevitably leaves the reader feeling less than sanguine about sweeping change in a fragmented, fraught world.

The Coming Wave is necessary reading, if only to understand the ways technology shapes societies and often directs the course of history. Elegantly written, impeccably researched and passionately argued, this is the technological wake-up call for the 21^st century.

This review first ran in the November 1, 2023 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.