The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future: The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the ultimate AI insider

- The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman discusses the transformative power of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology. It examines their potential to revolutionize economies and societies while raising critical ethical and governance challenges. It emphasizes the need for thoughtful management of these technologies to ensure they benefit humanity without causing undue harm. - Throughout history, humanity has progressed through technological advancements and waves of intervention, from discovering fire and harnessing electricity to inventing the wheel. These changes have significantly impacted the lives of many people, leading to increased prosperity. Now, we stand at the precipice of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, which have the potential to reshape the world we live in. - Almost every foundational technology ever invented, from simple tools like pickaxes and plows to complex devices like phones and rockets, follows a consistent pattern: it becomes cheaper and easier to use, ultimately spreading widely. - Almost everything you see, furniture, buildings, phones, food, and even landscaped parks has likely been created or altered by human intelligence. Language, cultures, political organizations, even what it means to be human, is another product of our intelligence. Only one other force is so pervasive: biological life itself. - The impending next wave is artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. The crux of AI lies in the concept of distilling the complexity of human thought and language into a processing algorithm. Synthetic biology aims to harness the essence of living systems to create novel technologies. - AI was barely discussed in 2010 but has since become an integral part of our lives. - BENEFITS: The potential applications of AI are limitless, it could unlock the secrets of the universe, solve climate change, cure long-standing diseases, and create novel forms of art and culture that transcend imagination. Biotechnology offers the potential to engineer life to combat diseases and transform agriculture, leading to a healthier and more sustainable world. However, it’s crucial to exercise caution, as in the wrong hands and misuse, this technology to cause immense harm, potentially leading to the deaths of over a billion people. - HISTORY: The book explores historical examples of how ideas such as the printing press, initially banned in some countries like Japan, China, and Turkey, eventually spread globally. For millennia, humans relied solely on walking or, later, using elephants or horses for transportation. The advent of railways and cars revolutionized travel, leading to unprecedented growth and prosperity. - Electricity has seen remarkable growth. In 1900, only 2% of fossil fuel production was dedicated to electricity generation. by 1950 it was 10%, by 2000, it had surpassed 30%. Electricity production, coupled with advancements in technology has transformed the global economy. - Today, global living conditions are objectively better than at any other time. We take access to running water and abundant food supplies for granted. Most enjoy warmth and shelter throughout the year. Literacy rates, life expectancy, and gender equality have reached unprecedented heights. The accumulated knowledge of thousands of years of human scholarship and inquiry is now accessible at our fingertips. For most individuals in developed countries, life is characterized by an unprecedented level of ease and abundance that would have seemed unimaginable in the past. However, beneath the surface, a persistent sense of unease lingers, and Western societies are grappling with deep-seated anxiety, manifesting as “nervous states,” characterized by impulsivity and fractiousness. - What surrounds us is a product of human intelligence and often driven by monetary gain. - Any technology can malfunction, often directly contradicting its original purpose. Prescription opioids to manage pain have led to drug dependency, antibiotics have become less effective due to overuse. Until recently, the history of technology could be summarized as humanity’s quest to manipulate atoms. From fire to electricity, stone tools to machine tools, hydrocarbons to medicines, and now AI machines that have become sentient beings, raising questions about their control. - The future of AI is relatively predictable. Over the next five years, substantial investments will continue, and some of the world’s brightest minds will work on these challenges. It won’t be long before AI can transfer its knowledge seamlessly between domains, just like humans do. - Life, the universe’s oldest technology, is 3.7 billion years old. Life evolved through a glacial, self-governing, and unguided process. However, in just a few decades, humans, one of life’s products, have made a profound impact. Biology’s mysteries have been unravelled and has become an engineering tool. The story of life was rewritten in an instant; evolution, once a slow and gradual process, was suddenly supercharged and given direction. Changes that once unfolded over geological time now occur at an exponential pace. Alongside AI, this transformation is arguably the most significant of our lifetimes. - DNA, the most effective forms of data transfer and life-building, functions like a recipe book using four letters to produce proteins that shape our identity. Proteins, the building blocks of life, are found in various forms, including muscles, blood, hormones, and hair, forming 75% of our dry body weight. They perform diverse vital tasks, from holding our bones together to binding antibodies to catch unwanted invaders. Understanding proteins is a significant milestone in grasping and mastering biology. Knowing the DNA sequence alone doesn’t reveal how a protein functions; it’s crucial to comprehend its process. - DEMOCRACY: Democracy is built on trust appears to be eroding. A 2018 study of democracy in America revealed that as many as one in five individuals believe “army rule” is a desirable concept! A staggering 85% of Americans perceive the country as “heading in the wrong direction.” Distrust extends beyond government institutions, with increasing levels of distrust in the media, the scientific community, and the notion of expertise in general. One concerns is that many see all the faults with government and fail to see all the benefits. - Since 2010, more countries have slid backward on measures of democracy and this this is accelerating. Rising nationalism and authoritarianism seem endemic, from Poland, China, Russia, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey. Populist movements proliferate like QAnon to Brexit. Yet, global living conditions are objectively better today than at any time in the past. - DISINFORMATION: In the 1980s, the Soviet Union funded disinformation campaigns suggesting that the AIDS virus was the result of a U.S. bioweapons program. Years later, some communities are still dealing with the mistrust and fallout. The campaigns, meanwhile, have not stopped. According to Facebook, Russian agents created no fewer than eighty thousand pieces of organic content that reached 126 million Americans on their platforms during the 2016 election. - AI-enhanced digital tools will exacerbate information operations like these, meddling in elections, exploiting social divisions, and creating elaborate campaigns to sow and spread chaos. More than seventy countries have been found running disinformation campaigns. China, Turkey, Iran are developing their skills (The CIA is no stranger to info ops). Deepfake imagery means it is easy to manipulate a person and put words in their mouth so who knows what is real. - Early in the COVID-19 pandemic a blizzard of disinformation had deadly consequences. One study analysed more than 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 at the height of the first lockdown. 82% of influential users advocating for “reopening America” were bots. This was a targeted “propaganda machine,” most likely Russian, designed to intensify the worst public health crisis in a century. - The book describes accidents that have occurred in labs where micro pathogens that spread disease and infection, that can cripple whole societies have accidentally occurred. Imagine what would happen if a rogue nation or terrorist got hold of an AI machine to replicate pathogen virus that could wipe out whole communities. AI will invent machines that can help fight new outbreaks of pathogens that can harm us - its benefits will outweigh the bad, but one person could kill 1 million people if this technology gets in the wrong hands. Nothing should get out of secure, well-guarded laboratories, but it happens repeatedly. Imagine what could occur in the hands of a country or madman that wants to cause harm. - Before it was eradicated, smallpox killed an estimated 300-500 million people in the twentieth century alone, with a reproduction rate more contagious than the strains of COVID-19, with a mortality rate thirty times that of COVID. Consider that throughout history, tools and technologies have been designed to help us do more with less. - TOTALITARIAN STATES: In C20, totalitarian regimes sought planned economies, obedient populations, and controlled information ecosystems. They aimed for complete hegemony, meticulously managing every aspect of life. Five-year plans dictated the number and content of films but also the bushels of wheat expected from a specific field. An ever-vigilant and ruthless security apparatus ensured the smooth functioning of these systems. Power concentrated in the hands of a single supreme leader, who had the ability to comprehensively assess the entire situation and make decisive actions. Examples of such regimes include Soviet collectivization, Stalin’s five-year plans, Mao’s China, and East Germany’s Stasi. These are manifestations of government as depicted in dystopian nightmares. - SURVEILLANCE: Your smart speaker wakes you up, you reach for your phone and check your emails. Your smartwatch informs you of your normal night’s sleep and heart rate. In theory, a distant organization already knows your waking hours, your emotional state, and the content you’re viewing. Your phone knows your movements and travel, your text messages and the podcast you’re listening to. CCTV films you hundreds of times as this city has at least one camera for every ten people, possibly more. It records and notes when you arrive at work and leave, your productivity and system records. It knows what you’re eating and what your, purchasing (loyalty schemes). Put 30 likes onto social media posts and some companies know more about you than your partner. And this is just a small part of the potential data that’s harvested every day, not just at work or on your phone, but at the doctor’s office or gym. Almost every aspect of life is logged somewhere by those with the expertise to process and act on the data they collect. This isn’t some distant dystopian scenario; this is describing the reality of millions of people in a city like London. - CHINA: The ultimate step is to merge these disparate databases into a single, integrated system: a comprehensive C21 surveillance apparatus. China is a prime example. While this isn’t entirely novel, what’s become evident is the extent and ambition of the party’s program, let alone its potential trajectory in the next two or three decades. Chinese research in AI focuses on surveillance domains such as object tracking, scene understanding, and voice or action recognition. Surveillance technologies have become ubiquitous, increasingly granular in their ability to check every aspect of citizens’ lives. They combine facial recognition, gait analysis, and license plate recognition with mass-scale data collection, including biometric data. Centralized platforms like WeChat seamlessly integrate various services, including private messaging, shopping, and banking, all within a traceable framework. Drive through the highways of China, and you’ll notice hundreds of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras diligently tracking vehicles. (These cameras are also prevalent in most major urban areas of the Western world.) During COVID quarantines, robot dogs and drones roamed the streets, broadcasting messages urging people to stay indoors. - China, now the leader in facial recognition technologies (e.g. Megvii, CloudWalk, SenseTime). Chinese police even have sunglasses equipped with facial recognition technology, capable of tracking suspects in crowded areas. Approximately half of the world’s billion CCTV cameras are in China, with many incorporating facial recognition and strategically positioned to gather maximum information, often in intimate private spaces such as residential buildings, hotels, and karaoke lounges. A New York Times investigation revealed that the police in Fujian Province alone estimated they held a database of 2.5 billion facial images, openly acknowledging its purpose: “controlling and managing people.” Authorities are also exploring the collection of audio data—police in the city of Zhongshan sought cameras capable of recording audio within a three-hundred-foot radius. - This technology reaches its most horrifying potential in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, a rugged and remote area in northwest China. Here, the systematic and technologically advanced repression and ethnic cleansing of the native Uighur people have been conducted. All these monitoring and control systems converge in this region. Cities are blanketed with camera surveillance, equipped with facial recognition and AI tracking. Checkpoints and “re-education” camps govern movements and freedoms. A social credit scoring system based on multiple surveillance databases watches the population. Authorities have even constructed an iris-scan database with the capacity to store up to thirty million samples—more than the region’s population. - The concept of a global “high-tech panopticon,” a dystopian idea popularized by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and Orwell’s 1984, is now becoming a reality. Billions of devices and trillions of data points could be simultaneously worked and checked in real time, not just for surveillance but also for prediction. This technology has the potential to forecast social outcomes with unprecedented precision and granularity, and it may even subtly or overtly influence or coerce them, from grand macro-processes like election results to individual consumer behaviours. - CATASTROPHE: The history of humanity is, in part, a history of catastrophe such as pandemics. The C6 Plague of Justinian and the C14 Black Death resulted in the deaths of up to 30% of the world’s population. In 1300, England’s population was seven million, by 1450 relentless waves of the plague had decimated it to just two million. - Catastrophes aren’t limited to natural disasters; they’re also man-made. World War I claimed the lives of approximately 1% of the global population, World War II resulted in the deaths of 3%. Genghis Khan and the Mongol army across China and central Asia in the C13 claimed the lives of up to 10% of the world’s population. - The advent of the atomic bomb has brought humanity to the brink of unprecedented destructive power, capable of wiping out the entire population multiple times over. Catastrophic events that once unfolded over years and decades can now occur in mere minutes, at the touch of a button. - Given these alarming developments, it is crucial we take proactive measures to contain this new technology and prevent it from leading to a catastrophic outcome. Doom-mongering can be disheartening, but it is important not to dismiss warnings outright. While catastrophic effects may be difficult to understand or accept, they happen. Just as breathless techno-optimism can be easily dismissed as hype, so too can breathless techno-catastrophism. However, the fact that a warning has significant implications does not automatically make it invalid. - We expect supermarkets to be brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables and kept at a consistent temperature throughout the year. Despite the constant turbulence, we assume that the supply chains and financial resources of the C21 are robust. Even the most historically extreme aspects of our existence appear utterly ordinary, leading us to continue our lives as if they can continue indefinitely. Most of those around us, including our leaders, do the same. However, it’s important to remember that nothing lasts forever. Throughout history, numerous societal collapses have occurred, from ancient Mesopotamia to Rome, the Mayans to Easter Island, and so on. It’s not just that civilizations don’t survive; it’s that unsustainability seems to be inherent in their structures. Civilizations that collapse are not the exception; they are the norm. A survey of sixty civilizations suggests that they tend to last around four hundred years on average before disintegrating. Without the advent of new technologies, they encounter hard limits to development in terms of available energy, food, and social complexity, which ultimately lead to their downfall. - CONTAINMENT OF AI: The fourth part of the book explores how we can manage this modern technology. The author proposes an outline of ten steps that can be implemented in small, incremental steps or gradually leading to a larger vision of containing this technology so that it can be harnessed for good rather than becoming a force for evil in the wrong hands. We have already made nuclear reactors safe, and the use of checklists has resulted in safer flying experiences. - AVIATION SAFETY AND CHECKLISTS: In the early days of aviation (1950’s) crashes and fatalities were frequent. By early 2010s, fatalities had significantly decreased to just 1 per 7.4 million passenger boardings. Years have passed without any fatal accidents involving American commercial planes, flying is one of the safest modes of transportation available. Sitting thirty-five thousand feet in the sky is safer than sitting at home on your couch. The remarkable safety record of airlines is due numerous incremental technical and operational improvements over the years. However, it’s equally important to recognize the role of culture in this success. The aviation industry has adopted an initiative-taking approach to learning from mistakes at every level. - CONCLUSION: AI offers numerous benefits far outweighing its concerns. When considering a variety of solutions, we’ve successfully made nuclear power stations incredibly safe, although this process took considerable time. Similarly, it’s possible that AI and biotechnology will achieve similar safety in the future. An amazing book about a wave that will sweep all before it.

It’s a very good book. Interesting, enlightening, at times thoroughly terrifying, and I would recommend to anyone with any interest in the subject matter (which is to say should be all of us). But my goodness does it repeat itself. Over and over and over the same key points, which I found exhausting. Do read, it’s very good, but be prepared to feel a bit bludgeoned a bit (maybe that was the intention).

The book is of exceptional merit, fascinating and awe-inspiring in equal measure. Two modern technologies, in particular artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology pose immense threats and their containment is compelling albeit virtually impossible to achieve. Until recently, the history of technology could be encapsulated in a single phrase: humanity's quest to manipulate atoms. From fire to stone tools, Agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, to internal combustion engine, electricity to aviation, an unfolding process in which our species has slowly extended its control over atoms. Then, starting in the mid-twentieth century, technology began to operate at a higher level of abstraction. At the heart of this shift was the realization that information is a core property of the universe. It can be encoded in a binary format and is, in the form of DNA, at the core of how life operates. First bits and then increasingly genes supplanted atoms as the building blocks of invention. The coming wave of technology is built primarily on two general- purpose technologies capable of operating at the grandest and most granular levels alike: AI and synthetic biology. In other words, technology is undergoing a phase transition. No longer a tool, it is going to engineer life and rival - and surpass - our own intelligence. AI is enabling us to replicate speech and language, vision, and reasoning. Foundational breakthroughs in synthetic biology have enabled us to sequence, modify, and now print DNA. The coming wave is characterized by a set of four intrinsic features compounding the problem of containment (containment is the overarching ability to control, limit, and, if need be, close down technologies at any stage of their development or deployment. It means, in some circumstances, the ability to stop a technology from proliferating in the first place, checking the ripple of unintended consequences). First among them is a hugely 'asymmetric' impact. New technologies create previously unthinkable vulnerabilities and pressure points against seemingly dominant powers. Second, they are developing fast, a kind of 'hyper-evolution', iterating, improving, and breaking into new areas with incredible speed. Third, they are often (omni-use); that is they can be used for many different purposes. And, fourth, they increasingly have a degree of (autonomy) beyond any previous technology. In order to have a chance of containing the coming technological wave, the author suggests a set of interlinked and mutually reinforcing of technical, cultural, legal, and political mechanisms for maintaining control of technology during a period of exponential change; an architecture to the task of containing what would have once been centuries or millennia of technological change, happening now in a matter of years or even months, where consequences ricochet around the world in seconds. Finally, we have to realize that safety in the context of the coming wave is not somewhere we arrive but something that must be continually and proactively enacted. Containment is not a resting place. It is a narrow and never ending path.

This book gives good insights for those new or not in the tech industry. Everybody else will find little new in this book. Additional, the book is well researched. However, the level of repetitiveness is tedious. Furthermore the book stays at the surface and doesn’t really get into matter. The biggest issue with this book: I can’t escape the feeling that this book is written by another well off tech bro -who made his money with AI- now all of a sudden coming to warn us about job displacement and doom&gloom caused by AI. It feel disingenuous and hollow.

The Coming Wave is a fascinating and thought-provoking look at the rapid rise of powerful technologies like AI and synthetic biology. Mustafa Suleyman, with his deep experience in tech, explains how these tools are developing faster than our ability to control them—and why that matters for everyone. What I loved most is how the book strikes a balance between excitement and caution. It’s not fearmongering, but it makes a strong case for why we need to act now to make sure these technologies serve humanity, not the other way around. His idea of the “containment problem” really sticks with you—it’s all about how we manage these world-changing tools before they manage us. This is a smart, accessible read that blends tech, ethics, and policy in a way that feels urgent but hopeful.

Very interesting.Its a longbread as print is very small.

IMHO this book should be read by everyone who has an interest in the future, particularly those who have young children, because AI is making our current education systems unfit for purpose, and it's also going to dramatically affect the world of work, in fact it already has for some professions. Some of the predictions in the book may seem far fetched, but if anyone knows how AI is going to evolve and how powerful it will become, it's the author who is one of the founders of AI company, Deep Mind, who is now the CEO of Microsoft AI. The book is well written and begins by charting the technological waves throughout human history, and how they changed the world we live in. This helps understand how this technological revolution is different. For the first time we are entering an 'industrial' revolution that will impact highly paid, professional jobs, and while it will probably result in new jobs, like previous industrial revolutions, it will be far fewer that the number of jobs that disappear - actually the jobs won't disappear as such, they will simply be performed by far fewer people whose productivity has been amplified by AI, at least in the short term! Unfortunately, it is hard not to develop a sense of foreboding while reading this book, but I believe it is better that people fully understand what's coming, especially for the sake of their children.

I found that the book was as much about the complexity of inter-connected life as it was about the complexity of inter-connected technology; with a great explanation of how this is and always has been, and how therefore, technology is instrumentally fundamental in all risk to life. It was fascinating to get the perspective from someone who is certainly in the know.

This is a book that gives a lot to think about. It is very well structured, a history of human technical revolutions with possible explanations and phases with hint on what we can expect from the revolution caused by AI. Very well informed author.

I don’t know what is going on with ordering books lately. They are coming dirty and scratched… this came with bird waste on it and it was not clean at all I had to through away the cover…

For someone not involved in the world of AI, the book was very enlightening.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman “Mustafa Suleyman” examines the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI): the good, the bad and the scary in realistic terms. Co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI and cofounder of DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman takes the readers on a ride to the future of AI and its implications. This thought-provoking 500-page book includes fourteen chapters broken out by the following four parts: I. Homo Technologicus, II. The Next Wave, III. States of Failure, and IV. Through the Wave. Positives: 1. Well-researched an insightful book. Suleyman has the expertise and experience to write such a book. 2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a fascinating topic, specifically whether containment is possible. 3. The book flows very well and it’s accessible. The reader is not expected to have expertise in the area to understand it. 4. Clearly defines the key topic of the book, the wave. “So, what is a wave? Put simply, a wave is a set of technologies coming together around the same time, powered by one or several new general-purpose technologies with profound societal implications.” 5. Goes over the history of technological waves. “One major study pegged the number of general-purpose technologies that have emerged over the entire span of human history at just twenty-four, naming inventions ranging from farming, the factory system, the development of materials like iron and bronze, through to printing presses, electricity, and of course the internet. There aren’t many of them, but they matter; it’s why in the popular imagination we still use terms like the Bronze Age and the Age of Sail.” 6. Defines the most important topic in the book, containment. “Containment is the overarching ability to control, limit, and, if need be, close down technologies at any stage of their development or deployment.” “Technical containment refers to what happens in a lab or an R&D facility. In AI, for example, it means air gaps, sandboxes, simulations, off switches, hard built-in safety and security measures—protocols for verifying the safety or integrity or uncompromised nature of a system and taking it offline if needed.” 7. The two technologies threatening to surpass our own intelligence. “The coming wave of technology is built primarily on two general-purpose technologies capable of operating at the grandest and most granular levels alike: artificial intelligence and synthetic biology.” 8. Describes breakthroughs in AI. “The breakthrough moment took nearly half a century, finally arriving in 2012 in the form of a system called AlexNet. AlexNet was powered by the resurgence of an old technique that has now become fundamental to AI, one that has supercharged the field and was integral to us at DeepMind: deep learning.” 9. Interesting observations and predictions. “In the words of an eminent computer scientist, “It seems totally obvious to me that of course all programs in the future will ultimately be written by AIs, with humans relegated to, at best, a supervisory role.” 10. The often-used term Singularity defined. “Over the last decade, intellectual and political elites in tech circles became absorbed by the idea that a recursively self-improving AI would lead to an “intelligence explosion” known as the Singularity.” 11. Examines synthetic biology. “Companies such as DNA Script are commercializing DNA printers that train and adapt enzymes to build de novo, or completely new, molecules. This capability has given rise to the new field of synthetic biology—the ability to read, edit, and now write the code of life.” 12. Looks at other transformative technologies that are part of the wider wave. “Amazon’s “first fully autonomous mobile robot,” called Proteus, can buzz around warehouses in great fleets, picking up parcels. Equipped with “advanced safety, perception, and navigation technology,” it can do this comfortably alongside humans. Amazon’s Sparrow is the first that can “detect, select, and handle individual products in [its] inventory.”” 13. Describes the quest for quantum supremacy. “In 2019, Google announced that it had reached “quantum supremacy.” Researchers had built a quantum computer, one using the peculiar properties of the subatomic world.” 14. Describes the four features that define the coming wave. “The coming wave is, however, characterized by a set of four intrinsic features compounding the problem of containment. First among them is the primary lesson of this section: hugely asymmetric impact. You don’t need to hit like with like, mass with mass; instead, new technologies create previously unthinkable vulnerabilities and pressure points against seemingly dominant powers.” 15. Explores containment issues. “However, any discussion of containment has to acknowledge that if or when AGI-like technologies do emerge, they will present containment problems beyond anything else we’ve ever encountered. Humans dominate our environment because of our intelligence. A more intelligent entity could, it follows, dominate us.” 16. The race for AI supremacy between China and the U.S. “China is already ahead of the United States in green energy, 5G, and AI and is on a trajectory to overtake it in quantum and biotech in the next few years. The Pentagon’s first chief software officer resigned in protest in 2021 because he was so dismayed by the situation. “We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he told the Financial Times.” 17. Statements that resonate. “Science has to be converted into useful and desirable products for it to truly spread far and wide. Put simply: most technology is made to earn money.” 18. Examines the implications of this coming wave and democracy. “A meta-analysis published in the journal Nature reviewed the results of nearly five hundred studies, concluding there is a clear correlation between growing use of digital media and rising distrust in politics, populist movements, hate, and polarization.” 19. Cyber threats examined. “Today’s cyberattacks are not the real threat; they are the canary in the coal mine of a new age of vulnerability and instability, degrading the nation-state’s role as the sole arbiter of security.” 20. The dangers of highest of high tech in the hands of a few. “This raises the prospect of totalitarianism to a new plane. It won’t happen everywhere, and not all at once. But if AI, biotech, quantum, robotics, and the rest of it are centralized in the hands of a repressive state, the resulting entity would be palpably different from any yet seen.” 21. Describes varieties of catastrophe. “AI is both valuable and dangerous precisely because it’s an extension of our best and worst selves.” 22. Describes keys to containment. “Deft regulation, balancing the need to make progress alongside sensible safety constraints, on national and supranational levels, spanning everything from tech giants and militaries to small university research groups and start-ups, tied up in a comprehensive, enforceable framework.” 23. Defines the key problem of the twenty-first century. “The central problem for humanity in the twenty-first century is how we can nurture sufficient legitimate political power and wisdom, adequate technical mastery, and robust norms to constrain technologies to ensure they continue to do far more good than harm.” 24. Lists the ten steps to containment. “There’s a clear must-do here: encourage, incentivize, and directly fund much more work in this area. It’s time for an Apollo program on AI safety and biosafety.” 25. Notes and a link to the bibliography provided. Negatives: 1. If you have watched Suleyman’s YouTube Videos there is very little new here. 2. Emphasis of speculation over technical details. I wanted more details; if the purpose is to keep the book accessible such details can be included in an appendix. 3. Redundancy. 4. Lack visual supplementary material: charts, diagrams, and sketches to complement the narrative. 5. Lacks a formal bibliography. In summary, this is an important topic a plea of sorts to global leadership and subject matter experts to watch this issue carefully and to take the proper precautions to contain the worst of AI’s potential. Suleyman makes clear that AI has potential for much good but also to catastrophe if humanity loses containment. The Coming Wave of AI and synthetic biology creates immense challenges for humanity, are we ready for it? An excellent, provocative book. I highly recommend it! Further suggestions: “Superintelligence” by Nick Bostrom, “The Age of AI” by Matt Ridley, “AGI: Age of Superintelligence” by Richard A. Mann,“The Singularity Is Near” and “How to Create a Mind” by Ray Kurzweil, “Our Final Invention” by James Barrat, “Surviving AI” by Calum, “ Chace, “When Computers Can Think” by Anthony Berglas, “What to Think About Machines That Think” edited by John Brockman, and “Rise of the Robots” by Martin Ford.

There is no doubt that this book, by the founder of DeepMind, will be influential for years to come. There is much for policy makers to dwell upon. The style of writing is accessible, there are no equations, nor are we expected to understand the sublime complexities of multi-layered neural networks which apparently give DeepMind its ‘mind’. The twin topics of the book are artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, how they combine to make the future not only exciting but threatening. The book concludes with a list of ways in which we can reduce that threat. Throughout the book there is a lurking presence and it is China. The author mentions the adversarial posture that the West has taken towards China’s technological progress, such as restricting the sale of advanced AI-capable chips, but I was disappointed that this was not explored further as it has huge consequences for the policies of ‘containment’ listed at the end of the book. China will go its own way, as Xi Jinping has said it will, while the West may go more slowly as it tries to implement those policies. This requires more thought. Many of us watched the ‘game-changing’ match between AlphaGo and South Korean world champion Lee Sedol in 2016. Less well known is that the match was repeated in 2017 in China with the top Chinese Go player Ke Jie, which is described on page 118 as follows: “The environment was stricter, more controlled; the narrative closely curated by the authorities. No more media circus. The subtext was clear: this wasn’t just a game anymore. AlphaGo won again, but did so amid an unmistakably tense atmosphere.” It wasn’t so much a game this time as a humiliation and its significance was not lost on the Chinese government: “Today, China has an explicit national strategy to be the world leader in AI by 2030. The New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, announced just two months after Ke Jie was beaten by AlphaGo, was intended to harness government, the military, research organizations, and industry in a collective mission.” One of the declared goals of that mission is “making China the world’s primary innovation center” (quote from the Chinese plan). The book goes on to remind us that “China overtook the United States in number of PhDs produced in 2007, but since then investment in and expansion of programs have been significant, producing nearly double the number of STEM PhDs as the United States every year” (p121). And what is the West doing? Allowing its universities to steadily undermine their pre-eminence in science by anti-science ‘woke’ agendas. It’s mad. Although China’s relentless technological advance is not the main theme of the book, for me it is the most important take-away for policy makers. The implications for the free world are ominous if it doesn’t get its act together pretty quickly. China will read this book with interest. So should our leaders.