AI, Power, and Our Future
Welcome to the future, where the line between science fiction and your morning commute is becoming very blurry. In The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind (Google’s AI research lab), presents a compelling case for why the next decade may make the Industrial Revolution look like a slow Tuesday.
This isn’t just a tale of robot butlers and helpful AI assistants, though those may be on the horizon. It’s a high-stakes narrative about DNA printers, autonomous weapons, quantum computers, and synthetic pathogens, all racing into our lives while governments struggle to keep up.
What’s at stake?
Everything. Suleyman warns that these breakthrough technologies will reshape our planet, economy, politics, and personal privacy. There is certainly a bright side: clean energy, hyper-efficiency, and tireless robotic coworkers. But there is also a dark side filled with surveillance states, cyber-pandemics, and a dangerously unstable global order.
Enter the containment problem
Suleyman introduces the idea of the “containment problem.” It is not about stopping the wave of innovation, since we are far past that point, but about how to guide it. Can we preserve human values and democratic oversight as our tools grow faster, smarter, and more powerful than we are?
Why you should care:
This is not just a tech manifesto. It is part warning, part blueprint, and part survival guide. Whether you are a CEO, policymaker, engineer, or simply someone who wants civilization to hold together, Suleyman challenges you to think critically and act quickly.
Praised by Bill Gates, Daniel Kahneman, and Yuval Noah Harari, The Coming Wave is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where technology is heading and how we might steer it away from disaster.
The wave is coming. The only question is whether we will ride it or be swept away.