The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma - Hardcover

by Mustafa Suleyman (Author), Michael Bhaskar (With)NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Best Book of the Year: CNN, Economist, Bloomberg, Politico Playbook, Financial Times, The Guardian, CEO Magazine, Semafor Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award and the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI “Brilliant . . . confronts what may be the most crucial question of our century: How can we ensure that the breathtaking, fast-paced technological revolutions ahead create the world we want?” - Eric Lander, founding director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard “A heartfelt and candid exploration of what the future may hold for us . . . Eloquently articulated. Reading [The Coming Wave], what came to mind was Gramsci’s famous adage that what we need is ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.’ To his great credit, [Mustafa] Suleyman has both.”- The Guardian "An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times." - Bill Gates “Deeply researched and highly relevant.” - Al Gore, former Vice President of the USA “A sweeping look at the future of artificial intelligence and other transformative technologies . . . Suleyman is intimately familiar with the technologies, companies and personalities at the heart of the A.I. revolution.”- The New York Times We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes "the containment problem"--the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies--as the essential challenge of our age. Author Biography 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. MICHAEL BHASKAR is a writer and publisher, author of The Content Machine, Curation and Human Frontiers.