We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species.
Everything is about to change.
This is a story of 21st century technology, why it matters so much and what we can do to make it work for everyone.
Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks—operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content and running core government services.
The coming wave will make this next decade the most productive in history. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability and human society, introducing both risks and innovations on an awesome scale.
This is what is coming.
Out Now
This groundbreaking new book from AI entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman is a must-read guide to the technological revolution just starting, and the transformed world it will create.
In it Suleyman establishes “the containment problem”—the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies—as the essential challenge of our age.
"A fascinating, well-written, and important book."
Bestselling author of Sapiens
"An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times."
Co-founder of Microsoft
"Rich with interesting facts, arresting arguments, and compelling observations; it is essential reading."
Bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
Over the last year, we've seen the first signs this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies is breaking. These tools will help address global challenges and create vast wealth—but also upheaval on a once unimaginable scale. Understand this wave, and you will begin to understand the future.
In The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman shows how these forces threaten the nation state itself, and how we can successfully contain history's most powerful technologies to avoid catastrophic or dystopian outcomes. Amidst unprecedented peril and extraordinary promise, here is both a stark warning and a hopeful guide to where society goes next.
Glossary of Terms
Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI. Previously he co-founded DeepMind, one of the world's leading artificial intelligence 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.
Michael Bhaskar is a writer and publisher based in the UK, author of The Content Machine, Curation and Human Frontiers.
Praise for The Coming Wave
"A heartfelt and candid exploration of what the future may hold for us... Eloquently articulated."
"Dazzling... You have by now read a great deal of both hype and doom-mongering on the subject [of AI]. But Suleyman’s is the book you cannot afford not to read... Brilliant."
Bloomberg
"[Suleyman] states his case with clarity and authority, and the result is a worrying, provocative book... An informative yet disturbing study and a clear warning from someone whose voice cannot be ignored."
"An erudite, clear-eyed guide to both the history of radical technological change and to the deep political challenges that lay ahead."
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
"Brilliant... Confronts what may be the most crucial question of our century: How can we ensure the breathtaking, fast-paced technological revolutions ahead create the world we want?"
Founding director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
"Truly remarkable, ambitious and impossible to ignore... A persuasively argued tour-de-force."
Professor emeritus, New York University
"A practical and optimistic roadmap."
Professor of computer science, University of California, Berkeley
"Extraordinary... Utterly unmissable."
Former CEO, Google
"A panoramic survey and a clarion call to action... Everyone should read it."
Co-director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
"Calm, pragmatic and deeply ethical... Enthralling reading."
Former United Nations Under-Secretary-General
"A brave wake-up call... Indispensable reading."
Co-founder, Center for Humane Technology
"Sharp, compassionate, and uncompromising."
Former COO, Baidu; former EVP, Microsoft Bing
"An extraordinary and necessary book... One leaves energized and thrilled to be alive right now."
Philosopher and bestselling author
"Deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing."
Actor, broadcaster, and bestselling author
"Honest, passionate, and unafraid to confront what is clearly one of the great challenges our species will face this century."
Principal research scientist at MIT Sloan