I understand that the author is a real insider in AI. A lot of knowledge is conferred to us in a relatively easy to comprehend way. He discusses, interestingly but alarmingly, the many ways that AI could be used for harm, intentionally or accidentally. While I understand that this may be true, I don’t feel the author has much faith that, at this point in time, people are doing much to safeguard AI and resulting harm to civilization. This may also be true. But I see nothing in this book that hopes in or believes we will be able to safeguard this. There is a chapter on the author’s recommendations to do that. The book is a good read, but I have more hope and trust in humanity.

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.

Such an insightful, informative, and interesting read about technology and how it affects our lives. This book is highlighting the AI revolution and also brings in a lot of history and patterns from the past that provide the basis for his speculation about our future. He sees a dilemma or choice, which I have also heard from other writers and speakers, between continuing to allow general access to technology leading to catastrophies OR give more power to the govenment to regulate the technologies via surveillance and hard enforcement. In either case humanity loses. The author honors the State, I do not. The way I see it, IF we base the future on the past, we are in serious trouble. Einstein said, you cannot solve the problems with the same thinking that created the problems in the first place. Other options exist that have nothing to do with the coercive governments we have. I sometimes think that fear drives our decisions, and that leads to where we are and where we are headed unless we try something different. It’s all insanity if we keep doing the same thing.

The 2023 book entitled: “The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and … “ by Suleyman and Bhaskar is a fascinating story of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and biotechnology and how it has and will continue to sweep over humanity in a wave that will improve our lives and change our society in several ways. Of interest to readers will be historical factual stories of past waves of technology and how they have improved live on earth. For those interested in the technical details of AI and biotechnology there is a great deal of informative discussion in an understandable form. Also, there is easy to understand, albeit, somewhat speculative view of what downsides this new wave of technology might portend if not appropriately contained. The book is worth purchasing and reading especially for those interested in the power of technology. The editors include the following “advance praise” for the book: “The Coming Wave is a fascinating, well-written, and important book. It explores the existential dangers that AI and biotechnology pose to humankind, and offers practical solutions for how we can contain the threat. The coming technological wave promises to provide humanity with godlike powers of creation, but if we fail to manage it wisely, it may destroy us.”—Yuval Noah Harari, New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens. The authors (Suleyman and Bhaskar) write: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science of teaching machines to learn humanlike capabilities... THE COMING WAVE [is about an] emerging cluster of related technologies centered on AI and synthetic biology whose transformative applications will both empower humankind and present unprecedented risks… The coming wave is defined by two core technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. Together they will usher in a new dawn for humanity, creating wealth and surplus unlike anything ever seen… it appears that containing this wave—is not… possible.” The authors write: “I [Suleyman] co-founded a company called DeepMind with two friends… in… 2010. This was our goal… replicate the very thing that makes us unique as a species, our intelligence… DeepMind became one of the world’s leading AI companies, achieving a string of breakthroughs… Today, AI systems can almost perfectly recognize faces and objects. We take speech-to-text transcription and instant language translation for granted… AI systems can produce synthetic voices with uncanny realism and compose music of stunning beauty… AI has been climbing the ladder of cognitive abilities for decades, and it now looks set to reach human-level performance across a very wide range of tasks within the next three years...” The authors write: “a short time before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I attended a seminar on technology risks at a well-known university… One… presenter showed how the price of DNA synthesizers, which can print bespoke strands of DNA, was falling rapidly. Costing a few tens of thousands of dollars, they are small enough to sit on a bench in your garage and let people… manufacture—DNA. And all this is now possible for anyone with graduate-level training… the presenter painted a harrowing vision: Someone could soon create novel… pathogens far more transmissible and lethal than anything found in nature… This was not science fiction… a single person today likely “has the capacity to kill a billion people.” All it takes is motivation... I stayed silent, frankly shaken… This widespread emotional reaction I was observing is something I have come to call the pessimism-aversion trap: the misguided analysis that arises when you are overwhelmed by a fear of confronting potentially dark realities, and the resulting tendency to look the other way…” The authors write: “History is full of false prophets and doomsayers proven wrong. Why should this time be different?... Many of those whom I accuse of being stuck in the pessimism-aversion trap fully embrace the growing critiques of technology… We’ll manage, we always do, they say… Technologies can and should enrich our lives; historically, it bears repeating, the inventors and entrepreneurs behind them have been powerful drivers of progress, improving living standards for billions of us. But without containment… the benefits it could bring, is inconsequential… Scores of state and non-state actors will race ahead to develop them regardless of efforts to regulate and control what’s coming, taking risks that affect everyone, whether we like it or not.” The authors write: “For most of lived history, proliferation of new technology was rare. Most humans were born, lived, and died surrounded by the same set of tools and technologies… Once a technology gets traction, once a wave starts building, the historical pattern we saw with cars is clear. When Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440, there was only a single example in Europe: his original in Mainz, Germany. But just fifty years later a thousand presses spread across the Continent” The authors write: “Civilization’s appetite for useful and cheaper technologies is boundless. This will not change… Computing transformed society faster than anyone predicted and proliferated faster than any invention in human history… Gordon Moore [conjectured]… every twenty-four months, the number of transistors on a chip would double… Since the early 1970s the number of transistors per chip has increased ten-million-fold. Their… power has increased by ten orders of magnitude—a seventeen-billion-fold improvement… It took smartphones a few years to go from niche product to utterly essential item for two-thirds of the planet.” The authors write: “AI became real for me... It happened in DeepMind’s first office… one day in 2012… We had watched as the algorithm taught itself something new. I was stunned… But the public response was pretty muted. AI was still a fringe discussion, a research area on the margins. And yet within a few short years, all that would change as this new generation of AI techniques exploded onto the world stage… Despite its simple rules, Go’s complexity is staggering. It is exponentially more complex than chess… [The old chess game] approach is hopeless in a game with as many branching outcomes as Go… AlphaGo initially learned by watching 150,000 games played by human experts… the key next step was creating lots of copies of AlphaGo and getting it to play against… itself over and over… Our AI had uncovered ideas that hadn’t occurred to the most brilliant players in thousands of years... with just a day’s training, AlphaZero was capable of learning more about the game than the entirety of human experience could teach it… Our team had, in full view of the public, emerged from what researchers had called “the AI winter,” when research funding dried up and the field was shunned. AI was back, and finally starting to deliver.” The authors write: “It’s easy to grow weary of the breathless press releases, the self-congratulatory product demos… AI is at the center of this coming wave. And yet, since the term “artificial intelligence” first entered the lexicon in 1955, it… 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… A technique called backpropagation then adjusts the weights to improve the neural network; when an error is spotted, adjustments propagate back through the network to help correct it in the future… This, in a nutshell, is deep learning. And this remarkable technique, long derided in the field, cracked computer vision and took the AI world by storm. AlexNet was built by… Geoffrey Hinton [et al.]… Thanks to deep learning, computer vision is now everywhere… we sold DeepMind to Google, and the tech giant soon switched to a strategy of “AI first” across all its products… Starting in the 2010s, the buzz… around AI was back, stronger than ever… Our WaveNet project was a powerful text-to-speech system able to generate synthetic voices in more than a hundred languages across the Google product ecosystem… AI is… far from done.” The authors write: “in November 2022, the… company OpenAI released ChatGPT. Within a week it had more than a million users … Ask [ChatGPT] a question and it replies instantaneously in fluent prose… in 2017 a small group of researchers at Google… laid the foundation for what has been… a revolution in the field of large language models (LLMs)—including ChatGPT… LLMs take advantage of the fact that language data comes in a sequential order… OpenAI released GPT-2. (GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer.)… when OpenAI released GPT-3, that people started to truly grasp the magnitude of what was happening. With a whopping 175 billion parameters it was, at the time, the largest neural network ever constructed, more than a hundred times larger than its predecessor of just a year earlier… When GPT-4 launched in March 2023, results were again impressive… request start-up business plans and the output is akin to having a roomful of executives on call. Moreover, it can ace standardized tests… [and]… identify weaknesses in contracts, and suggest compounds for novel drugs, even offering ways of modifying them… ” The authors write: “a key ingredient of the LLM revolution is that for the first time very large models could be trained directly on raw, messy, real-world data, without the need for carefully curated and human-labeled data sets… Today’s LLMs are trained on trillions of words. Imagine digesting Wikipedia wholesale, consuming all the subtitles and comments on YouTube, reading millions of legal contracts, tens of millions of emails, and hundreds of thousands of books. This kind of… consumption of information is not just difficult to comprehend; it’s truly alien.” The authors write: “LLMs aren’t just limited to language generation. In 2022, OpenAI and Microsoft unveiled a new tool called Copilot, which quickly became ubiquitous among coders. One analysis suggests it makes engineers 55 percent faster at completing coding tasks, almost like having a second brain on hand… It took LLMs just a few years to change AI. But it quickly became apparent that these models sometimes produce troubling and actively harmful content like racist screeds or rambling conspiracy theories… The potential for harm, abuse, and misinformation is real. Researchers all over the world are racing to develop a suite of new fine-tuning and control techniques… much more is still needed.” The authors write: “… less well known is what The Economist calls the Carlson curve: the epic collapse in costs for sequencing DNA… the cost of human genome sequencing fell from $ 1 billion in 2003 to well under $ 1,000 by 2022. That is, the price dropped a millionfold in under twenty years… Genome sequencing is now a booming business… But the power of biotech… now enables us to edit it, and write it, too… Impacts can be enormous: editing germ-line cells that form eggs and sperm, for example, means changes will echo down through generations… Experiments that once took years are tackled by grad students in weeks… You can now buy a benchtop DNA synthesizer… for as little as $ 25,000 and use it as you wish, without restriction… at home in your bio-garage.” The authors write: “Simply knowing the DNA sequence isn’t enough to know how a protein works. Instead, you need to understand how it folds. Its shape, formed by this knotted folding, is core to its function: collagen in our tendons has a rope-like structure, while enzymes have pockets to hold the molecules they act on… in advance, there was no… knowing how this would happen… In 1993, they… set up a… Critical Assessment for Structure Prediction (CASP) [competition] —to see who could crack the protein folding problem… in 2018… a rank outsider entrant arrived at the competition, with zero track record, and beat ninety-eight established teams. The winning team was DeepMind’s. Called AlphaFold, the project… provides a perfect example of how both AI and biotech are advancing… One headline said it all: “One of the Biggest Problems in Biology Has Finally Been Solved,” wrote Scientific American… For half a century protein folding had been one of science’s grand challenges, and then, all of a sudden, it was ticked off the list.” The authors write: “Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, residents of the city of Kyiv… dismounted near the column’s head and launched jerry-rigged drones equipped with small explosives… The Ukrainian resistance… demonstrated how they can undermine a conventional military calculus... A thousand-strong group of nonmilitary elite programmers and computer scientists banded together in an organization called Delta to bring advanced AI and robotics capabilities to the army… Delta’s ability to create machine learning systems to spot camouflaged targets and help guide munitions was critical… Drones provide us with a glimpse of what’s in store for the future of warfare… It won’t just be… soldiers... It will be anyone who wants to.” The authors write: “In 2020 an AI system sifted through 100 million molecules to create the first machine-learning-derived antibiotic… To date eighteen clinical assets have been derived with the help of AI tools… What if, instead of looking for cures, you looked for killers? They ran a test, asking their molecule-generating AI to find poisons. In six hours it identified more than forty thousand molecules with toxicity comparable to the most dangerous chemical weapons, like Novichok… Most technologies have military and civilian applications… the more powerful the technology, the more concern there should be…” The authors write: “Modern research works against containment. So too do the necessity and desire to make a profit… Investment in AI technologies alone has hit $ 100 billion a year… big numbers do actually matter…technologies… will reduce the cost of tactical drones to a few thousand dollars, putting them within reach of everyone… A legal AI might be able to parse this against multiple legal systems, figure out every possible infraction, and then hit that company with multiple crippling lawsuits around the world at the same time.” The authors write: “Containment is about the ability… to control technology… “what might containment, even in theory, look like?... the answer… Deft regulation, balancing the need to make progress alongside sensible safety constraints… We’ve done it before, so the argument goes; look at cars, planes, and medicines… [In] CHAPTER 14 [the authors provide] TEN STEPS TOWARD CONTAINMENT”