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

Suleyman begins the chapter by briefly exploring the influence of literal and metaphorical waves on the history of humanity. He notes that many cultures tell stories of world-ending (or world-transforming) floods like the one described in the biblical story of Noah’s ark. Actual floods and waves have also shaped the word’s history, from the immense tsunami that accompanied the extinction of the dinosaurs to the seasonal flooding on the banks of the Nile. Suleman then transitions to describing the metaphorical waves of religion, commerce, and empire that have transformed human culture. Similarly, he claims that technology also rises and spreads in the form of waves.

The coming wave of technology is led by artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. These two technologies, Suleyman explains, will bring unprecedented levels of change, since they unlock the power to engineer the two foundational forces—intelligence and life—that shape the world. Because of this, humanity faces an inflection point: If humanity cannot contain these two technologies, it will face potentially dire consequences, but if it does not reap the benefits of these technologies, it will remain in a precarious and vulnerable position.

Suleyman shares that, in 2010, he co-founded an artificial intelligence company called DeepMind. At the time, widespread adoption of AI was considered far-fetched. But DeepMind eventually became one of the world’s top AI companies, and the overall speed of AI development accelerated. This sharp acceleration has surprised even those like Suleyman who work at the cutting edge of the field. AI, he says, looks likely to reach human-level performance within the next three years.

Suleyman says that the acceleration of these technologies concerns him. On the one hand, once these technologies reach maturation, they will spread quickly throughout society and offer quality of life improvements. On the other hand, they present huge risks to nation-states and could even upend the geopolitical order, enabling vast cyberattacks, engineered pandemics, and automated wars. Some nations may respond by becoming increasingly authoritarian and intrusive to control the technologies. On the other hand, Suleyman claims, it would be unwise to ban these technologies or refuse to pursue them. The “narrow path,” a path that would reap the benefits of these new technologies while avoiding their perils, becomes narrower as these technologies accelerate (24).

Years ago, Suleyman recalls, he gave a presentation on AI’s long-term impacts. He found that when he attempted to warn others in the industry about AI’s potential threats, he was met with resistance and dismissiveness. He witnessed a similar reaction when attending a talk on biotechnology in which the presenter warned that “a single person today likely has the capacity to kill a billion people,” thanks to the acceleration of biotechnology and the availability of relatively affordable tools for synthesizing DNA (28).

The emotional reaction Suleyman witnessed in response to these talks—a type of reaction he refers to as the pessimism-aversion trap—involves downplaying and refusing to engage with potentially dire realities. This phenomenon, he says, is especially common among people who hold secure and powerful positions in society, since they are most resistant to challenges in their world order. Suleyman intends to counter pessimism-aversion with his book.

Overall, he says, The Coming Wave is about the failure of technology. There are two ways in which technology can fail: It can fail to work, or it can fail to live up to its promise. While today’s technology increasingly avoids the first type of failure, the coming wave of technology requires confronting the second type of failure. Suleyman argues that while containing these new technologies seems impossible, for the sake of humanity, it must somehow be made possible.