The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

None of us can be sure how exactly all this unfolds. Within the broad parameters of the dilemma are an immense and unknowable range of specific outcomes. I am, however, confident that the coming decades will see complex, painful trade-offs between prosperity, surveillance, and the threat of catastrophe growing ever more acute. Even a system of states in the best possible health would struggle. We are facing the ultimate challenge for Homo technologicus. If this book feels contradictory in its attitude toward technology, part positive and part foreboding, that’s because such a contradictory view is the most honest assessment of where we are. Our great-grandparents would be astonished at the abundance of our world. But they would also be astonished at its fragility and perils. With the coming wave, we face a real threat, a cascade of potentially disastrous consequences—yes, even an existential risk to the species. Technology is the best and worst of us. There isn’t a neat one-sided approach that does it justice. The only coherent approach to technology is to see both sides at the same time. Over the last decade or so this dilemma has become even more pronounced, the task of tackling it more urgent. Look at the world and it seems that containment is not possible.

The Uncontainable Paradox