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The Coming Wave

AI, Power and Our Future

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The Coming Wave

By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar
Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

**A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, Sept 2023**


**SHORTLISTED FOR THE FT BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023**

AI. SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY. QUANTUM COMPUTING. Everything is about to change. This is the only book you need to understand this new world.

From the ultimate AI insider, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, part of Google.

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 and the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.

Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?

This ground-breaking 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.


'Fascinating, well-written, and important' Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens

'Deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing' Stephen Fry

'An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times' Bill Gates

©2023 Michael Bhaskar & Mustafa Suleyman (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Biological Sciences Biotechnology Computer Science Future Studies History & Culture Machine Theory & Artificial Intelligence Science Social Sciences Technology & Society Technology Inspiring Thought-Provoking Robotics Surveillance

Critic Reviews

Heartfelt and candid … a serious exploration of what the future might hold for us all
Thoughtful and persuasive
Confused by the current furore about AI? This book is a good place to start… The Coming Wave is a sweeping account of the latest advances in AI and synthetic biology
A cogent look at the technology’s potential to transform the economy and society, along with the risks of misuse and surveillance
The rise of AI has led to a rise in books about AI, among the most insightful of which is The Coming Wave
Unusually thoughtful, expansive, historically rooted and engagingly written
A genuinely mind-boggling read, setting out the ineluctable forces soon to completely transform politics, society and even the fabric of life itself over the next decade or two
Deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing
A fascinating, well-written and important book
A stunning book by a man at the very centre of the AI revolution - realistic, tough-minded [and] charting a meaningful course between AI catastrophe and dystopia
All stars
Most relevant
Confronting but I think spot on there needs to be action on the global scale to consider what is happening and how we can best contain it so that everyone can benefit. Let’s not be ignorant.

Time to act. Create a we.

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The level of information of new information beautifully presented. was amazing.
most informative book I've listened too.will read this a second time soon.

My Enlightenment

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A must listen for those running a business or an employee, I wish for a smooth transition to AI .. it could be ugly

Recommend

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Very interesting topic. Worth listening to. Mentions a lot of parallels, however, the power of this wave has no parallel.

It's actually a Tsunami that is coming.

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The Wave Is Already Here

- Suleyman argues that we’re not waiting for a technological revolution—it’s already underway. AI systems are organizing our lives, running businesses, and even influencing government services.
- He emphasizes that quantum computing, synthetic biology, and autonomous systems are converging with AI to create a wave of transformation that’s faster and more disruptive than anything humanity has faced before.

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🧠 Profound Impact of AI Today

- AI is already augmenting human decision-making, optimizing logistics, diagnosing diseases, and generating creative content.
- Suleyman, as co-founder of DeepMind and CEO of Microsoft AI, brings insider clarity to how AI is being deployed at scale—not just in labs, but in real-world systems that affect billions.
- He warns that governments and institutions are unprepared, and that the pace of deployment is outstripping our ability to regulate or even understand the consequences.

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🚀 Future Implications: Beyond Automation

- The book envisions a world of robot assistants, DNA printers, and abundant energy, where AI doesn’t just support human activity—it redefines it.
- Suleyman explores how AI could challenge the nation-state, disrupt global order, and force us to rethink governance, ethics, and control.
- He calls for a “containment” strategy—a way to guide and constrain these technologies before they spiral beyond our grasp.

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🔍 Why It Resonates

- Endorsed by thinkers like Bill Gates, Yuval Noah Harari, and Stephen Fry, the book is praised for its clarity, urgency, and depth.
- It’s not just a warning—it’s a call to action for technologists, policymakers, and everyday citizens to engage with the future we’re building.

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AI as we know it is just the very tip of the iceberg.

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