The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future: The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the ultimate AI insider Paperback – 3 Oct. 2024

IMHO this book should be read by everyone who has an interest in the future, particularly those who have young children, because AI is making our current education systems unfit for purpose, and it's also going to dramatically affect the world of work, in fact it already has for some professions. Some of the predictions in the book may seem far fetched, but if anyone knows how AI is going to evolve and how powerful it will become, it's the author who is one of the founders of AI company, Deep Mind, who is now the CEO of Microsoft AI.The book is well written and begins by charting the technological waves throughout human history, and how they changed the world we live in. This helps understand how this technological revolution is different. For the first time we are entering an 'industrial' revolution that will impact highly paid, professional jobs, and while it will probably result in new jobs, like previous industrial revolutions, it will be far fewer that the number of jobs that disappear - actually the jobs won't disappear as such, they will simply be performed by far fewer people whose productivity has been amplified by AI, at least in the short term!Unfortunately, it is hard not to develop a sense of foreboding while reading this book, but I believe it is better that people fully understand what's coming, especially for the sake of their children.

Dense read with lots of stimulating ideas on the potential impact of AI. Edition now likely to be overtaken (unless updated) by developments (e.g. in Agentic AI). Good primer, nonetheless.

The Coming Wave is a fascinating and thought-provoking look at the rapid rise of powerful technologies like AI and synthetic biology. Mustafa Suleyman, with his deep experience in tech, explains how these tools are developing faster than our ability to control them—and why that matters for everyone.What I loved most is how the book strikes a balance between excitement and caution. It’s not fearmongering, but it makes a strong case for why we need to act now to make sure these technologies serve humanity, not the other way around. His idea of the “containment problem” really sticks with you—it’s all about how we manage these world-changing tools before they manage us.This is a smart, accessible read that blends tech, ethics, and policy in a way that feels urgent but hopeful.

My beef with AI research for the last 40 years has been that they often seem to mistake "humans exhibit some general intelligence" with "general intelligence will exhibit humanlike traits". If you could make an AI that was as generally intelligent as a squirrel, you'd deserve the Nobel Prize. Instead, thanks to the Turing Test, we keep looking at conversation. And GPT-4 has shown us some very interesting things about intelligence, but mostly how well you can get by without thinking at all. Suleyman proposes a new "Turing Test" for what he calls "artificial capable intelligence", but it's essentially a test of how good an AI is at behaving like an entrepreneurial investor. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.Anyway, what's the book like? Well, I found the first half infuriatingly superficial. It's a supermarket dash through all the ways AI will be changing our lives, but never in any real depth. I thought You Look Like A Thing And I Love You was a bit lacking in meat, but it was The First Three Minutes compared to this. In fact, if you asked ChatGPT to write a book about the subject, it would look a lot like this.It gets better halfway through (Part III onwards) when the author is on firmer ground with an interesting discussion of AI's impact on society and politics. If the book had started there it would have been half as long and twice as good.On the other hand, I never normally read these "Times bestseller" pop tech books. I mentioned it to a friend and he said he loved it -- possibly because you can skim-read it in a hour or two and then have something to say at a dinner party. Intellectually, though, you'll be hungry again a couple of hours later.

Essential reading! Powerfully argued and very well written, and despite the author's solid gold credentials in the world of Machine Learning, the book doesn't get bogged down in the technology - this is all about the social and political implications. Encourage everyone you know or meet who's in a position of power in both commercial and political spheres to digest the messages, and act on them.

Very good but not as good as Tie Stories by Tom H.H. Kelly.