The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar New: Crown 2023

The author begins his analysis by identifying the two technological opportunities and threats: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Biotechnology (BT). Regarding AI, the author reiterates the fear that the application can go rogue, operate beyond human control. With BT, the concern is tampering with the fundamental elements of life. With both, Suleyman ponders the ability to contain the consequences of their results. He posed the following question, "What if we could distill the essence of what makes us humans so productive and capable into software, into an algorithm?" (pp. 7-8). The author believes that we are proceeding to an affirmative to his question. The risks include an upheaval and replacement to manual and intellectual labor and, biologically, the ability to purchase DNA synthesizers that will produce and modify strands of DNA. Suleyman wrote this book to warn readers of the potential dangers and propose safeguards. He divided the book into four parts: Part 1, the history of technology, Part 2, the current state with AI and BT, Part 3, the politics of current technology, and Part 4, the interventions that humans should take to have the technologies work toward the common good. Defining containment as "a set of interlinked and mutually reinforcing technical, cultural, legal, and political mechanisms for maintaining societal control of technology during a time of exponential change" (pp. 37-38), the term implies a multi-dimensional approach to human control over technology, extending to various social institutions and political layers, national and international. The failure of nuclear containment shows the difficulty of the task.