Technology & Society
The Coming Wave
Power, containment and the next technological wave
Mustafa Suleyman, 2023, 9 min read
Editorial introduction
Mustafa Suleyman helped build modern AI at DeepMind, and his argument is not that the tools are clever but that they are unstoppable: a wave of large-scale AI, joined by synthetic biology, is arriving with the power to reshape economies, security and the state itself.
Kravion reads the book as a governance problem rather than a product tour. Its uncomfortable core is the containment problem, how a society keeps a technology it can no longer un-invent from outrunning the institutions meant to steer it.
Key ideas
- 01
The wave is real, and it proliferates
General-purpose technologies never stay in the lab; they spread because they are useful, cheap and easy to copy. Betting against their arrival, Suleyman argues, is the least realistic position on offer.
- 02
Why this wave resists control
It is asymmetric, omni-use, increasingly autonomous and fast-evolving: a small actor can wield outsized power, and the same model serves cure and weapon. Those traits make older methods of control leak.
- 03
The pessimism-aversion trap
We look away from disruptive downsides because naming them is uncomfortable, which is how real risks get quietly sweetened. Facing that reflex is the precondition for taking the danger seriously.
- 04
Power drains from the nation-state
As capability concentrates in code and cheap hardware, the state loses its grip on force and coordination. Suleyman's fear is a squeeze between catastrophe on one side and a surveillance overreaction on the other.
Who this book is for
- Anyone forming a view on AI beyond both hype and doom
- Builders and policymakers who want the containment question stated plainly
- Readers after the societal stakes, not a manual for the tools
Kravion verdict
Urgent, and honest about its own dread
Suleyman is more convincing on the diagnosis than on the cure: his closing agenda for containment, safety, audits, choke points, treaties and culture, is a direction more than a manual, and he says so himself. As an insider's case for taking the next decade seriously, without sliding into boosterism or despair, it holds.
Turn it into action
Write a two-line critique of the most optimistic AI claim you heard this week, and name what it leaves out.
Kravion for iPhone runs the loop for you: one insight, one reflection, one action, then a review of what actually happened.
Open this in KravionDiscussion
The reading circle around The Coming Wave: notes, questions and takeaways from other readers.
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