Reviews
Praise for The Coming Wave
"A heartfelt and candid exploration of what the future may hold for us... Eloquently articulated."
"Dazzling... You have by now read a great deal of both hype and doom-mongering on the subject [of AI]. But Suleyman’s is the book you cannot afford not to read... Brilliant."
Bloomberg
"[Suleyman] states his case with clarity and authority, and the result is a worrying, provocative book... An informative yet disturbing study and a clear warning from someone whose voice cannot be ignored."
"The Coming Wave is a fascinating, well-written, and important book. It explores the existential dangers that AI and biotechnology pose to humankind, and offers practical solutions for how we can contain the threat. The coming technological wave promises to provide humanity with godlike powers of creation, but if we fail to manage it wisely, it may destroy us."
New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
"AI will change the way we work, communicate, learn, travel, and access health care. It's an incredibly exciting opportunity, but we have to proceed thoughtfully. The Coming Wave serves as an excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times."
Co-founder of Microsoft
"The AI revolution is underway, but how well do we really understand it? The Coming Wave offers an erudite, clear-eyed guide both to the history of radical technological change and to the deep political challenges that lie ahead."
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian
"This important book is a vivid wake-up call. It carefully outlines the threats and opportunities associated with the exhilarating scientific advances of recent years. The Coming Wave is rich with interesting facts, arresting arguments, and compelling observations; it is essential reading."
Nobel Prize winner and bestselling author of Thinking Fast and Slow
"This wake-up call from the future warns of just what's coming, and what the global economic and political implications are likely to be. Truly remarkable, ambitious, and impossible to ignore, this book is a persuasively argued tour de force from a leading industry expert that will shape your view of the future—and rewire your understanding of the present."
Professor emeritus at New York University
"Mustafa Suleyman's insight as a technologist, entrepreneur, and visionary is essential. Deeply researched and highly relevant, this book provides gripping insight into some of the most important challenges of our time."
Former vice president of the United States
"In this bold book, Mustafa Suleyman, one of high tech's true insiders, addresses the most important paradox of our time: we have to contain uncontainable technologies. As he explains, generative AI, synthetic biology, robotics, and other innovations are improving and spreading quickly. They bring great benefits, but also real and growing risks.Suleyman is wise enough to know that there's no simple three-point plan for managing these risks, and brave enough to tell us so. This book is honest, passionate, and unafraid to confront what is clearly one of the great challenges our species will face this century. Thanks to Suleyman we know what the situation is and what our options are. Now it's up to us to act."
Principal research scientist at MIT Sloan; author of The Geek Way
"When this landed in my inbox, I cleared the diary and got reading. This is an extraordinary and necessary book; the awe-inspiring thought is that in twenty years it will seem almost like a conservative vision of the future, whereas right now, reading it is impossible without pausing every few pages to wonder: Can this be true? It's the book's genius to explain, soberly and gently, that yes, this will all be true—and why and how. The tone is gentle and kind and sympathetic to the reader's sense of shock. There are terrifying moments, as there should be when one realizes that most of what is familiar is about to be transformed. But, ultimately, one leaves energized and thrilled to be alive right now. The wave is about to hit and this is the forecast."
Philosopher and bestselling author
"The Coming Wave offers a much-needed dose of specificity, realism, and clarity about the potential unanticipated and yet disastrous consequences of artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and other advanced technologies. This important book is a vivid and persuasive road map for how human beings might guide technological innovations rather than be controlled by them."
Harvard professor; former dean of Harvard Law School
"Nobody has been closer to the unfolding AI revolution than Mustafa Suleyman, and nobody is better placed to outline the risks and rewards of the huge technological changes happening right now. This is an extraordinary and utterly unmissable guide to this unique moment in human history."
Former CEO of Google; co-author of The Age of AI
"In The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman offers a powerful argument that today's explosive technological revolution is poised to be uniquely disruptive. Read this essential book to understand the pace and scale of these technologies—how they will proliferate across our society and their potential to challenge the fabric of the institutions that organize our world."
Founder of Eurasia Group; bestselling author of The Power of Crisis
"This vital book is inspiring and terrifying at the same time. It is a critical education for those who do not understand the technological revolutions through which we are living, and a frontal challenge to those who do. This book is about the future for all of us: we need to read it and act on it."
Former U.K. foreign secretary
"Presenting a stark assessment of the dangers as well as the wonders of AI, Mustafa Suleyman proposes an urgent agenda of actions governments must take now to constrain the most potentially catastrophic applications of this revolutionary challenge."
Harvard professor; bestselling author of Destined for War
"The rapid pace of exponential technologies has overwhelmed us with its power and its peril. Mustafa Suleyman, in tracing the history of industrial development to the dizzying acceleration of the recent technological advances, gives us the bigger picture in calm, pragmatic, and deeply ethical prose. His personal journey and experiences enhance The Coming Wave and make it enthralling reading for everyone wanting to step back from the daily onrush of tech news."
Former United Nations under-secretary-general and high representative for Disarmament Affairs
"An incredibly compelling window into the current developments and exponential future of AI—from the ultimate insider... If you really want to understand how society can safely navigate this world-changing technology, read this book."
Cybersecurity expert; author of A Hacker's Mind
"The coming wave of AI and synthetic biology will make the next decade the best in human history. Or the worst. No one recognizes and explains the epic challenges ahead better than Mustafa Suleyman. Thought-provoking, urgent, and written in powerful, highly accessible prose, this is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding the staggering power of these technologies."
Professor, Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
"One of the greatest challenges facing the world is to devise forms of governance that harness the benefits of AI and biotech while avoiding their catastrophic risks. This book provides a deeply thoughtful account of the 'containment challenge' of these two technologies. It is meticulously researched and packed with original insights and constructive recommendations for policy makers and security experts."
CEO of RAND; former assistant director of national intelligence; former director of IARPA
" If you want to understand the meaning, promise, and threat of the coming tidal wave of transformative technologies that are even now swelling and converging out there on the main, then this deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing book by Mustafa Suleyman, one of the key pioneers of artificial intelligence, is an absolutely essential read."
Actor, broadcaster, and bestselling author
"The Coming Wave is a fantastically clear, energetic, well-researched, and readable book from the front line of the greatest technological revolution of our times. It weaves the personal and technological stories seamlessly, and shows why better governance of immensely powerful technologies is both so vital and so hard."
Professor at University College London
"The best analysis yet of what AI means for the future of humanity... Mustafa Suleyman is unique as the co-founder of not one but two major contemporary AI companies. He is a profoundly talented entrepreneur, a deep thinker, and one of the most important voices on the coming wave of technologies that will shape our world."
Co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection
"Technology is rapidly transforming society, and hence it's more important than ever to see someone within the technology industry write with such honesty and rigor. Taking us from the earliest tools to the heart of the present explosion in AI capabilities and research, this book is a panoramic survey and a clarion call to action impossible to ignore. Everyone should read it."
Professor of computer science at Stanford University, co-director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI
"The Coming Wave makes an eye-opening and convincing case that advanced technologies are reshaping every aspect of society: power, wealth, warfare, work, and even human relations. Can we control these new technologies before they control us? A world leader in artificial intelligence and a longtime advocate for governments, big tech, and civil society to act for the common good, Mustafa Suleyman is the ideal guide to this crucial question."
University Professor at Columbia University, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
"A sharp, compassionate, and uncompromising framing of the most consequential issue of our times, The Coming Wave is a must-read for technology practitioners, but more importantly it is a resolute call to action for all of us to participate in this most consequential discourse."
CEO of MiraclePlus, ex-COO of Baidu, ex-EVP of Microsoft Bing
"Suleyman is uniquely well-positioned to articulate the potentially grave consequences—geopolitical upheaval, war, the erosion of the nation-state—of the unfettered development of AI and synthetic biology, at a time when we need this message most. Fortunately for the reader, he has also thought deeply about what needs to be done to ensure that emerging technologies are used for human good, setting forward a series of incremental efforts that if undertaken collectively can change the environment in which these technologies are developed and disseminated, opening the door to preserving that brighter future. This book is a must-read."
Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
"A brave wake-up call that we all need to answer—before it's too late... Mustafa Suleyman explains, with clarity and precision, the risks posed by runaway technologies and the challenges that humanity faces... Indispensable reading."
Co-founder and executive director of the Center for Humane Technology
"A practical and optimistic road map for action on the most important issue of our time: how to retain power over entities far more powerful than ourselves."
Professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley
"The Coming Wave is a realistic, deeply informed, and highly accessible map of the unprecedented governance and national security challenges posed by artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Suleyman's remarkable and in some senses frightening book shows what must be done to contain these seemingly uncontainable technologies."
Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University
"Brilliant and inviting, complex and clear, urgent and calm, The Coming Wave guides us all to understand and confront what may be the most crucial question of our century: How can we ensure that the breathtaking, fast-paced technological revolutions ahead—AI, synthetic biology, and more—create the world we want? It's not going to be easy, but Suleyman lays a strong foundation. Everyone who cares about the future should read this book."
Founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and former White House science advisor
"A strikingly lucid and refreshingly balanced account of our current technological predicament, The Coming Wave articulates the defining challenge of our era. Blending pragmatism with humility, it reminds us that there are no stark binaries or simple answers: technology has gifted us with exponential improvements in well-being, but it's accelerating faster than institutions can adapt. Advances in AI and synthetic biology have unlocked capabilities undreamed of by science fiction, and the resulting proliferation of power threatens everything we've built.To stay afloat, we must steer between the Scylla of accessible catastrophe and the Charybdis of omnipresent surveillance. With every page turned, our odds improve."
Biologist and associate professor at MIT Media Lab
"The Coming Wave is a masterpiece and a must-read for every leader grappling with today’s reality. Mustafa Suleyman, a leading AI pioneer, takes us on a compelling dive into what is by turns the most promising and most threatening development of our time. With a confident hand, he both zooms out to the big picture and zooms into the essential details about AI, synthetic biology and robotics. His penetrating observations about the challenges are followed by clear recommendations for the approach we must take in order to tackle them successfully."
Former prime minister of Israel
"This book is a masterclass for policymakers on the great technological challenges already upon us and what they mean for geopolitics."
Former prime minister of Australia