New Book = Must Read!
How AI and biotechnology will transform humanity and our future.
Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay
Mustafa Suleyman doesn't know the future.
But he well knows which two forces are going to overwhelmingly shape our future.
We can't stop these two forces.
Suleyman hopes we'll learn to control them enough to survive and, better, bring on utopia for humanity.
But they could just as easily - almost inevitably will - cause huge catastrophes that could wipe us out.
Suleyman's rosy outlook is exhilarating.
We're headed for longer healthier lives, cheaper energy and solutions to the environmental challenges we face.
His bleak outlook is like a roadmap to Hell.
Totalitarian governments using AI to make the world of George Orwell's 1984 look like Jeffersonian democracy.
Wars with few soldiers, but civilian casualties in the millions.
Worldwide disasters.
Which fork will humanity choose?
Quite likely - some of both.
And Suleyman wrote this book to help tilt the balance of future events toward the positive outcome.
But nothing's guaranteed, except these two forces will continue to grow and impact our daily lives (as they do already).
Here's the most important book on technology and humanity since 1970's FUTURE SHOCK by Alvin Toffler:
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman
My biggest objection is the dull, unimaginative title.
"Coming Wave" sound more like a volume on surfing than the most important book for a general audience on both the promise and peril of two inevitable technologies.
The subtitle's a little better, but we're facing something much more dramatic than a mere "dilemma," even the century's "greatest."
The stakes for humanity couldn't be higher.
What's pushing humanity to a future either fantastically wonderful or catastrophic:
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
2. Biotechnology, the harnessing of DNA
As the founder of two major AI startups (DeepMind and Inflection AI), Suleyman is uniquely qualified to write about both the promises and dangers posed by AI.
I especially like his recognition of both the value and limitations of the modern liberal democratic nation-state.
He's well aware that in the high tech industry, many are libertarians actively cheering on the collapse of said nation-state and governments.
(He specifically mentions Peter Thiel.)
Suleyman grew up in England, but his family's from Syria, which has seen a near-collapse of its government. Because he’s seen how disastrous and violent anarchy really is, he recognizes the value of a stable, functioning society.
However, that doesn't mean he wants governments to use AI to control their own citizens, as we're seeing now, most notably in China.
Early chapters cover the history of technology, making the point that from fire to the Internet, useful technologies inevitably spread - even when governments actively try to restrict, control or suppress them.
He goes into great depth on the present state of AI and biotechnology - and how they will help humanity or return us to the Stone Age.
Thanks to the introduction of ChatGPT a year ago, you probably think you've already heard all the hype surrounding AI.
You're wrong.
I subscribe to both ChatGPT and MidJourney, yet I've been underestimating the eventual power of AI.
According to Suleyman, there's no limit to AI because you can always increase computational power by linking more computers.
Our ability to process information from DNA is already beginning to reshape the practice of medicine.
Wait until any high school kid can buy a DNA synthesizer and create brand new creatures - yes, novel species.
This could include brand new micro-organisms that cause diseases our immune systems don't know how to cure.
All of us will be able to create AI virtual agents to accomplish a variety of tasks online.
If everything goes well, we'll all live lives of leisure and abundance, doing only what interests us, playing games.
We'll live in luxury, with unimaginable physical, material comforts.
Intellectual or creative work will be carried out by AI.
Robots will perform all physical work.
Unless, that is, we're all killed by an incurable virus or AI-directed drones hunt us all down like a scene out of THE TERMINATOR.
Can AI Replicate My Creativity?
As a writer, I want to believe AI cannot duplicate what I write.
That's why I deliberately include content AI can't know. That includes my opinions, stories from my life and experiences and connections I've made other people haven't.
So you know *I* wrote this - a fallible human being, but a human being.
But AI can't be ignored, and reading this book reminded me I need to use ChatGPT more.
I once asked it to write an article on the health benefits of eating walnuts.
The article ChatGPT wrote was not at all in my style. I sure couldn't use it. My client wouldn't have accepted it.
But it did give me a few useful and fun facts on walnuts and turns of phrase I did incorporate into the final article.
I wrote a children's picture book, and was having trouble thinking up a good title.
ChatGPT came up with a great, appropriate title. I had to tweak it a bit, but it solved my problem.
I still would not trust ChatGPT or any AI to write an entire book from scratch.
I'm now working on a novel, a unique political thriller, and I'm certain AI couldn't have come up with the idea, let alone the terrific plot and characters.
But other "writers" are using AI to write books as a money-making scheme.
These novels may lack heart and depth of soul, but there's a huge number of people who'll read any book in the genres they enjoy.
Quality and originality of ideas not required.
What Can We Do?
In later chapters, Suleyman analyzes various potential ways to contain AI and biotechnologies.
He concludes this will be extremely difficult - maybe impossible - but we've got to try.
'We,' in this case meaning all of us - because all of humanity's survival is at stake.
This Book Won't Make You Rich, Though
Or maybe it will.
But that’s not the point.
My other criticism is that Suleyman gives no advice to us as individuals and families on how to survive and thrive using AI and biotechnology.
In a way, maybe that's partly his point.
If the government adopts AI surveillance technologies or a brand new plague spreads around the globe . . . there's not much we as individuals can do to stop it.
Yes, of course you could buy up the stock of a lot of AI companies.
The AI industry is absolutely set to grow enormously in the next five, ten and more years.
But nobody can tell you now which of those companies will become the Microsoft of AI and which the Lotus.
Yet owning a fortune in AI stock won't protect you if that AI decides to wipe out humanity.
The same with biotechnology.
So I'll leave you to make your own choices.
To do that, however, you must remain aware of all possibilities - for both good and evil - in the fields of AI and biotechnology.
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