My Reflections on The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Artificial intelligence, containment, and the challenge of governing accelerating power.

The Coming Wave offers a forward-looking reflection on the significance of artificial intelligence and the risks that accompany it. While Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, is clearly optimistic about the potential of this next industrial revolution to improve human life, the central argument of the book is containment: whether it is possible and, if so, how humanity should approach it.

Suleyman begins by placing AI within a broader historical context. He introduces the idea of Homo technologicus, humanity as a species defined by its tools. He revisits the four previous industrial revolutions: the steam engine, electricity, computers, and the digital internet age. Each of these transformations initially generated fear, often for valid reasons such as job displacement and social disruption. Over time, however, societies adapted, normalized these technologies, and rarely reflected on how destabilizing they once appeared.

The “coming wave,” as Suleyman describes it, represents a fundamentally different shift. Artificial intelligence will not only transform digital technologies but will also merge with fields such as synthetic biology, robotics, and automation, which can be understood as a fifth industrial revolution. These systems will reshape human life in ways we cannot yet fully predict. Importantly, this transformation is not limited to tools like ChatGPT; it involves the convergence of intelligence and biology, expanding technological power into domains previously governed by natural limits.

This raises the book's central question: how do we contain such power? Suleyman argues that containment requires global, interdisciplinary cooperation across governments, institutions, and scientific fields. Without such efforts, the risks extend beyond abstract concerns and into the stability of the systems modern societies depend on. While the coming wave is advancing rapidly and may never be fully contained, the book makes a compelling case that restraint and governance are still necessary—and worth attempting.

This reflection serves as an overview of Suleyman’s core arguments: humanity’s historical relationship with technology, why the coming wave is different, and why containment has become one of the defining challenges of our time.

In a future post, I will reflect more personally on what these ideas mean through my own lived experience. These reflections are part of an ongoing series on leadership, technology, and resilience.