MFDF Board Bookshelf: The Coming Wave. AI, Power and Our Future. By Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar. Crown. 2025

Mustafa Suleyman, author of the Coming Wave, cofounder of AI firm DeepMind and CEO of Microsoft AI, makes the case that because of AI’s power and potential for peril the technology should be embraced but controlled and contained.  He writes that the “coming wave” is defined by two core technologies: artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, which will “usher in a new dawn for humanity.”  This new dawn will create untold wealth and surplus but may lead bad actors to cause “disruption, instability and even catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.”  Suleyman looks back to past waves, from the printing press, industrialization, and the automobile, noting that with each invention that transformed the way humans lived, proliferation was key. “General purpose technologies become waves when they diffuse widely.”

Similarly, AI has the potential to transform the human race. His discussions on the uses of AI, particularly in bioinformatics, could be enough to change some AI skeptics’ minds on the technology’s potential for good. Not so much AI’s warfare capabilities. He acknowledges that labor market disruptions will be “hugely destabilizing for hundreds of millions.” Throughout, Suleyman takes a balanced view of AI noting its many positives and negatives, and warning that appropriate harnessing of this technology is critical.

The second half of the book was the most impactful, focusing on “containment,” which he writes, encompasses regulation, technical safety, governance and ownership models, accountability and transparency. Suleyman asks what does a “World Bank for biotech or a UN for AI look like?”  He seems to advocate for a sort of nuclear treaty to build a common approach for “management and mitigation” of the AI wave. Suleyman points to recent initiatives such as the White House executive order on AI, the UK’s national Safety AI Institute and the EU’s AI Act as positive steps by governments but notes much work still needs to be done. Overall, this was a balanced and informative read on the seemingly unlimited power of artificial intelligence and the need for a joint, global effort to manage its potential.