Book Review: The Coming Wave
I just finished reading Mustafa Suleyman’s book The Coming Wave. This book I got for free at The Atlantic Festival 2023. My friend told me about the festival last year and I was unsure if going to this event was worth my time or not. But because I had just finished my M.S. degree and was technically still classified as a student, I was able to get the student discount for I think $23. This was a total steal and a great deal, so I thought why not? Why not go to The Atlantic Festival and see what happens? One of the sessions I attended was a panel discussion with supermodel Karlie Kloss and Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, Infection AI and author of this book; interestingly Mustafa is now at Microsoft and works for Microsoft AI. To be honest, I don’t remember much from their panel discussion. I remember the panel discussion was around noon time and I fell asleep during parts of the discussion. At the end of the discussion, they gave everyone a free copy of Mustafa’s latest book The Coming Wave.
I was finally able to finish reading this book last week. It was a struggle to get through this book and I would rate it a 2/5. I felt this was a very general book with a lot of hype and big ideas, but not a lot of specifics. I will give the book credit for one thing: When it did go into specifics, it had some really interesting information such as details about the chip war, geopolitics, and the culture at cutting-edge technology companies. I didn’t really learn much from this book, but here are the top seven interesting ideas I gleaned from the book:
- “Generally, though, consider containment more as a set of guardrails, a way to keep humanity in the driver’s seat when a technology risks causing more harm than good."
This was an interesting point. When we talk about AI ethics, the most important thing is to put in guardrails such that the AI can be shut off and brought back to a nominal state if needed. I think this is important and part of what developing technology ethically would entail. Innovation is important, but so is ethics.
- “But what this misses is that the most powerful forces in the world are actually groups of individuals coordinating to achieve shared goals. Organizations too are a kind of intelligence."
Big things, especially when it comes to any technical or engineering project, can never be done alone. It’s too hard and the product is not going to be that great if one person is working on it. Technology products must be created in a group setting to really bring forth the creativity of the group. The end result will be better and cater to a far greater audience!
- “Making history, doing something that matters, helping others, beating others, impressing a prospective partner, impressing a boss, peers, rivals; it’s all in there, all part of the ever-present drive to take risks, explore the edges, go further into the unknown. Build something new. Change the game. Climb the mountain."
At the core of any new technology, it’s driven by egos. Technology can only be propelled forward if it’s self-driven by the founders’ egos. This is an important point in that people will put forth great effort to do something if it ultimately benefits them. Whether that’s money, prestige, power, or just maintaining an image, people don’t do things that don’t ultimately benefit them or the people that they care about!
- “Most technology is made to earn money."
Related to the last point, technology is only sustainable and worth doing if it ultimately brings in profits. Otherwise, there’s not going to be sustained motivation to push through the hard times and the technology will eventually lose momentum. Most technology ultimately is about P&L and how viable it is from a business perspective.
- “Openness is science and technology’s cardinal ideology. What is known must be shared; what is discovered must be published. Science and technology live and breathe on free debate and the open sharing of information, to the extent that openness has itself grown into a powerful (and amazingly beneficial) incentive."
Open-source is a central tenet of science and engineering. It’s important to share everything and document everything such that all parties can learn from the experience. In this type of open culture where debate is encouraged, the best ideas emerge and win out. This is so important in that it adds a source of rigor to the project and ultimately makes the results that much greater!
- “As with AI, robotics proved much more difficult in practice than early engineers assumed. The real world is a strange, uneven, unexpected, and unstructured environment…"
The real world can never be closely boxed in and planned in detail. Even the best plans cannot account for crazy things that happen in the world. Therefore, adaptability is very important and one has to always learn new things. If one is not learning, then one is stuck in his or her ways. Especially when it comes to doing engineering and technology work, just start with a rough plan. Don’t get too deep in the weeds; focus on getting something working and then optimize later!
- “Get involved… The closer you are to a technology’s beating heart, the more you can affect outcomes, steer it in more positive directions, and block harmful applications. But this means also being part of what makes it a reality - for all the good and for all the harm it may do."
To be a true engineer, you need to build and tinker. This is the most important thing. It’s not enough just to be able to describe or talk about technology; the most important thing is to be able to build things! Building things for humans (who are unpredictable and emotional) means that engineers must ultimately be able to adjust and recalibrate at any time. It may feel messy, but an engineer’s job is to sort out the chaos and solve problems by proposing and executing solutions after consulting with others! Take a problem that you don’t know much about, research a bit, and then go and build a solution!