The Coming Wave

July 31, 2023
“An emerging cluster of related technologies centered on AI and synthetic biology... will both empower humankind and present unprecedented new risks,” according to this shrewd debut. Suleyman, cofounder of the artificial intelligence companies DeepMind and Inflection AI, chronicles the technological advances that led to today’s AI boom with anecdotes from his career, describing DeepMind’s 2012 work on an algorithm capable of teaching itself simple computer games and the company’s 2018 breakthrough developing a program capable of predicting unknown protein structures. According to Suleyman, four features distinguish these new technologies: the high speed at which they’re developing, the broad variety of uses for them, their ability to function relatively autonomously, and their capacity to affect “entire societies” (he mentions the possibility that “a single system could control autonomous vehicles throughout a territory”). Regulation is the key to dodging dystopia, he contends, outlining 10 steps for keeping AI under human control, including ensuring that all AI have a “bulletproof off switch” and requiring government-issued licenses to produce “the most sophisticated AI systems.” Suleyman’s account of DeepMind’s achievements can come across as self-serving, but anecdotes about other companies working on technologies capable of, for instance, interfacing directly with the human brain, underscore the mind-bending possibilities. It’s a sober take on navigating the perils of AI.