The coming wave by Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman
E book
non fiction! Which is why it is so scary!
The intro is the best! A prediction of the future of AI was written so well and the dangers of AI having control over our life and future! The scary thing was that the intro was written by an AI!
Suleyman is the founder of a company called the Deep Mind which was the leader in AI till it was acquired by Google for a staggering 400 million USD! Then after different roles he is now the part of the AI team of Microsoft!
He tells even in 2010, the AI wave is actually a tsunami!
Anyone and everyone has access to knowledge on the know how! How to create DNA strands using an assembled machine with a DYI instruction freely available online if you are willing to watch an ad! With that a single person has the capability to kill a billion people!
Pessimism aversion is the emotional response an ingrained gut refusal to accept the possibility of seriously destabilising outcomes!
In a satirical way the author starts the first part with a development of technology and names this as Homo Technologicus!
Development of automobiles with an amazing history of Benz and Ford!
Then about Nuclear proliferation and the first atomic bomb developed 12 years after the eminent Physicist told in full confidence about the impossibility of a bomb! He categorically told that anyone who is saying that they can develop atomic bomb is actually taking moonshine! For the teetotalers like me, Moonshine is a whisky!
Now the warhead developed in the early years were maintained by obsolete hardware chips! A single error would actually mean the end of the world! Plus the fact that it has been told that the United States has ‘Lost’ at least ‘three’ nuclear weapons! Now that is a scary fact!
How even now itself many computer techs use ChatGPT for writing codes and then only supervise! Very soon writing codes will be relegated to them completely!
The human genome project started in 1988 and completed in 2003 after completing over 92 percent!
The cost of genetic testing fell from a Billion dollars to less than a 1000!
So in the future you can have a gene testing or modifying lab in your garage!
CRISPr edits DNA and sequences it! Here he tells about the progress in Genetic engineering along with the example of two illegally produced genetically engineered babies!
The quantum computer by google was a tech marvel! Now you have many!
The sputnik influence on US arms race is like the influence of AI on China which has not emerged leader in AI
Even the AlphaGo was like the sputnik influence on China which has made them move at an amazing speed!
Huge amount of data is public like GitHub has 190 million repositories of code!
Research is the key! The worldwide research spending is 700 billion annually! Amazon’s R and D budget itself is around 78 billion dollars!
Amazon already has a auto bot which does amazing work!
The chief aim of the book is to warn about the dangers of AI from the expert in AI and also some suggestions on how to contain or control the AI
How being a part of Google he was responsible for the legal team which did not happen though!
Then about the containment issue of AI and data! This was a scary section! Luckily he also gives some solutions!
About how a rogue person with an example to boot can actually use AI for nefarious purposes! With an example which was quite recent and scary!
How we know have amazing nuclear weapons, bioweapons and data weapons!
We can do genetic engineering!
The example of Lulu and Nana, the first genetically illegally modified babies are perfect examples of the same!
The best part of the novel according to me was his opinion of India! Now while Yuval had positives and negatives; Suleiman was all positive and I loved it!
I am reproducing a section verbatim for Indians!
This is after he spoke of the superpowers US, China and EU;
India is an obvious fourth pillar to a new global order of giants, alongside the United States, China, and the EU. Its population is young and entrepreneurial, increasingly urbanized, and ever more connected and tech savvy.
By 2030 its economy will have passed those of countries like the U.K., Germany, and Japan to be the third largest in the world; by 2050, it will be worth $30 trillion!
Its government is determined to make Indian tech a reality. Through its Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) program, India’s government is working to ensure the world’s most populous country achieves ownership of core technology systems competitive with the United States and China. Under it, India established partnerships with, for example, Japan on Al and robotics, as well as Israel for drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. Prepare for an Indian wave!
This section was bliss for me!
He concludes how when the machine looms were being built there were a group of people who formed an army and used to regularly destroy such machines! In spite of huge destructions though, the machines finally won!
In fact it actually lead to an improvement of the quality of life of the worker’s children and grandkids!
The author concludes that any modern tech will definitely come and we cannot stop it for long! He just hopes that the tech will be safe!
The whole book if is hundred percent then over 30 percent is just the references! That will tell you of the amount of research which has gone in this book!
Unlike Yuval though who is actually not an expert in tech; the authors here are leaders in AI! But the text is bland and slow and very very dull!
This whole novel actually reads like a textbook and feels like one! Full of facts and boring data!
We like reading Yuval’s books because he made history interesting! It was like gossip! This novel may be having more facts and is much more accurate but the flow will make you sleep!
But wake up! The AI wave is coming!
ramadocblog 