Over the ten years I’ve been writing my WOW blogposts – weekly, until last May, but only sporadically since then – I’ve written dozens of reviews of books I thought WOW readers would appreciate reading as much as I had. These reviews were mostly gentle nudges, sometimes strong suggestions, to read books I’d loved, for whatever reasons I loved them — the way book-loving friends share book suggestions among themselves all the time.

This time, in this review, I’ll need to do more than nudge and suggest, I think. I’ll have to add a bit more pressure, because the subject of this book, artificial intelligence, known by all as A.I., is not necessarily of interest to my WOW readers, who are mainly older women about my age. I know this because my last two blogposts, “Meanwhile” (11/29), and “Stardust to Stardust” (12/12), on the subject of A.I. received so few views.

But bear with me now, please, because this book, THE COMING WAVE, by Mustafa Suleyman, may be the most important book you’ll read in 2025:

So if you have a New Year’s Resolutions list, please add getting and reading this book to it. And if you don’t have such a list, make a resolution to read this book anyway. 

As I mentioned in “Meanwhile” (https://blog.bonnieleeblack.com/meanwhile/ ), I set a goal for myself some weeks ago to read four reputable books on the subject of A.I. and treat this list as if it were on a syllabus for a college course. My aim was not to become an expert on A.I. – I’ll never be that — but rather a better informed citizen of the world I still live in. 

I’ve just finished reading all four books – James Barrat’s OUR FINAL INVENTION, Henry Kissinger’s THE AGE OF A.I., Alejandro Diego’s THE UNSEEN DANGERS OF A.I.’S UNSTOPPABLE RISE, and now Suleyman’s THE COMING WAVE. Of these four excellent books that I’d chosen for this personal course of study out of the many books now available on the subject, Suleyman’s is the one I’d recommend the highest.

In fact, if I were still teaching Creative Nonfiction Writing at the college level, I would assign THE COMING WAVE to all of my students to read and report on. Why? Because Suleyman has managed to achieve the almost impossible: He’s taken the highly technical, mind-boggling, and unnerving topic of A.I.’s existence, acceleration, benefits, and risks and made it all not only clearly accessible to the layperson (such as myself) but also page-turningly compelling. 

His writing sparkles. His storytelling skills – in painting true, human stories of technology’s inexorable advancement through the ages – are gripping. His scope is wide and comprehensive. His tone is consistently reasonable and calm, never alarmist or preachy. He places A.I. as a technological phenomenon in a grand historical context; he looks at it from all angles – past, present, and future; and he offers his best thoughts on ways the immense risks of it might be averted. 

Oxford-educated Mustafa Suleyman, now only forty years old, is perfectly positioned to teach us about A.I. In 2023 and 2024 he was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the world in artificial intelligence. 

The eldest son of a Syrian father and English mother, he was born and raised in London and became an artificial intelligence entrepreneur in his mid-twenties. Now EVP and CEO of Microsoft A.I., he was the co-founder and former head of applied A.I. at DeepMind, an A.I. company acquired by Google. After leaving DeepMind, he co-founded Inflection A.I., a machine learning and generative A.I. company in 2022.

As he clearly states in the beginning of THE COMING WAVE, “I love technology. It’s been the engine of progress and a cause for us to be proud and excited about humanity’s achievements. But I also believe that those of us driving technology’s creation must have the courage to predict – and take responsibility for – where it might take us in decades to come.”

We’re living at a time when unprecedented opportunities could well be matched by unprecedented risks, he points out.  “As the technology has progressed over the years,” he says, “my concerns have grown. What if the wave is actually a tsunami?”

Yes, yes, I know what you may be thinking: This wave, this possible tsunami, will likely hit after I’ve left this mortal coil, so I don’t have to add it to my long list of worries right now. There’s so much else to worry about in this crazy, swirling world! Maybe so. But if we have children or grandchildren – or know people who do – we need to be aware of and concerned about the coming wave destined to hit humanity in the not-too-distant future. And the best way, I feel, to become better aware is to read this book in this new year; in fact, the sooner the better.

Unlike the other books on the subject I’ve read, which speak optimistically – or skeptically – about the possibility of containment and leave it there, Suleyman’s book gives a deeply thought-through ten-point outline at the end on HOW this containment might be achieved. He believes in being realistic, clear-eyed, and proactive:

“People often ask me,” he says, “given all this, why work in A.I. and build A.I. companies and tools? Aside from the huge positive contribution they can make, my answer is that I don’t just want to talk about and debate containment. I want to proactively help make it happen, on the front foot, ahead of where the technology is going. Containment needs technologists utterly focused on making it a reality.”

So here’s an idea: After you’ve read this book and you’re fully inspired to act, why not encourage your grandchildren (or friends’ grandchildren) to pursue careers in A.I. containment? There are not enough of these specialists, Suleyman says. That would be a good place to begin, I feel.

“The closer you are to a technology’s beating heart,” Suleyman says, “the more you can affect outcomes, steer it in more positive directions, and block harmful applications.” Fundamentally, though, he says, “neither technologists nor governments will solve this problem alone. But together we all might.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I’m delighted to retire my bent and battered SMA 2024 calendar – so symbolic of this year just passed — and replace it with this big, brand new, clean, shiny 2025 calendar I have in my hand. Twenty-twenty-five will be a challenging year, no doubt about it, but we must all resolve to work to make good things happen in it.  

HAPPY, HEALTHY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!