The Coming Wave : Technology Doesn’t Wait

What Happens When Technology Can’t Be Contained

Author

Jithin VMadathil
May 30, 2025

This week, I’m excited to share snippets from The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Most people believe technology progresses in bursts.
But when you zoom out, you realize: proliferation is the default.
In this week’s issue, I share reflections from The Coming Wave on how innovation spreads, why it’s hard to contain, and what happens when invention outpaces our control.

The world doesn’t pause for our readiness—and that's both exciting and deeply challenging.

Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, and a leading thinker in artificial intelligence and technology ethics. In The Coming Wave, he combines his insider knowledge with a deep understanding of history and human nature to explore how transformative technologies—like AI and biotech—are developing faster than our ability to control them.

Here is some interesting snippets from the book which will make you think more about how the current AI wave is going to pan out.

  • For most of lived history, proliferation of new technology was rare. Most humans were born, lived, and died surrounded by the same set of tools and technologies. Zoom out, though, and it becomes clear that proliferation is the default.

  • Proliferation is catalyzed by two forces: demand and the resulting cost decreases, each of which drives technology to become even better and cheaper.

  • Technologists, innovators, and entrepreneurs get better by doing and, crucially, by copying.

  • As with cars, it was by no means obvious to contemporary observers that computing would spread fast. 

  • It took smartphones a few years to go from niche product to utterly essential item for two-thirds of the planet. 

  • Technology’s unavoidable challenge is that its makers quickly lose control over the path their inventions take once introduced to the world. 

  • One day someone is writing equations on a blackboard or fiddling with a prototype in the garage, work seemingly irrelevant to the wider world. Within decades, it has produced existential questions for humanity.

  • People throughout history have attempted to resist new technologies because they felt threatened and worried their livelihoods and way of life would be destroyed. 

  • Technology’s nature is to spread, no matter the barriers. 

  • Our appetite for invention is insatiable.

P.S. I’d love to know: What is the single snippet above that sounds most interesting or impactful to you?