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Douglas Flora

Jul 21, 2025, 14:35

Douglas Flora: The Coming Wave – Why AI Might Be Unstoppable

Douglas Flora, Executive Medical Director of Oncology Services at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“The Coming Wave: Why AI Might Be Unstoppable

Enjoying some morning reading and coffee in Nice, diving into Mustafa Suleyman’s ‘The Coming Wave.’ This framing really got me thinking.

Every culture has a flood myth. Noah’s ark. Gilgamesh. Atlantis. These stories persist because they capture something fundamental: some forces are simply unstoppable.

Suleyman argues we’re facing exactly that with AI and synthetic biology – a technological wave that may be impossible to contain.

His insight? History is shaped by waves:

Literal floods that reshape landscapes• The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs
Religions that started as “small ripples” and transformed civilizations
Empires that rose and fell like tides

The difference now? We’re not just riding this wave – we’re creating it.

‘The coming wave is defined by two core technologies: artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Together they will usher in a new dawn for humanity, creating wealth and surplus unlike anything ever seen.’

But here’s the paradox: without these technologies, we become ‘exposed and precarious.’ With them, we face potentially ‘dramatic, potentially dire’ consequences.

The uncomfortable truth: Containment might not be possible this time.

This reframes everything for those of us in tech. We’re not just building products or optimizing systems. We’re potentially unleashing forces as transformative as the agricultural revolution or the printing press – but compressed into decades, not centuries.

The question isn’t whether this wave is coming. It’s already here.

The question is: How do we navigate it? I want providers interested, educated, and involved in that part.

What’s your take? Are we riding the wave or about to be swept away by it?”

Douglas Flora: The Coming Wave - Why AI Might Be Unstoppable