The Book Club Meeting When Nobody Finished the Book
For our second book of 2026, our Bettering Communities Book Club struggled through none, some, or a percentage of The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma. Why did we not finish it? Why do I have a conspiracy theory that the 5-star review rating on Amazon is fake? All of your questions and more will be answered in time.
Reactions to the Book (TLDR - we hated it)
The description promised a dystopian horror read about the dangers of AI and how our lives will be dominated by it in every aspect in the coming years. It touched on how government entities will be impacted, which sounded interesting, as about half of our group works in local government. Here are the glowing book jacket one-liners on Amazon:
“A fascinating, well-written, and important book.”—Yuval Noah Harari
“Essential reading.”—Daniel Kahneman
“My favorite book on AI.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes
Well, Yuval, Daniel, and Bill - our group begs to differ with you on all accounts. I mean I guess, as far as Bill Gates’ comment is concerned, I could say it is also my favorite book on AI because I haven’t read any others, so it is also my least favorite book on AI. I am wondering if Yuval and Daniel were in some sort of hostage scenario when giving this feedback because our group was NOT on the same page.
Since not a single member of our book club was able to make it through the entire book, that should tell you our feedback.
Reactions to the Book from funny internet strangers:
We instead rely on the extremely honest keyboard warriors on Goodreads who have put their reviews well. I’ve curated some of the one star reviews that made me laugh below:
“This book is so rambling and repetitive, plus it dwells on an endless supply of needless comparisons, that the whole message gets fully buried under, you know, stuff.”
“This is the typical example of a book that should have been an essay.”
“Suleyman likes to hear himself talk. This book could have been 100 pages. Part 1 especially, was drawn out with repetitive analogies.”
“Complete word salad. Also boring.”
“Reading should be a delightful experience, but reading this book feels like being stuck listening to a long-winded grandpa who just won't cut to the chase.”
What we talked about instead
We like the thought of using AI for intelligence assistance, rather than in replacement of human intelligence
We agree that regulation is needed because it is the Wild West out there
That you can tell when a brand or organization is using AI to generate its copy for content writing
That most of our organizations only allow CoPilot as an approved AI tool (vs. open source tools)
That few organizations have a formal policy, but that many have loose guidelines in place
One organization represented by a member has an AI use training that employees must go through in order to access the permitted AI tools
The City of Boston has a good example of guidelines for using generative AI available here
Do people fear AI and think it is evil?
Our book club discussion came at an interesting time because it took place just days after the attempted arson attack on Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Wisconsin, the state where a handful of our book club members live and work, has garnered a great deal of attention around data center investment and site selection recently. Comedian Charlie Berens (from WI) has even chipped in his opinion and lent his major platform to discussing the dangers of data center investment. The group discussed uncertainty around whether this is legitimate concern, or fearmongering based on misinformation.
A similar-but-different story took place in WIsconsin 16 years ago when the state’s tallest wind turbines were sited in a small community south of Green Bay. The siting led to resident outcry and six years of back-and-forth disputes between residents, an organized group, and Brown County to determine if the wind turbines posed a health hazard. It begs the question, are we primed to dislike and fear anything that is new, large, and outside our independent control as residents and community members?
A large concern around data centers and their siting in Wisconsin is the use of freshwater. Wisconsin is one of states that is a part of the Great Lakes Compact, which the affiliated non profit, Alliance for the Great Lakes, has produced a report on the anticipated use of water by data centers.
What do young people think of AI?
Several members of our group shared how much younger generations in the workplace fear AI, feel strongly that we should not be using it, or are skeptical/hesitant to use AI. One individual who teaches a college class part time noted that hallucinated AI sources are a real problem for students researching - as we are now unable to trust citations unless we verify them - as they very easily could be hallucinated by AI. Okay, so is there anything good about AI?
We dissected our own personal use of smart technology, the internet of things, and AI-enabled devices in our own home. Our speakers that speak to us (Alexa, Google Home, Apple homepods) - they felt like a novelty at first, but it’s worn off and we now see them as a nuisance when they don’t work. We get more angry when technology that is “smart” doesn’t understand what we need it to do.
Some benefits we’ve experienced have been the ability to control screen time or internet access by device, or the ability to preheat an oven remotely while we’re driving home from work. Overall though - it seems like we’re adding smart features to everything and we’re not sure if we really need all those features.
It works well for some things - like analyzing data sets, and sometimes schedule or game development. There are other scenarios where it’s failed us and we’ve probably wasted a ton of time trying to get AI to understand our prompts. Examples: Designing logos or image generation, and coordinating workout plans.
TLDR: We’re exhausted by this conversation
Overall, this book had SO MUCH PROMISE and really could have been better than it actually was. We are all exhausted by AI conversations dominating our work, and we're not sure if these tools are bringing a huge amount of present value to our lives or day-to-day work. We'd like to see some regulation to avoid accidental privacy breaches, and add structure to the Wild, Wild West. If someone wrote a book about AI that was a little more digestible, we'd be open to reading it.