debates on our website. you can watch them anytime on demand by visiting c-span.org, c-span thanks our partners for their dedication to the democratic process and commitment to public service. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. funded by these television companies and more including charter communications. >> charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers and we are just getting started. building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach of those who need it most. ..it's also my pleasure welcome yuval noah >> it's also my pleasure to welcome yuval noah harari this evening to discuss his new book,

"nexus: a brief history of information networks from the stone age to ai." he's an academic historian and philosopher known for his ability to take complex history and present in an accessible manner. in "nexus" he turned his attentions to the existential crisis we face in the age of artificial intelligence, providing both the historical perspective on areas of information as well asg a warnig about nonhuman intelligence. if we are so wise, we are so self-destructive? he asks. harari is author author of five books including theli best-sellg and he's considered one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. he is currently a lecturer at hebrew university and a fellow at the university of cambridge center for the state of existential risk. he has also cofounded the social

impact company sapient ship. tonight he will be in conversation with nicholas thompson, the ceo of the atlantic. thompson has also worked as editor and chief of wired and is the editor of new yorker.com. please join me in welcoming yuval noah harari and nicholas thompson. [applause] helo, to do our you?re >> i'm fine, thank you. >> this is a real pleasure to be with yuval. he's a kind manned. in the green room among his many duties signing books, as a question that is politics, he also read a bedtime story so

thank you my pleasure. >> i want to do in this book is a want to go through some of the history, some of the stories you tell your come wouldqu ask you w questions about characters are introduced, the ideas they represent, we'll go through some of the argument you make about history, but the i and about democracy and that i hope there will be timer at the end to go through some of your apocalyptic thought experiments. does that work? >> absolutely. >> i whole series of questions, several thousand that people sit in. appreciate that there will get to those. first question, what is that bird? mean, thank you. all these what does the bird represent and why is it on the cover of your book about the history of the world? hmm. well for two main reasons. first of all, in hebrew, there is no difference between a pigeon and a dove. i know that in. in english, in the english speaking world, pigeons often called rats with wings.

whereas doves are thought of as these white angels of. but in hebrew they are the same. and they'll know doves in the middle east. maybe this is why there is no peace in the middle east and. there are only pigeons. and in bible in the story. noor and the flood. so sends a pigeon, not a dove to save the flood is. so we are now living in the midst of a flood of information. and this is kind of my pigeon been sent to see if there if the flood is over. and the reason is that one of the chief characters of the book is a pigeon called the sher amin, which was hundred years ago, was basically most famous bird in the world. and i think he is still on display. the smithsonian not far from here and until the story of shami because it's actually i think important to the to the arguments you make in the book.

yes. so how did this bird become the most famous bird in world? so during the first world war, when the expeditionary force fought in northern france against the germans. so an american battalion was caught behind german lines, surrounded by the germans and american artillery, which tried to provide them with cover, didn't know their exact location, and actually dropped the artillery right on. the american soldiers. adding to the problems. and they try to send runners to division headquarters is to inform the commanders where the battalion actually is. but none of them could get through the german lines. so they turned the only thing that could, which was carrier pigeon ceremony. and the the commander wrote this tiny note on a piece of paper and attached it to the leg of the pigeon. and they released it to the air. and the pigeon flew through the

german fire. it was hit several times. it lost the other leg. luckily not the leg with the with the was the note. it was shot through the breast. but it nevertheless managed to get through and artillery barrage was lifted and help was sent to the right place. and the battalion, which was known as the lost battalion, was saved. and the pigeon, which called shir amin, was then hailed as the the bird that saved hundreds of american soldiers from death or, captivity at the hands of of the germans. at least this was story which was repeated again and again in army communiques, in the newspapers. there are movies, are children's books. so if you want to read story, there is still a children's book about share army the brave pigeon. a recent historical research that delved into the raised a lot of questions marks about

this whole story. first of all it now turns out that the headquarters learned about the right of the battalion before the pigeon arrived and. then it turned out that nobody is sure the pigeon was actually jeremy, but it could have been a completely different pigeon. but still, the the all the terror meme was displayed in the smithsonian for years and became a pilgrimage site for veterans of the first world war and was the most the most famous bird in, the world and this is part what the book is about. the power of information on the one hand. and the tension between the truth and the stories we tell and the effectiveness of stories which are not necessarily always truthful.

and that's that's why it caught my attention, because as you may have heard in america, we still have of these issues. and in fact, often with animals animals. and so i'm going to read quote that one of our modern philosophers dealing with the same issue, jane, events said yesterday, if i have to create stories. so that the american media actually pays attention, the suffering of the american people. then that's what i'm going to do. you are in favor of that, correct? i'm not. i think i'm in favor. i'm saying that this is what is happening throughout human history that again, most information is not the truth. the truth is rare and costly subset of information. if you want to write a true story, you need to invest a lot of time and effort money. whereas fiction or fantasy, they

are very cheap. you just write first thing that comes to your mind. the truth also to be complicated. because reality is complicated. whereas fiction you can make it simple. as simple as you would like it to be. and people usually prefer simple stories and the last disadvantage of the truth is that the truth is often painful, whether on the individual or if you talk about israeli politics, the on the national level, the many things people don't want to know about themselves, about donate and donation, about the world and, you know, fiction can be made as flattering as you would like it to be. so in a competition between something which is cheap and simple and flattering, and something which is costly and complicated and painful, it's obvious who is going to win

unless give the truth some help. this is the exact argument made to my board yesterday while i'm trying to money for our fact checking department. but let me ask you then about the question of a noble lie, because it's clear that history is determined by the people who tell the stories which have either truth in them or they don't have in them. and you are not as of the idea of a noble as i expected you would be when i began the book. explain what circumstances it is okay for someone who is telling a story to not tell it exactly truthfully, for the greater good of some kind. it is impossible for a story to be an exact replica of a reality. you know, there was a famous bull story about an empire that wants to create a complete, totally truthful map, which will be exact li and exact represent

of reality. and they end up producing map with a scale of 1 to 1, because this is the only map which will be 100% truthful and accurate and will not are simplified. anything will not change anything. it will have to be a 1 to 1 map. and so suppose the empire was covered by a map of the empire and the effort of of of creating this empire. is this map exhausted. the resources of the empire, therefore, collapsed. and we are now in a similar situation to some extent. there is a crisis of representation in the world, but no representation seem good enough for us because no representation can actually be a 1 to 1 map of the world. this simply impossible and we are not sure what to do about

it. now my my position. is that every story? to some extent is fictional and every story you can't tell the whole truth. this is simply impossible. and there are cases that, yes, you need to simplify as somebody who wrote, you know, the history of the world in 500 pages. i know sometimes you have to simplify, but and a fiction in itself is, not necessarily bad, you know, the rules of football or baseball, though they are fictional, we invented them. it mean that they are bad fictional literature is not all bad. the key is fiction should acknowledge fictional city and not pretend to be reality and to to to. when you think about the cultural or political implications of that, if you want unite a large number of people you need to use some

stories some mythologies and this is not necessarily bad as long as you acknowledge what you're. so if we compare for instance two foundational texts of human history. if you compare ten commandments and the constitution. so one text acknowledges its fictional city and the other doesn't. the ten commandments doesn't that it emerged from human imagination. it claims to be the product of divine intelligence to come down from heaven. and the downside of that is that it has no mechanism to admit and correct its own mistakes. and, for instance, the commandments, as they were written sometime in the first millennium, bce, they endorse slavery. many people don't think about it

or don't notice it. but the 10th commandment actually endorses slavery, says it's to hold slaves because the ten commandments says that you should not covet your field or ox or slaves which implies that god has no problem with people holding slaves. god has a problem only if you covered the slaves of neighbor. no, no, no. that's not okay. that may god angry and compare that to the us constitution, which also, like the ten commandment, have served as the basis for large scale cooperation for legal systems. political systems. whereas the ten commandments start with i am, your lord god. the us constitution starts with we the people. we the people. invent this document we invented laws. and therefore, because it

acknowledged, is that it emerged just from the human imagination. it's humans who wrote this document. it also acknowledge the potential that there might be mistakes in the document. and it has a mechanism to amend itself, which was eventually used. amend the us constitution, which again initially endorsed slavery and was eventually amended to forbid to ban slavery. whereas with the ten command ments because they claim to be just, you know, they came from heaven, there is no mechanism to change the text. there is no 11th commandment which tells people, well, if you don't like something in, the 10th commandment, if you have a two thirds majority, you can change text. no, there is mechanism. i, i think you i would think it might be possible for pope francis to change the second commandment better than the u.s. congress could, change the second amendment.

but that's where we are. all right. let's let's let's stick with religion. i want you to tell the story that i think comes up in at least three very consequential parts of the book is the story of the council, hippo and carthage and the consequences of selecting one timothy into the new testament instead of the acts of politics where you explain that story. i think it's a very important follow on to what you were just saying about the power of story. and i swear to god. we'll get to air in just a minute. but this is an important premise for that. i think we can actually with amy, which is very very relevant to the could the church council of carthage, which took place in what is today tunisia in 397 c.e. because 88 one of the first big things that that we saw it to do that shaping human history is taking the power of recommender station that if go on social media what do you see

is the result of recommendations made by social media algorithms and the power to recommend to people what stories to read or what videos to watch is extremely important. and one of the best examples in history the power of recommendation is the editorial process that created the bible in the new testament. the people who created new testament are not the author of the texts. they, the editors who decided what will be in and what will be out because know there was no new testament, there was no bible in the time of jesus or in time of saint paul. they never read the bible they didn't exist in. the first four centuries of christianity christians produced an enormous number, enormous variety of texts.

those stories about christ the prophecies, doomsday prophecies about the apocalypse, the by saint paul, by other church leaders. there are a lot of fake letters that people wrote things the name of saint paul, like 200 years after the men was dead. so christian communities were going flooded by very large number of texts and a question arose what should good christians read they needed a recommendation list the same way that today we flooded by tv series and we need a recommendation list. what to watch so in the late fourth century, a committee was set up a church council theologians, bishops. they met first in hippo in what is today think algeria then in carthage in what is today tunisia. and they hammered out a recommendation list top 27 texts.

every christian should read and this became the new testament they didn't try to text they went over again very large numbers of texts existed at the time and, chose what will be in and what will be out. and this was this shaped christianity and the views of billions of people, numerous issues until this very day. and to give you just one example out of many, so one very popular text with christians at the time was the acts of paul thecla paul is saint paul and thecla was one of the most. favorite saints the time she was a woman disciple of paul and she was leader of the community. she preached. she performed miracles. she baptized and she was hailed as an example that women can be leaders in the church and women can preach and women can baptize

and perform miracles so and so this was one popular text with one view of women. then there was another a letter allegedly from paul to timothy, which most scholars today think is a much later was not written by saint paul in the first century, probably forged his name sometime in the second century, and in this letter, a completely view of women and the role in the church it that women should be obedient, should be silent, should never be leaders they should fulfill themselves by doing whatever men tell them to do and by having children and raising children. this is their role in life. and the committee in carthage decided exclude the acts of paul and thecla from the top 27. but include this letter timothy

which is still part of the new testaments around the world. first timothy and this is shaped the views billions of christians about women in the church and also in general for more than 1500 years. this is the power of recommendation and now this and this connects to a i. this is the power which is increasingly held by algorithms we have now with this kind of huge debate about, social media and the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories and so forth, and social media. and you'll hear people like, elon musk or mark zuckerberg saying that we don't want to censor anybody, that this is an issue, freedom of speech, but it's not the problem with spread of this type of information on social media is not human users

producing certain lies or fictions or fake news. the real problem is parait algorithms deciding which stories to recommend which stories to promote, but then the power that was held by the bishops in the of carthage and the power was held by newspaper editors in recent generations. this is now the power in the hands of the social media algorithms and. this should be at the center of the debate, which we'll get to on regulation. it's not about the freedom of speech of it's about the responsibility, the corporate algorithms, because if the corporate algore then decides to promote a certain conspiracy, this is not on the person who invented it this is the decision of the algorithm and the

decision of its human corporate master was and this is what should be at the center of the debate. so what hearing is if the council of carthage had been slightly different, women would have been empowered much sooner. we would have had a feminist several centuries earlier. probably a.i. would have been invented and we all would be obliterated by now. is that correct. yuval, let's one possibility. i mean, you never i mean, history is extremely. yeah, no, i know. yes. so you can never predict the outcome. you can't unspool one thread from the tapestry. let's go to some of the concerns have about i want to go through some of the concerns quickly and then i want to go through your philosophy of how these algorithms should be structured. but very briefly, in just a word or two, explain modern a.i. might destroy democracy. oh, very briefly. well, very briefly. democracy is a conversation, a dictatorship is one person dictating everything.

that's a dictatorship. democracy is when a group people have a conversation in order to decide what to about any major question. now to have a conversation is not an easy thing and the technical difficulty if you have 20 people trying to have a conversation so they can all gather in in a room and talk with each other. but how can 20 million people have a conversation you need some kind of technology in order do that now until modern age there just no technology to facilitate large scale conversation which is why there were no large scale democracy anywhere in the world. the only examples we have of ancient democracy since they are all small scale.

there are 50 states like athens or republic and rome, just one one city. although even smaller tribes and bands and villages with many examples of small scale democracies, not a single example of a large scale democracy in the ancient world. all large scale polities are authoritarian we begin to see large scale democracies only after rise of modern, informal technology, the first crucial technology is newspaper and we have the telegraph and, the radio and the television. and suddenly it becomes feasible. all the other conditions that have to be met. it doesn't guarantee democracy, just that you have a newspaper, you have newspapers and radio also in the soviet union. but it becomes possible for the first time in history to have large scale democracies and it's

important to understand that because it means information technology, not a side dish that you have democracy. and on the side you have these all issues of information technology, no information technology is the basis of democracy. democracy is built on top of technology. so any major change in information technology is to cause an earthquake in democracy which is built top it. and this is what we are now seeing all over the world what we are seeing all over the world is the collapse of the democratic control. we have the most sophisticated information technology, human history and people are losing the ability to talk with each other, and even more so to to each other. and in every country where this is happening, there are these

explanations of what is in our country. why can't democrats and republican in the us have a conversation anymore? and you go israel to my country, you hear the unique explanation of what is wrong with israel? and then go to brazil. and then you have the unique explaining of what's wrong with brazilian society. but you see, the same thing is happening everywhere. the conversation is collapsing and this is not of some special feature in the history or society or economy of the country. it's universal earthquake, which results from the rise of this new information technology that originally the developers, the technology promised to us, that it will spread the truth and bring tyrannies down and strengthen democracies. but is doing the opposite and very briefly one way to to

visualize what is happening is imagine that democracies the group of humans standing and having a conversation suddenly a group of enter the and start talking very loudly very very emotion and we can't tell who is who who is a human and, who is a robot. this is what has been happening over the last ten, 15 years. and the result is that the conversation breaking down and again this is not a uniquely american phenomenon. it is happening all over the world, leading more and more to the rise of dictatorships, because dictatorships don't need conversations again, is one person dictating everything? well, let's let's push on that assumption for a second. so i could have a different metaphor which is not a bunch of robots enter the conversation but a bunch of infinitely aides

join me and they help me sort through the conversation and they help me prepare for what i'm going to ask. and then not only that, if you look at the last year, obviously venezuela tragic example, but we had elections are not the same as democracy, but we use them as a proxy for this. this hypothetical. we had reasonably positive elections. if you're in favor of democracy in poland, we had a little bit of progress in turkey, serious progress in india, in fact, where and illiberal democracy has actually been challenged. we had an extremely smooth election, the election of a jewish woman in mexico we had extremely swift and effective no deepfakes maybe don't like the outcome of the election in france similar election in the united kingdom i mean the world's just doing all right on these despite the challenges of social media everything else and it's not that it's already a deal. it's not that democracy is collapsed. but if you look at the health of

democracies today compared to ten years ago or 15 years ago, at least the momentum is very worrying. and again, it's not a i don't think what surprises me when they look at the example from around the world is that it's not about some huge ideological gaps actually ideological gaps between the different camps today, a place like the us are much smaller than 50 years ago. what worries is the kind of temperature of the of of of the argument and again this inability to have a reasoned debate, to have a reasoned conversation simply, having is important, but it is not enough elections, not democracy. and even in of the examples you mentioned. so it's not about who wins, which 51% win. in the end, it's the relation

between the 1% and the 49%. and democracy shouldn't feel like every election is a life and death struggle that if we lose this it might and even more so it shouldn't feel like a war between enemies. but if a country, a situation when people view their political rival as enemies, then democracy cannot survive for because then every election and again it's like a war you anything to win. if you lose you have no incentive to accept the verdict. if you win you only take care of your tribe. what is happening in this situation that? a nation breaks down into tribes leading eventually either to tribal warfare and civil war or to dictatorship.

that i think that the the key thing here also has to do not just with democracy, but also with nationalism and with the breakdown of national communities that many people think that democracy and nationalism democracy in patriotism as some of opposites. but they go together. they must go together. democracy functions as well. only when there is a national community. only when you feel that really care about. the other people in your country and that they really care about you. if a nation, which is the point when there is no longer a nation, the warring tribes and each tribe cares only about itself, then it's only a question of before democracy collapses. and this is really the worrying that we see in many places around the world irrespective of

the results of the latest elections here or there. and this, again, it goes back to the type of communique nation between people. can we, for instance, listen to people with different views, our own without thinking that, they are enemies. i learned in the room that one of the ways that you've all arguing with bots on twitter is he, as he says, as he is stuck in nineties and uses email and the telephone. let me ask you a question. all right. so we're headed into this age. i will certainly agree that democracy is at risk and i will certainly agree it is at risk for the reasons you give. and i will certainly agree that we will soon have extremely powerful algorithms that will underlie a lot of the decisions we make and a lot of the thinking that goes on our own heads in. a very important section in the book you lay out for values that you think should be embedded in air systems, and they are

benevolence right. they should air systems should be benevolent. it seems reasonable. decentralize and mutuality. you should understand it. what it understands about you and the ability evolve, much as you said about the us, the us constitution versus the ten commandments. so a question for you. what happens when some of these come into conflict each other? so when i read that section, i thought, well, benevolent is kind of his intention decentralization? because if you decentralize these algorithms and suddenly you have all kinds algorithms, you've all kinds of options you have all kinds of different companies, some of which will be benevolent. you define it. some will not be benevolent as you define. well, how is one supposed to weigh these four principles for designing future ai systems because weighing them correctly seems pretty important to getting the world you want now. was benevolent saying mean something very, very narrow and. you know, it's something we've known for for centuries, simply, if you get hold of my information you should use it for benefit and not in order

manipulate me. which is a basic principle that we already have with our doctors and lawyers and our accountants and therapists. and it should be no different with the people who. provide us with digital services, like social media, like email, like my personal physician. for a second, facebook would not have said manipulating us even when the sort of the heyday of its algorithm it would have said it's giving us what we want. that's that's a one way of putting it. and the facebook algorithm has enormous power over us and. facebook's business model and the business model of most of these social, social media companies. it is based increasing user engagement and engagement. sounds like a nice thing. but, you know who doesn't want to be engaged but for them for the companies it means that we need to spend more time on

platform because the more time spend on it, the more money they either by showing me advertisements and commercials or by collecting my data and then giving it or selling it to third parties and whether this is what i want or not, that's a very big question. do i really want to spend and more time on the platform now? what the algorithm is do is by trial and error, they find my and they use my weaknesses to keep glued to the screen for longer. this is the, you know, the basic idea of hacking. how do you hack a smartphone phone or a computer or a program? you look for the weaknesses in the code. it's the same with human beings. this is how you hack beings. you use algorithms to find weaknesses in our code. but each person with their own

weakness. it's not one size fits all. what makes me angry? what do i already hate? what do i already fear or what i am greedy for? and they give me more and more and more of that. it's like, you know, of the food companies that learned that if you pump some something full of sugar and fat and salt, people would want more of it. now, is it really good for us or not? again, it's it's there there is question here it's not an easy thing to solve. but this is the key the of the dilemma the key to the discussion and the main message is that ultimately it should not be about the profits of the corporation. but whether consuming this information is good for me or not. and one last point, i think like in the example of food, we have reached a when i think most people an information diet that

this this simplistic idea that's more information is always good for us is simply wrong the same way that more food is not always good for us. well that's why everybody should subscribe to the atlantic. let me let me give you a thought experiment. i think i mean, because part of what i think is going to for your system to come down to work it's going to depend little bit on who defines benevolence and defines these values. and so i to give you a thought experiment from a i had at a bar not long ago so i met somebody i'm going to change some of the because i can't reveal who they are and what exactly they do. but was an engineer who works in a.i. and they make algorithms and their current job is that they work the state of texas and. they're in charge of the sentencing algorithm, and so they're in charge of an ai algorithm that will determine how long somebody who's guilty will be sent to prison. and so they have a hard tasks, right? they have to make sure any algorithm that trained on historical data will have the biases that historical data.

so you train a sentencing algorithm on historic texas data, it will be racist. so you have to control for that and they let the women out sooner you have to make sure that's proper and and you go back through and you control through it. you try to try to fix them. so we're having a long conversation asking her, well, how do you control for this and how do you control for that and how do you control for this and eventually she says, you know what i do next? she said, i've rigged the algorithm and i break it in such a way that everybody will be sentenced for much less time than the state texas did before. and i've done it in such a way the state of texas will never figure out that i've done that. is that something that an ai should be doing that's extremely dangerous? the extremely dangerous. but it's a it may be a value that many liberals agree with, and they feel like conservative states have sentenced people too long. so it's embedding value that that feels is benevolent into a system and leading to what they believe is justice. at the very least, when we are talking about, you know, the law of a country.

this should be left to the citizen and into the voters. has to do that. you know, a dictatorship of engineer. well, they've given the power to hire whatever contractor they to the state they've elected you know, the governor of the state of texas. and they've hired this person. it's the state is not texas where this is happening. so don't it's like sentencing algorithm. it's a different thing in a different you won't be able to figure it out. but it's the same example. i think the key that is raised by this example is the issue of unfathomable bility to what extent we still understand the systems that control our lives. when i got this question, a lot, what really frightens me about a.i. and you have these kind of hollywood science fiction scenarios of the big robots rebellion, and the robots are rebelling, coming to kill us. and it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. but what is already happening? this is not a science fiction scenario for the future. what is already happening is that we basically have millions

a.i. bureaucrats, millions of bureaucratic algorithms making more, and more decisions about our life. we apply to a bank, to get a loan. it's an ai deciding we committed the crime. send us to prison. it's increasingly in ai deciding for how long and. and this could rise to to the level of, you know, a key economic and financial decisions about what would be the the the the the rate of interest of the federal reserve. this could increasingly a decision made by ice and not human beings. and there are many good reasons why to give this kind of power to ice. but what happened down the road when eventually so many of these crucial decisions us are made in a way that we simply understand

we don't know why the bank refused alone. we don't know why they us to five years and not four years or six years in prison. we don't know why the interest rate is 4% and not 3% and we don't know. not because they are hide. somebody is hiding from us simply because it's far too complicated for the human brain that the advent of 80 the kind of the good side a.i. that it can analyze much more data than any human brain find patterns that we can't deal with mathematical which are way beyond what we can deal with. but the downside of all that is what is the meaning for instance of democracy if increasingly all decisions or at least many of the decisions us are made in a way which are not transparent and therefore not accountable to human beings.

let's go through another one which is somewhat similar. so one of the companies that makes a.i. systems says anthropic and they use this system called a.i. as they choose how they write their prompts and how they their algorithm, which is probably the closest of the major ai companies to, as i understand it, the philosophy of yuval noah harari and. so when it gives an answer, it checks whether the answer. would, you know, abide by the u.n. declaration of human rights. right. it actually follows the u.n., the us constitution, the u.n. of human rights and apple's terms of service. it's very funny, but any event, you know, biggest problem that they have and the other company says they don't know, just as you said, they don't know why things make decisions. and so they've been trying to understand what's called interpretability. and so they went in and they said, well, let's see happens if we go into all of our training data and we add a little extra weight to everything that has to do with the golden gate bridge. so there's a picture the golden gate bridge will way it double if there's a mention of the golden gate will way at double,

if there's a word, if there's a, you know box score about the san francisco giants will weigh that a little than one about the philadelphia phillies. they do all that. and then they ask him, clod, tell me a love story. and naturally the love story takes place on the golden gate bridge right? if you mess with the train at eight in the weights, you get some of these interesting outcomes. so the question for you would be if we can do this why not go into the a.i. and not wait it towards golden gate bridge but wait it towards love, compassion, benevolence is a good idea. i'm not sure what it means in a technical sense, but when i look at human history, i know that quite often in history people talk about love of they start with love and very quickly they to hate and to war, you know, the which itself. and going back to the conflicts

of of carthage sees itself as the religion of love. but it's all about love was responsible for more violence than any other or ideology in history. and they somehow found a how out of love we wage and we inquisitions and we heretics at the stake. it's all out of love and really believed it. they also gave us back a a but again and the way that i think this often happens is that if you think that you are motivated by love and if you think that you're trying to build utopia whoever stands in. your way must be demonic. whoever stands in your way be evil. the good i am then any opposition is by definition.

it's not just somebody who thinks differently, but they are evil. now i. i'm not sure how to translate that into icepick, but i again, one of the lessons from history is that just thinking, because we have these kind of good waits, we've waited our arrow holy book, we've waited the cord in favor of love, anything that has love it got extra, anything that has compassion, it got extra. and somehow from that you got the inquisition. so if it happens with humans, i would also be very worried about a i but what we need the basic that again we learned again and again in history is that we need a self-correcting we can't trust that just because something is has these good values at its basis what come out of it will also necessarily be benevolent compassionate. we saw it again in the modern age with marxism which begins

with you know these wonderful ideas of of equality and compassion and ends with the gulags. and and if you if you're really convinced that you're coming from a good foundation and also if you think that you're in the process of building utopia, then it gives you an open check to do the most horrible things on the way. utopia. and then anything that stands in your in your way is then transformed from political rivalry to kind of demonic possession. i mean, in some ways this is one of the scariest things you said because the people who are the models genuinely do believe they're leading us to utopia. right. and that's very, very dangerous because this is what them the open check. they say we're building utopia. so anything that that kind of we have to sacrifice on the is

worth it because when you would look at the bottom line and this was the basic argument if people like lenin and stalin yes we have to murder these millions of people. but in the end, when we build utopia real existing socialism here on earth it will turn dark, it will turn out that, you know, these billions of in the gulag was worth it. and i had never thought of have khmer rouge at the same time i thought of anthropic. but here we are. but the hold on all in the next couple of weeks, i think. where were you last year or last in toronto? you're going to move west and you're going to sit down and you're going to sit down with all these people. they all read your books, right? there's this famous image of jeff bezos and he's giving this interview and he's got like four books behind him on his bookshelf and like plants, you know, and three of them are you walls? i believe so you're going to be talking to these folks. and so what you're telling me is that if they promoted guy who runs anthropic theories like, you know, we're trying to figure out what to train on. and i've been thinking we should

train it on, you know, we should just train and on sort of positive uplifting factual stories, i really don't think we should, you know, train on everything which includes like serial killers, diaries and you're going to say like, no, no, put the zero in killers and ill respect will sayay put the serial killer diaries in a because don't just hang on your definition of love. is that what you're going to argue to? >> no. i would basically say i don't know how to train an eye. this is not my field, but no matter what kind of positive bases you give it and no matter what positive intentions you have your number one should be, chernobyl and assumption should be this thing is not infallible. i'm not infallible. there is a high chance for mistakes and, therefore, i need to leave room for correction. the most important thing when you build it is build a mechanism for identifying and correcting the mistakes. this is also the advice i would

have given lenin in 1917, that you're going on this huge experiment, thinking you are building utopia, start with this assumption you make mistakes, include t in the structure say f the soviet union mechanisms for identifying and correcting the mistakes of the system, including the mistakes of linen and whoever is going to succeed you. which is the one thing they didn't do. >> linen should've read sapience. i've images of inbreeding on the train. let's talk about cocoons which is an extremely interesting part of your book. you make an argument and you say yound are some fundamental human issues like separation of mind and body. this you tell the story of martin luther. you argue that what could happen at age of ai is you end up with some civilizations that of a totally different understanding of what is the mind and what is thee body and, therefore, totaly different judicial systems. one of the most mindbending part

of the book. i'd like you to explain this to the audience. >> a lot of explain. i'll try to do it short. first of the cocoons, the changing of the metaphors in this age of information revolution that 30 years ago the dominant metaphor was the web, the world wide web. and the web was supposed to connect everything and everybody. and over the years the web kind of close in on us and now it's the cocoons that everyon personr every group is enclosed within an information cocoon, and sometimes go next-door neighbors are in a different cocoon that you and there's just no way to access from one to the other. an extreme example of where this can go, like today, okay people don't agree like in the united states about who won the last

election. this can go to a place where people don't agree what a human is or what a person is and what are the relations between mind body. one of the recurrent arguments throughout history that we see many traditions, judaism, christianity, hinduism, buddhism is what exactly is a human being and what is the relation between mind and body, or between soul and spirit and body? so if we again go back to the age of thear council of carthage and early christianity, so judaism and the first christians which came out of judaism, they viewed humans as embodied entities. the body was central. we our bodies. the soul, i mean, biblical

judaism did not talk at all about the soul. the idea that there could be a soul that exists separate from the body unheard of in biblical judaism. it's all about the body. and also the first christians, they focused on the body. i mean, the whole idea originally is that god is incarnated in the flesh. the flesh is at the center, and after jesus was crucified he is supposed to come back in the flesh, and the kingdom of god is supposedpo to be a material kingdom of fleshy bodies on the earth. but eventually, under influence of platonic philosophy and other influences and also for practical purposes, because of the kingdom of god was nowhere to be seen and the really big problem for early question is that they won. when you're persecuted, minority

you can have all the responses okay, when we finally gain power then we will have the kingdom of god. and then they have one of the biggest disasters that can happen to any religion, they gain power. they become the dominant religion of the roman empire so okay, so where's the kingdom of god? and there is no kingdom of god. you still have the same wars and corruptions and civil wars and executions and human greed, and it's all the same. so they say okay, the kingdom of god is not on earth. it's on a a different level of reality. it's in heaven, and you can't access it in the flesh after you die, your soul will get to heaven. many christians drift towards a very different view of humans as a dualistic view actually, that my real essence is my soul,

which is entrapped in a material, biological, filthy body with all these sexual passions and all these lusts. and the hope, the idea is that eventually the soul will be released fromm. this earthly fleshy prison and get to a purely immaterial realm, which iswh evan, where it will exist forever and ever. and throughout the 2000 years of christian history you see this tension. they can never really abandon the body, partly because the bible is fulld of it, and criss incarnated in the body, in the flesh and rose in the the bo life in the flesh. there is very little about this immaterial realm of purehe souls in the bible itself. most again later. so there is this constant

argument that often leads to blows and wars of religion. and then in the early century of the church, one of the biggest arguments was about the nature of jesus christ himself, with one camp saying that he was entirely a human made a flesh. another f camp saying that he ws entirely divine and nonmaterial, a spiritual being. and there wasd a third camp who said that he was a non-binary. and the non-binaries one. this was eventually official doctrine of the church, he's non-binary. he's both in none at the same time. huge arguments and also violence around these issues. now, how does all this relate to ai? we are going to have another round of this mind-body debate.

we are already in the midst of it. what is your identity? what defines your identity? is your identity defined by your biological body? or is your identity defined by what you believe about yourself, by your faith? people like martin luther, they said the only thing that matters is what you believe. and we are now living in a kindf of new ground of this debate with some people say if you go online you can be whatever you want. the biological body sitting in front of the screen should not limit the identities that you can adopt. other people say no, no, no if there is a biological body. this is a central of your identity. you cannot ignore your biological body. as anybody knows this is a very heated debate right now.

and this also goes, potentially with influence, , how we treat . ai has nobody. but they will increasingly be able to interact with us and to press our emotional buttons and even to pretend to have emotions of themselves. now, people who give primacy to the body in the identity of a person will have, will resist treating ai as persons. people who think that identity has little to do with biology will have a much easier time giving or treating ai as persons, even though they have no bodies. and different countries can go differentt ways. so arguments about human rights

today between say united states and china, think what it means in 50 years when you perhaps have billions of entities which are considered persons with rights in one country, but another country doesn't recognize them as persons at all because they have no biological body. and at least in the u.s., interestingly enough, there's already a completely open legal path to t recognizing nonhumans devoid of bodies as legal persons with rights. because corporations, according to u.s. law, are legal persons that has come for instant freedomco of speech, according o the supreme court since at least 2010. now, at present this is a legal fiction because all the decisions of corporations are made by human beings with biological bodies. so google, according to u.s. law, is a legal person, at

present all the decisions of google have to be made by some human being. but what happens in a few years maybe when you start incorporating ai as legal persons? you can technically incorporate an ai as a corporation. let's call it google. interesting thing about google is the does it meet any human employee to make its decisions for it. this is whate the ai can do ity itself. so the ai, for instance, can open a bank account and can start earning money. they can go on task rabbit or mechanical turk online and offer its services to people or corporation and earn money.y. .. exchange. and if it's a very intelligent a.i., it could potentially become the richest person in the us. so think about a situation when

the richest person in the us is not a human being, it's an a.i. and again, according to us law, as far as i understand, one of the rights reserved for this non-human person is freedom of speech, which manifest itself, among other things, >> among things in making political contribution. so this ai could donate billions of dollars to politicians in exchange for giving even more rights to ai. so, these are the kinds of -- kind of science fiction scenarios that we should be more concerned with than the great robot rebellion. >> if a senior ai bot starts to hit on a junior ai bot in this corporation, what should the ai hr -- okay. [laughter] >> we have a bunch of flesh and blood bodies here and we have to go get pizza and beer.

i'll have one more question about the apocalypse and then go to audience question. i was reading your book on the subway, wrapping it up before dinner with my son. i'm going to read the paragraph, explain what it means. we've now croated a nonconscious, but powerful alien intelligence. agreed, if we mishandle it, it might turn the universe into a realm of utter darkness. very cheerful book. it is our responsibility to prevent this. so one way to prevent it would be to prevent ai from extinguishing us, and create consciousness and send it out to the universe. explain to me, the question this paragraph raises, what is the thing that humans could do

to that allow consciousness to exist even if we extinguish ourselves. >> i'm not sure what it is. the problem is we still don't understand consciousness, we don't know how it emerges in us. we don't know how it evolved. that's why we also with question of ai consciousness, i tend to be agnostic about it. i don't think that ai will necessarily develop consciousness, but i am not sure that they will never develop consciousness, it could be. so in this scenario that ai's destroy human civilization, take over and maybe spread to earth to the rest of the galaxy, to other galaxies, but in the process never develop consciousness, this is the doubt universe scenario. that, again, there's a huge

confusion about these two terms because in humans they go together. intelligence is the ability to attain goals and solve problem on the way, to that goal. consciousness is the ability to feel things, like pain, pleasure, love and hate. humans solve problems, relying on our feelings. in us, any other mammals and animals, consciousness and intelligence go together and this is why we confuse them. now, in computers, so far, we've only seen a huge advance in intelligence without any advance in consciousness as far as we can tell. in some fields, narrow fields, ai is already far more intelligence than us, and still it has no consciousness. when it wins a game of chess, it's not happy. when it loses, it's not sad. it doesn't feel anything. now, in many scenarios as ai

becomes more and more intelligent, at some point it also gains consciousness, there's no reason to think this is inevitable. there could be different roads leading to super intelligence. mammals and humans have been travelling along one road for millions and millions of years, a road which involves the development of consciousness. computers, ai's might simply be travelling along a different road, a much faster road, which reaches super intelligence without passing through any phase of developing consciousness. and if this happens, if it gets out of our control, this could spell again, not just the end of the human dominion on earth, but the end of the light of consciousness itself. you could have a galactic

empire without any feeling and nothing feels anything. it's just all dark. >> but why is that-- explain why that is so much worse outcome and the obliteration of humans, which is a plenty bad outcome? >> you know, there are other entities, conscious entities in the world right now. there are other animals. there is no reason to think that, you know, in the history of billions of years of life that sapions is definitely the last station. whether through biological evolution, or whether through some kind of combination like ai, it's very likely if we survive, i don't think that humans like us will still be here in a thousand years or 10,000 years. the technology will be so advanced that there will be sapion beings, but there will

have completely different bodies and minds. completely different experiences. and this is not necessarily bad. the same way that you know, the fact that we are here and that the first human species that existed two million years ago are gone, we don't think about it as a tragedy and most people at least with regard to their children, they hope that their children will at least in some way a bit more evolved than them. but to is think that this will be completely wiped out, that there will still be intelligence, but no consciousness at all. i think that intelligence is really overrated. the really important thing in life is consciousness. it's not intelligence. intelligence enables us to do different things, but ultimately it's all about consciousness. >> now who is still going to be there, yuval?

you guys, they're going to be there and speak thousands of languages. >> let's go to audience questions. in your last book, you began your book arguing that humanity has almost exceed the hunger, plague or war. do you still stand by that or reconsider your argument? >> i think that humanity has the capacity to rein in famine, plague and war and whether we do it depends on our decisions and we have been making terrible decisions over the last 10 years, which is why we're seeing the return of these calamities, of these conditions. we are now on the verge of a third world war, which if it happens, it's likely to be accompanied by famine and potentially by plague. and the key thing to understand is that the decline, for

instance, of wars, in recent generations was not the result of a change in the laws of nature, it was not some divine miracle, it was simply human making good decisions and building good institutions. and if we start making bad decisions and neglecting the institutions that preserved peace, then war returned. >> this question is there's growing concern of impact of ai on unemployment particularly low income jobs and low skilled communities. considering the rapid advancements and uncertainties with ai, what strategies can be implemented to alleviate these effects. >> the safest thing is to slow down. i think that humans and human society are extremely adaptable, in order to adapt, you need time. so if 10% or 20% of people suddenly lose their jobs, this

is a huge political crisis. if it's kind of more drawn out over several years, we have time to adapt. and the most important thing is what happens on the global level because when i look at the country like the united states, for instance, i'm not so worried. i mean, you know, many jobs will disappear in the coming decade or two. other jobs will emerge. the big question is whether people will be able to retrain themselves, to fill the new jobs, and for that, they will need supportment and the countries that lead the ai revolution, they will have immense resources to support the retraining of the population, and also, to support those members of society that will not be able to go through the transition. the big problem will be in other countries that might face complete economic collapse and will just not have the

resources to retrain the work force and to adapt to the new ai economy. >> what do you think of the premise of the question that ai will affect employment, particularly for low skilled job and communities? people argue both sides of that. >> i'm not sure, there are good reasons to definitely think it will impact also high income jobs, accountants, lawyers, coders, engineers, there's no reason to think it will focus specifically on low income jobs. >> i think it's probably going to wipe out media ceo's and historians first. this is from mike. my favorite thing about your historical writing it has implications of how we live, if you were a life style guru instead, what messages would you have for your audience. >> i'm not a life style guru, so i don't know.

>> this man meditates two hours a day and-- >> i don't tell all people to do it. it works for me, but it doesn't work for other people. for somebody else, it's better to take a hike in the woods. so do that instead. the idea that meditation works for me and doesn't work for all. >> and i tried a month and didn't work for my kids. and how do you think this will impact minority rights especially those in the lgbtq plus community? >> depends on decisions. it's not deterministic, it can work both ways. the internet and social media has been wonderful in many ways to the lgbtq community. i met my husband 22 years ago in one of the first social media websites for gay people in israel, which was-- and it was really a revolution

because if you think about minorities in history, there are two types of minorities. you have concentrated minorities and you have dispersed minorities and concentrated minorities, you think like jewish communities. so if you're born, if you're born a jew, let's say in europe in the middle ages, there aren't many jews around, but you're surrounded by them. you're born into a jewish family in a jewish neighborhood, in a jewish ghetto, in a jewish community, you know lots of jews, so you have no problem finding other jews. but i, for instance it was born in israel in the 1970's, grew up in '80s and '90s and very homophobic society and i was born in a suburban, and i didn't know anybody who is gay. most boys are not born to a gay family in a gay community. sometimes it happens, but it's

very rare. and the first question you encounter is how do i find the others? and a question that jews don't have to deal with, but gay people had to deal with throughout history. the internet came along and solved the problem, suddenly became very easy, or much easier than before to find each other. i often criticize-- and there was criticize of technology, but they have enormous positive potential. >> could extinguish the light in the universe, but good for the gays. if you could resurrect one other species of humans which was now extinct. which would you and for what purpose. >> i think that would be bad for them. the way that we treat ourselves because we have a different

language or skin color i wouldn't want to be a minority in a sapions world. >> should ai's be raised a human parents along with curated to develop love and connection, possible to have a moral code on created by humans or try. >> ai is not organic, they're not okay, okay i'll raise a chimpanzee in a human family so it's human-like. this is a key misconception we have about ai. like you have all of these people asking, when will ai reach human level intelligence? the answer is never. it's not on the path to human level intelligence. it's not human, it's not even organic. and for me, i mean, the acronym

ai, traditionally stands for artificial intelligence. i think it should stand for alien intelligence. not from outer space, but yes, this is intelligence, but it makes decisions, it processes information, it invents idea in a fundamentally alien way, and again, it's not organic. one thing, just one very important thing is that organic beings, we work by cycles, day and night, winter and summer, growth and decay and sometimes we're active and sometimes we need to rest. one of the problems we encounter more and more in the world is that now the world is increasingly run by these nonorganic intelligences, that never need to rest. and they don't have cycles, and they pressure us to be the same. instead of them becoming like

us, they pressure us to be the same, and if you force an organic being to be on all the time and be active all the time, eventually it just collapses and dies. you know, you think even about something like the financial system. so, traditionally, the financial system is an organic system, which sometimes take breaks. wall street is the market is open, only, i think monday through friday, to 4:00 in the afternoon, that's it. the weekend it's off. christmas, it's off. this is good for human beings, but if you give ai greater control of finance, then the system is always on and this puts pressure on human financiers and bankers to always be on, which is humanly impossible and the same thing is happening to journalists and the same thing is happening to politicians, which consequently collapse. and i often say that the most misunderstood words in the

english language, at least in the united states, is the word excited, that people overuse it as a good thing, like they meet you and i'm so excited to meet you. people publish a book, oh, this is so exciting and they think that excited means happy, but it doesn't. excited means your nervous system and your brain is fully on, and if you could keep the nervous system from organic entity all the time, it would collapse. the system is far too excited and we need to relax, like we meet each other, i'm so relaxed to be here with you today. and not excited at all and just think how good it would be if politics was less exciting. like -- [applause] >> what we need, i think, above all in politics is boring

politicians. like vote for boring politician. >> all right, well, i am so relaxed to ask the very last question of the night, yuval. this is from mischa. do you think that futch reliance on artificial intelligence will compete with religion as a source of spirituality? >> could be quite likely, i think that religions-- many religions have always fantasized about having access to super human intelligence and suddenly, we have it. think about texts, about holy texts. idea of the holy texts, this is coming from a known human intelligence that is superior to us. the problem with holy texts throughout human history and still today was that they couldn't really talk back to us. there was something in the text we couldn't understand and the

text could not explain itself. like what is the correct interpretation of this passage in scripture. you could in theory, the highest authority in religion is holy text. and in practice, it grew around the human text and the real authority was in the hands of the people who interpreted the text and in the same way that you have today, they find in the tech world between people who believe in open source, no, it should be closed and a couple of experts. this was the same with catholics and protestants. the catholics say, no, the experts of the church should interpret and you have the protestants who believe in open source and anybody can read the quote and interpret it by itself. what happens for the first time in history the text can talk back.

whether the text of the traditional holy books, you can train an ai to read every single treatise written by every theologian or bishop or thinker in the third century or 11th century and that ai will understand the text of christianity better than any human being. would it be more authoritative than humans, theologians and bishops? one big question. the other question, what happens if you have new religions where texts written by a non-human intelligence? and this can already happening right now with ai, maybe disseminating a new holy text online which creates the kernel for the next big religion. which will have, again, a text that can talk back.

coming from a super human, non-human intelligence. so, i definitely think that some of the most interesting developments in ai will be in the field of theology and religion, and maybe end with a recommendation that google and microsoft, they should hire a few theologians, because they will need it. >> that's the perfect note to end on. thank you so much to politics and pros. thank you so much for the theater and thank you so much for yuval noah harari. [applause] >> if you're enjoying book tv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the green to receive the scheduled program, author discussions, book festival and more. book tv.

every sunday or anytime on book tv.org. television for serious readers. >> this election night, c-span delivers something different. not just the presidential race, but the state races that will decide the balance of power in congress. no political pundit. no spin, no commission, just the candidates. the results and you. follow c-span this election night beginning at 7 p.m. eastern, live tonight on tv, online, or on the free c-span now video app. >> attention middle and high school students crass america, it's time to make your voice heard. c-span's student cam documentary contest 2025 is here. this is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness and make an impact.

your documentary should answer this year's question. your message to the president. what issue is most important to you or your community, whether you're passionate about politics, the environment, or community stories. student cam is your platform to share your message with the world. with $100,000 in prizes, including a grand prize of $5,000, this is your opportunity not only to make an impact, but also be rewarded for your creativity and hard work. enter your submissions today. cam.org for all the details on how t enter. the deadline is january 20th, 2025. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for