and helping tech workers, high tech workers, you think of them as libertarian, the same kind of things, david, that you talked they're experiencing, they understand that they need collective representation in order to have good working at jobs that otherwise they would love. thank you very much. thank you,it's also my pleasuree yuval noah harari this evening to discuss his new book nexus a history of information networks from the stone age to a.i. harari is an academic, historian and philosopher for his ability

to take complex history and present in an accessible manner and nexus he turns his attention to the existence crisis we face in the age of artificial intelligence, providing both the historical on theories of information, as well as a warning about. non-human intelligence. if, say, if we sapiens are so wise, why are we so self? he asks. harari is the author of five books, including the bestselling sapiens, and he's considered of the world's most influential intellectuals. his a lecturer at hebrew university and a fellow at the university. cambridge's center for the study of existential risk. he has also co-founded the social impact sapiens ship. tonight he will be in conversation. nicholas thompson, the ceo of the atlantic. thompson is worked as the editor in chief of and as the editor of

newyorker.com. join me in welcoming yuval harari and nicholas thompson. hello, yuval how are you? i'm fine, thank you. it's a real pleasure to be here with yuval. he is not only a great historian, as you all know, he is a very kind in the green room. among his many duties, signing books, answering my about israeli politics. he also helped read a bedtime to my ten year old, who is a huge of unstoppable. so thank you, yuval? it's my pleasure pleasure. all right. so what i want to do in this book. is i want to go through some of the history, some of the stories you tell. i'm going to ask you a few questions about characters you

introduce, the ideas they represent. we'll go through some of the arguments you make about history, about ai and about democracy. and then i hope there'll be some time at the end to go through some your apocalyptic thought experiments. does that work? yeah absolutely. and i have a whole series of questions, several thousand that people have sent. i appreciate that. we'll get to those as well. first question, what is that bird. oh, that's a difficult question. it's a pigeon. i 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 serial killer's diaries in there because, you know, like, don't just train on your definition of love. is that what going to argue to him? no. i mean, i would basically say that i do not know how to train ais. this is not field, but no matter what kind of a positive basis give it. and no matter what positive intentions you have, your number one should be, you number one assumption should be that this thing is not infallible. i'm not infallible. there is a high chance for mistakes and therefore need to leave room for correction. i need to the most important thing when you build it is build a mechanism for identifying correcting the mistakes. again, this is also the advice that i would have gave lenin in 1970. and now you're on this huge experiment, your thinking, yet you're building a utopia. start with the assumption that you will make a mistakes. include in the structure, say, of the soviet union mechanisms

identifying and correcting the mistakes of the system include the mistakes of lenin and, of whoever is going to succeed you, which is the one thing they didn't do. yeah, lenin. lenin should have sapiens. i have an image of him reading it on the train there. all right, let's talk a little bit about cocoons, which is one of the extremely interesting parts of your book. so you make an argument and, you say that there are some fundamental human issues like the separation of mind and body. you tell story of martin luther. it's actually a way of telling the story of martin luther. i had not read before. but you argue that what could happen in an age of ai is that you end up with some civilizations civilizations have a totally different understanding of what is mind and what is the body and therefore a totally judicial systems. so as one of the most mind bending parts of the book, i'd like you to explain this to the audience. oh, so there is a lot of explaining. i'll try to do it short. i mean, first of all, about the cocoons it's the changing of the

metaphors in this age of information revolution that. you know, 30 years ago, the dominant metaphor was the web, the world wide. and the web was suppose to connect everything and everybody and over the years, the web kind of close in on us. and now it's the cocoons that every person or every group is enclosed within an information cocoon and. sometimes, you know, your next door neighbors are in a different cocoon than you and there is just no way to from one to the other. and an extreme example of where this can go, like today. so, okay, people don't agree like in the united states about who won the last elections 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 and body. one of the recurrent arguments throughout history that we see in many traditions judaism and christianity, in hinduism, in buddhism, is what exactly is a human being and what is the relation between mind and body, or be told me between soul and spirit and body so if we again go back to the age of the council of carthage and early christianity, so judaism and the first christians which came out of judaism they viewed humans as entities, the body was central we are bodies the there if i mean jewish biblical judaism did not talk at all the soul the idea that there could be a soul that exists separately from the body unheard of in biblical judaism. it's all the body and.

also the first christians they focus on the body. i mean the whole idea originally is that god is incarnated in flesh. the flesh at the center and jesus is crucified he's supposed to come back in the flesh and the kingdom of god supposed to be a material kingdom of fleshy bodies on the earth, but eventually under influences of platonic philosophies and other influences, and also for practical purposes, because the kingdom of god nowhere to be seen. and the really big problem for early is that they want, you know, when you're persecuted a sect, you can have these promises. okay, when we finally gain power, then we'll 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 is the kingdom of god? and there is no kingdom of god. you still have the same wars and corruption, guns and civil wars and executions and human greed. and it's it's all the same. so they say, okay, the of god is not on earth. it's on a different level of reality. it's in heaven. and you can't access it in the after you die, your soul will get to heaven and many christians drift towards a very different view of humans as. a dualistic view, actually, that my real is my soul, which is entrapped in a mating, real biological, filthy body with all these passions and these lusts

and, the hope, the ideal, is that eventually the soul be released from. this earthly, fleshy prison, and get to a purely immaterial realm which is heaven where it will exist forever and ever and throughout the 2000 years of christian history, you see tension. they can never really abandon the body. partly because the bible is full of it. and again, christ was incarnated the body in the flesh and rose and came back to life in the flesh. and there is very little about immaterial realm of pure souls in the bible itself. it all came mostly came later. so there is this constant and arguments that often leads to blows and two wars of religion and in the early centuries 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 of flesh. another camp saying that he was entirely divine and spiritual being. and there was a third camp who said that he was a non and the nonbeing reason this was the eventually official doctrine of the church he's non-binary. he's both and none at the same time the huge argument and also violence around these issues. now how does all this relate to a i we are to have another round of this mind body. we are already in the midst of it. what is your identity what defines your identity is your identity by your biological

body? is your identity defined your what you believe about yourself by your faith? you know, people like luther, they said salafi. the only thing that matters what you believe and we are now in a kind of new round of of of of of this debate with some people say. if you go online, you can be whatever want the bible logical body sitting in front the screen should not limit the identities that can adopt other people. no, no, no, no. there is a biological body. this is the center of your identity you cannot ignore your biological body. and as everybody know, this is a very heated debate right now. and this also goes as well potentially will influence we treat eyes. hey, eyes have no bodies, but they will increasingly be able

to interact with us and to press our emotional buttons and even to pretend to have emotions themselves. now people who give primacy to the in the identity of a person of the will have will resist treating eyes as persons. people who think that identity is has little to lose. will have a much easier giving or treating eyes as persons even they have no bodies and different countries can go different ways. so you know arguments about human today between the united states and china. i think what it means in 50 years when 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 and least in the us. interestingly enough, there is already a completely open legal path to recognizing nonhumans devoid of bodies as legal persons with rights because corporations, according to us law, are legal persons that, for instance, freedom of speech according to the supreme court, at least 2010. now, at present, this is a legal fiction because all of the decisions of corporations are made by human beings with biological. so google, according to us law, is a legal. but at present all of the decisions of google have to be made by some human being. but what happens in a few years may be when you start

incorporate ai's as legal you can technically incorporate an ai as a corporation, call it google. and the interesting thing about is that it doesn't need any human employees to make decisions for it. this is what the eye can do it by itself. so the ai for can can open a bank account and can start earning money. it can go and unlock on taskrabbit or mechanical turk online and offer its services to people or corporations earn money and then it has money and then it can start investing its money in the stock 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, in making political contributions. so this ai could donate billions dollars to politicians, exchange for giving even more rights to a.i. so these are the kinds of kind of scientific scenarios, i think, that we should be more concerned with than the great robot rebellion. if a senior i bot starts to hit a junior a.i. bot in this corporation, what should the air we have a bunch of flesh and blood bodies here. you have to go get pizza and beer. so i'm going to ask just one more question about the apocalypse and then we're going to go to audience questions. so i was reading your book on the subway as wrapping it up before dinner the other night.

my son and i this is my favorite paragraph. i'm going to read it to you and watch you explain what it means. we have now created a non-conscious. non-conscious, but very powerful alien intelligence. agreed if we mishandle it, i might extinguish not the human dominion on earth, but the light of consciousness itself, turning the universe into a realm of utter darkness a very cheerful book. here you have all this is the end. it is our responsibility to prevent this. so one way to prevent it would be to prevent air from extinguishing us. another would be to try to create consciousness and send it out into the universe. explain to me the question that paragraph raises is what is the thing that humans could do that would allow consciousness to even if we extinguish ourselves. oh, i'm not sure what it is. i mean, the problem is we don't we still don't understand

consciousness we don't know it emerges in us we don't know how it that's why we also regard to a.i. you know this big question a.i. consciousness i to be agnostic about it i don't think that ai's will necessarily develop consciousness but i'm sure that they will never consciousness. it could be so in this scenario that ai's destroy human civilization can take over and maybe spread from earth to the rest of the galaxy to other galaxies. but in the process they never develop consciousness. so this is the the dark universe scenario that again, that there is a huge confuse about these two terms because in humans they go 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 and pleasure and love and hate humans solve problems relying on our feelings in us and in other mammals, in animals, consciousness and intelligence go together. this is why we confused now in computers so far we've only an advance, a huge in intelligence without any advance consciousness. as far as we can tell in some fields, narrow fields a.i. is already far more intelligent than us and still 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, it also gains consciousness. but there no reason to think that this is inevitable.

there could be different roads leading to. mammals and humans been traveling along one road for and millions of years and which involves the development of consciousness computers, a.i. might simply be traveling along a different road, a much faster road, which reaches superintelligent without passing through any phase of developing consciousness. and if this happens, and if it gets out of our control this could spell again, not just end of the human dominion on earth, but the end of of the light of consciousness itself. you can then you can have an galactic empire without any feeling and nothing feels anything. it's just all dark. but why is that? explain to me why that so much worse outcome than just

obliteration of humans, which is a plenty bad outcome. you know, there are other entities conscious 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 that sapiens is definitely the last station whether through biology evolution or whether through some kind of combination with a.i. it's very likely that if we i don't think that like us will still be here in a thousand years or 10,000 years. the technology will be so advanced that there will be sentient beings, but they will have completely different bodies and minds, completely different experiences. and this is not necessarily the same way that. you know, the fact that we are

here and the human species that existed 2 million years ago are gone. we don't think about it as a tragedy and most people, at least with regard to the children, they hope that the children will be at least in some way, a bit more evolved than them. but to think that, this will be completely wiped out, that we will still be intelligence. but no consciousness at all. i mean, i think that intelligence is really overrated. the really important in life is consciousness, not intelligence. i mean, intelligence enabled to do different things, but it's all about consciousness, you know, who's still going to be there. all these are going to be there. they're going to speak of languages. all right. let's go to some audience questions in your last book. this is from martin gallardo and homa das. you began your book by arguing

humanity has, quote, i'm has almost defeated, quote hunger, plagues and war. do you still stand for that idea or have you reconsidered your argument. i think humanity has the capacity to reign in famine, plague and war. but it depends whether we actually do, depends on our decisions. and we have been making some terrible decisions over the last ten years, which is why are seeing the return of are calamities. these conditions we are now on the verge of a third world war which if happens is also likely to be a accompanied by by famine and potentially by plague. and the key thing to understand is the decline, for instance, of war in recent generations was not the result of a change in the laws of nature. it was not divine miracle. it was simply humans making good

decisions and building good institutions. and if we start making bad decisions and neglecting the institutions that preserved peace, then war returns. this question is from hamid alavi. there growing concern regarding the impact of ai on employment, particularly for skilled jobs and low income communities. considering the rapid advancements uncertainties associated with a.i., what strategies are measures can be implemented to alleviate these negative effects? the safest thing is to down. i think that humans, human societies are extremely adaptable all. but in order to adapt, you need time. so you know, 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 is what happens on the 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. and the countries that lead the air 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 just not have the resources to retrain the workforce and to adapt to the new economy. what do you think of the premise of the question that i will affect employment, particularly

low skilled jobs in low income communities, argue both sides of that. oh, i'm not sure there are good reasons to think it will. it will definitely impact also kind of high jobs accountants, lawyers, doctors, coders engineers. there is no reason think that it will focus specifically on low income. i think it's probably going to wipe out media ceos and historians first. this is from mike sexton. my favorite thing about your historical writing is that it has implications, not just for how we live, but how we should live. if you were a lifestyle guru, what message or recommendation would you have for your audience? i'm not a lifestyle guru, so don't know as of you know, this man meditates 2 hours a day, takes a month retreat, but i don't know. lifestyle guru. yeah but but i don't tell people to do it. i know that you know, it works for me but i know it doesn't work for other people, you know, for somebody else it's better,

you know, take a hike in the woods. so, so do that. instead, the idea, you know, meditation works for me, so it must for all people. it's yeah. i tried a month long, silent retreat and didn't work for my employees. my three kids. how do you think ai and disinformation impact minority rights especially for those in the lgbtq community? oh, and it depends on all decisions. it's not deterministic. it can it can work both ways for own life. i know that, you know, 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 for gay people in israel, which was it was really a revolution, because if you think about minorities history, there are two types of minorities you have concentrated minorities and you have dispersed minorities and

concentrated you think like, you know, jewish communities. so if you're born if you're born a --, let's say in europe, in the middle ages, there aren't -- around, but you're surrounded by them. you're born a jewish family in a jewish neighborhood, a jewish ghetto in a jewish community. you know, of --. so you have no problem other --, but i, for instance, i was born in israel the 1970s. i grew up in the eighties and nineties in a very homophobic society. and i wasn't born tel aviv. i was born in a small suburb of haifa. and i didn't know anybody who was gay. and this is dispersed minority most boys are not born to a gay family in a gay community. sometimes it happens, but it's very rare. so the name, the first question you encounter is, how do i find the others? and a question the -- don't to deal with, but gay people had to deal with throughout history.

and then the internet along and to a large extent solve the problem that suddenly became very easy, or at least much easier than before to find each other. so, you know, i often criticize. and in the book there was a lot of criticism of of information technology and social, but they also have enormous positive could extinguish the light of the universe but good for the gays. all right. thank you. if you could, one other species of human that is extinct, which one would you bring back and for what purpose? i think it would be very bad for i mean, the way that our species treat ourselves just because we have a little bit of different language or skin color. i like to be a neanderthal minority or the needs of minority in a sapiens world. should i be raised with human parents along a curator? this is from kathleen landers.

along a curated developmental trajectory to create a sense of love and attachment connection on the assumption that is possible to instill a moral code in the way one is created by humans should try a not organic. i mean they function along a completely different but in completely different ways they are not. i don't know chimpanzee. these are neanderthals that you can think of always a chimpanzee in human family. so it will become human like and this is a key kind of conception we often have a i like you have all these people. when will i reach human level intelligence. the answer is never. it's not on the path to human level intelligence, not human. it's not even organic i mean, for me i mean, you know the acronym out is a-i traditionally stood artificial intelligence. i think it should stand for alien intelligence is alien not

in the sense of coming from outer space alien in the sense yes, this is intelligence, but it makes decisions. it processes information, it invents idea in a fundamentally alien way. again, it's not oregon one thing, just one very important thing is that organic beings we work by day and night winter and summer growth and decay, and sometimes we're active, sometimes need to rest. one of the problems we encounter more and more in the world is now the world is increasingly run by these nonorganic intelligences that never to rest and they don't cycles and they pressure us to the same instead of them becoming like like us they pressure us to be the same. and if you force an organic being to be on all the time to 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 organ system which sometimes breaks. wall street is is the market is open only i think monday to friday. 30 to 4:00 in the afternoon. that's it. we it's off christmas. it's off and this is good for human beings but if you give ai's greater control of finance, then the system is always on. and this puts pressure on human financiers and bankers to be always on, which is just human impossible. and the same thing is happening journalists. and the same thing is happening to politicians, which collapse. and i often say the most misunderstood words in the english language, at least in united states, is the word excite it that people overuse it as a good thing, like they meet you and they say, oh, i'm so

excited, meet you. you, you people publish a book. all of it is so exciting and they think that excited means happy but it doesn't. excited that like your nervous system in your brain is fully on and if you could keep the nervous system of an organic entity on all the time it leads to collapse so the whole system is far too excited. we need to relax like we meet each other. i am so relaxed to be here with you today and excited at all and think how good it would be if politics was less exciting like. what we want, what we need. i think above in politics is boring politician. like i would vote for boring politicians. all right. well, i am so relaxed to ask the very last question of the night.

you've all this is from misha. do you think that future reliance, artificial intelligence will impact compete with religion as a source of spirituality could be quite i think that you know religions of all many religions always fantasized about having access to a super human and suddenly have it think texts about holy texts the idea of the holy text is that this is coming from a non-human intelligence is superior to us. now the problem with the holy texts throughout human history until today was that the really talk back to us like 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. so you always even in theory,

the highest authority in the religion was the holy text. in practice, a human institution grew around and the holy text and the real authority within the hands of the people who interpreted the text. and the same way that you have today, this fight in tech world between people believe in open source and people who believe that no it should be closed in just a couple of experts. well this was the same with catholics protestants look at the catholics say you have the experts of the church. they should interpret the holy and you have the protestants who believe in open source anybody can read the code and interpreted by themselves. but what happens when for the first time in history the text talk back whether the text of the traditional holy books you can train in ai to read everything single treatise written by every theologian or bishop or thinker in the third

century or in 11 century. byzantium. and that day i will understand the texts of christianity better than any human being. would it be more authoritative than human theology? bones and bishops won't be? question the other question what happens if you have new religions with texts written by a non-human intelligence intelligence? and this can already happening right with ai's maybe disseminating a new holy text online, which creates the kernel. the next big religion which will have again a text that can talk back coming from a superhuman nuns human intelligence. so i definitely think that some of the most interesting developments in ai will be the

field of theology. and in and maybe tim end with a recommendation that that google and in microsoft they should hire a few theologians because they will need it. all right. that is the perfect note to end on. thank you so much to politics and prose thank you so much dear theater and you most of all to yuval noah harari. and now joining us on booktv is george landreth, the. his book is called let freedom ring again. ken, self-evident truth, save from future decline.

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