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Hi everyone from New York Magazine in the box media podcast network. This is on with Cara Swisher and I'm Cara Swisher. My guest today is Israeli historian and philosopher, Yvall Noah Harari, who is out with his latest book Nexus. It's called a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI. It's kind of a third in a sequel after sapiens a brief history of humankind and homodeas a brief history of tomorrow. Let me be clear none of them are brief.
And once again, Harari is covering a lot of ground and he's breaking ground. He's not just looking backwards. He's analyzing the present complicated paradigm shift. We find ourselves in with AI and emerging information network and helping us understand where it could lead us in the future. Spoiler alert according to him. It doesn't look good, but he makes a lot of suggestions based on historical experience of how we can prevent the worst case scenario, the collapse of democracy.
Oh, that the AI revolution is obviously something many people, including me are falling very closely and strangely despite his apocalyptic vision of the AI future. Harari is revered in Silicon Valley, maybe not after this book. Daniel Immerwar from the Atlantic has said Harari is to the taxi EO what David Foster Wallace once was to the Williamsburg hipster. Let's see if that holds true after he's done raining on their parade.
My conversation with Yvall was taped at city arts and lectures in San Francisco. It was a packed audience and again, thank you so much to a terrific organization in my amazing city. It's really important addition to this ongoing conversation we're having about the impact of tech, especially AI on society.
One more thing I've been nominated for best host in the signal listeners choice awards if you agree that I'm best and why wouldn't you you can vote at vote dot signal dot com or follow the link in the show notes thanks so much now let's get to it. So welcome to city arts and lectures is great to see you again and thanks for joining me. Thank you. It's really good to be here with you.
So we're here to talk about your latest book nexus of brief history of information networks from the stone age to AI. It's not brief. It's quite large from the stone age to AI 400 pages. It's quite great. All right. Okay. Fine. Okay. All right. Okay. If you say so. Your first bestseller sapiens obviously a brief history of humankind. I like to use brief all the time came out in 2000 and then you wrote homodeias brief history of tomorrow in 2015.
So let's talk about what you were trying to do with nexus and how it relates to these other books that you wrote. So I mean it picks up where I left off with sapiens and with homodeias. The two main questions at the basis of the book is first of all if humans are so smart. Why are we so stupid?
We've managed to take over this planet to reach the moon to split the atom to the cypher DNA and here we are on the verge of destroying ourselves and much of the ecological system with us in several different ways could be ecological collapse could be nuclear war could be the rise of AI.
So what's wrong with us? And you know this is a question that has bothered people throughout history and you have a lot of answers in mythologies and theologies that tells us that there is something wrong with us. There is something wrong with human nature and nexus takes a different view. The problem is not in our nature. The problem is in our information.
If you give good people bad information, they will make bad decisions and self-destructive decisions. And then the book goes on to explore the long term history of information why isn't information getting better. I mean you would have expected that over thousands of years our information will get better and it really doesn't large scale modern societies are as susceptible to mass delusion and really insanity like mass insanity as stone age tribes.
If you think about the 20th century with Stalinism and Nazism I mean far more powerful of course and stone age right tribes a lot more sophisticated information technology but still can be extremely delusional. And when you look at the world today we have the most sophisticated information technology in history and people are unable to hold rational conversation you know there's a technology term for that which is very technical which is garbage in garbage out right.
And I think a lot it explains quite a bit of it in a really kind of easy simple way but the point you're making is this is historical this is a historical thing it's just more sophisticated in the garbage that we're making for ourselves correct. The garbage is is not accidental and it's it's effective in one important thing it's effective in creating order and the one of them key ideas of the book is that humans control the world because we can cooperate in larger numbers than any other animals.
And to create a large scale cooperative system you need two things which pull you in different directions you need to know through some truth about the world but you also need to preserve order between large numbers of people thousands millions billions and the truth is not the easiest way to do it. Most cases fiction and fantasy and done right lies are more effective in creating order among people.
Obviously AI is very hot right now but you know in homo day as you you discuss the benefits and dangers of new information technology especially if humans lose control. And you write in nexus as since homo day is your conversation about a have gone from being idle philosophical speculations to having quote focused intensity of an emergency room why what is that conversation right now from your perspective about AI.
I mean there are two conversations one is simply understanding what we are facing what is a i wise dangerous what is the threat and a lot of people have difficulty grasping it it's not like nuclear weapons right that the danger was obvious and nuclear war which will just kill everybody what's that what's the danger in AI.
And only would I think this is a good big service in focusing attention on that issue long before anybody else thought about it but it focused on the wrong scenario if you think about the terminator of the matrix the focus is on the big robot rebellion right the moment the a eyes decide to take over the world and wipe us out.
And this is unlikely to happen anytime soon because AI doesn't have the kind of broad intelligence necessary to build a robot I'm are me and take over a country or the whole world and this makes people feel complacent. And I think one of the key issue in the in issue in the conversation about AI is to explain that it's not about the big robot rebellion it's more about the AI bureaucrats it will take the world from within and not by rebelling from from outside or from below.
I mean AI is not a general intelligence but it doesn't need to be within a bureaucracy you need a very kind of narrow intelligence to gain enormous power if you think about a lawyer for instance that as an example if you drop a lawyer in the middle of the savanna.
He or she are not particularly powerful entities there much weaker than in a lion or an elephant or a aina but within a bureaucracy a lawyer could be more powerful than all the lions of the world put together right and this is where AI is stepping in we now have millions of AI bureaucrats increasingly making important decisions about us about the world you apply to a bank to get together.
It's an AI deciding you apply for a job in in wars increasingly it's AI choosing the targets so one part of the conversation is to understand what is the threat and we can explore that the other part of the conversation is of course what to do about it and here I think I mean almost everybody after a certain amount of time agreed that the best thing would be to simply slow down.
No, not everybody does because of an argument that I'll get to immediately I mean they will say ideally yes it would be good to slow down because it would give human society time to adapt but we can't slow down we can't afford to slow down because then the bad guys are competitors here or across the ocean they will not slow down and they will win win the race so we must run faster.
And then you have this kind of paradox that basically they are telling us we have to run faster because we can't trust the humans but we think we'll be able to trust the AI's. Right, right exactly you know you and I have this discussion with Daniel Coniman the late Daniel Coniman about the decision making of AI versus decision making of humans I don't know if you remember that.
But one of the things that I think is interesting to do is where at the beginning though is is the historical what what's happened historically with much lesser information systems that humans construct. So the tacit assumption of this information age is what we call I think all ages have been information ages in a lot of ways.
As you said that more information will lead to the truth which will lead to more wisdom more openness a better world. Obviously that's naive and you discuss that and you you define the information instead is something that creates new realities by connecting different points of view into a network. But as a philosopher do you see any danger in separating information from truth.
Most information is not truth the truth is a very small subset of all information in the world. The truth is first of all it's it's costly. If you want to write a truthful account of anything you need to research you need to gather evidence to fact check to analyze that that's very costly in terms of time and money and effort. Fiction is very cheap you just write the first things that comes to your mind the truth is also often very complicated because reality is complicated.
As fiction can be made as simple as you would like it to be and people prefer usually single stories and finally the truth can be painful whether the truth about us personally my relationships what I've done to other people to myself or in time nations or cultures.
Whereas fiction you can you can make it as attractive as flattering as you would like it to be. So in this competition between truth and fiction and fantasy truth is at a huge disadvantage if you just flood the world with information which was the point of a lot of.
Most information will not be the truth and in this ocean of information if you don't give the truth some help some edge the truth tends to sink to the bottom not rise to the top right and we see it again and again throughout history every time people invent and you information information. So it's really interesting because I was just listening reading Rachel my nose prequel was stuck about Joseph gobl is talking about this like if you flood the zone with with that information or just anything.
It washes out the truth and of course ten of the Williams said the truth is at the bottom of bottomless well you can never get to it and someone more modern Steve Bannon if you I read Steve Bannon I'm sorry I do it for the rest of you but he talks about it.
Incessantly the idea of flooding the zone because that's the best way to confuse and distract people so we're used to equating new technology with scientific progress this virtuous circle like the case the printing press and this was a really interesting part of your book so let's go a little bit in history. You know that when the good and press was invented instead of science and such as Copernicus is on the revolutions of the heavenly spears.
One of the founding documents of science of the scientific position you wrote the real best seller of the 15th century was a book called the hammer of witches yeah talk a little bit the hammer of witches okay was a best seller you are.
You best seller so basically especially in a place like this in some francisco and silicone valley you talk with people about information they will eventually reach out to history to give you some historical analogies and they will tell you something like the same way that the printing press calls the scientific revolution so what we are doing will create a new scientific revolution right and the thing is the printing press did not cause the scientific revolution you have about 200 years.
From the time that Gutenberg brings print technology to Europe in the middle of the 15th century until the flowering of the scientific revolution was newton and livenates and all these people in the middle of the 17th century during these 200 years you have the worst wave of wars of religion in European history because of the printing.
The printing press enabled it in in in in in a way I'll explain in in a moment and also the worst wave of witch hunt the big European witch hunt craze is not a medieval phenomenon it's a modern phenomenon that was helped along by the printing press medieval European didn't worry much about witches they thought they existed but they didn't think they were dangerous right then around the time that Gutenberg comes with the press.
You have a small group of people that comes up with this conspiracy theory that witches are not individuals with magical powers that can brew love potions and help you find lost treasure there is a global conspiracy led by Satan with agents in every town and every village that wants to destroy humanity. So QAnon is what you're talking about. Basically yes. I mean there is a direct line it's there is a direct line. I mean the ideas are coming from there and at first nobody paid it much attention.
Then there was one of the people who popularized it was a man called Heinrich Kramer he started to do it yourself which hunt in the Alps what is today Austria and but he was stopped by the church authorities who thought he was crazy and expelled yes and he took revenge through the printing press he wrote this book the hammer of the witches Malau Smalifikarum which was again a do it yourself manual to harm the witch.
And you know how to identify and kill witches and many of the ideas we still associate today with witches for instance that witches are mostly women that they engage in wild sexual or these this came to a large extent from the deranged imagination of Heinrich Kramer. Now just to give you a taste of this book there is an entire section in the book about the ability of witches to steal penises from men.
With all kinds of evidence you know it's all evidence plate I heard from some people that so for instance he give you bring the story evidence of a man who wakes up one morning to find out that his penis is gone.
And so he suspects the local witch he goes to the house of the local witch and forces her to bring him back his penis and the witch says okay okay climb this tree and he climbs the tree and at the top of the tree he finds a bird's nest where the witch keeps all the penises she stole from different men and she says okay you can take your own yeah and the men of course takes the biggest one. And the witch tells you no no you can't take this one this belongs to the parish priest.
Oh okay good for him. Now you can understand why this book sold a few more copies than Copernicus's on the revolutions of the heavens. I don't think there's penises in that. Yeah and now this is all sounds very very funny. Until you realize the consequences right tens of thousands of people were killed. During the European witch hunt craze and to give just one example to to balance the fun story about the penises.
So in Munich they arrested an entire family the Papinheimer family accusing them of being part of this global conspiracy of witches. And they'd say father mother three kids and they start by torturing the ten year old boy the youngest of the family and you can still read the protocol of the interrogation in the archives in Munich today. And they they torture a ten year old boy in unspeakable ways until he incriminates his mother he admits yes she's a witch.
She she went to meet Satan she she kills babies she's someone's health storm and they break the whole family. And they execute all of them including the ten year old boy. And you know this eventually also reaches to America the Salem witch hunt right. And this was again this was fuel not caused by of course but it's not that the printing press caused it but the printing press enabled it to spread. Right.
For the same reason that fake news and conspiracy theories spread today and then the people that create the printing presses don't take responsibility for it. Yes modern day. Yeah I've been in that conversation. I mean and the thing is that conversation happened centuries ago. Right. And today you again have millions of Americans basically believing in the same story about a global conspiracy led by Satan. Right.
And if you look what what stopped it last time how did we in the end get to the scientific revolution it wasn't the technology of the printing press. It was the creation of institutions. That were dedicating to sifting through this kind of ocean of information and all these stories about which which has and so forth. And developing mechanisms to evaluate and to the population correct which is very easily for yeah right and and to to to spread not the information people are most likely to buy.
But the information which is most likely to be true right. You know when you when you send a manuscript to a scientific publisher who published as a paper is a book so they want to know not only if is this will this sell a lot of books or a lot of. But is it true is it true right. What can I think is you know one of the things that's happened if you fast forward to today and I want to ask a couple more historical things because it happens again and again this is constant.
And the narrative of lying essentially that people tend to believe I had an interview with Mark Zuckerberg where I was talking we were talking about Alex Jones who is one of the greatest purveyors of misinformation.
And he's a really heinous character in our in our modern history and I was like why don't you take him off the platform he's clearly lying and it's not true and these kids weren't child actors and they're actually dead and it's damaging to the parents is damaging to me and for some reason he switched the conversation to holocaust in iris when we did this interview and I was like what a mistake on your part but fine we'll go to holocaust in iris I was like no no let's stay with Alex Jones but he did it night went along.
And he started to talk about that holocaust deniers don't mean to lie and I felt that was the definition of holocaust and I was like wow and I let him spin it out which was really interesting to hear his point of view which was completely ridiculous because I felt that the more holocaust that I was on the platform the more anti-semitism down the river would happen like you could see it happening if these people had access to other people because it's interesting stuff right it's it's much more interesting than the fact.
And you know he got a lot of trouble for saying that and etc but it didn't prevent him from continuing to allow them to thrive on the platform until later when he decided to kick them off he decided one person was responsible as far as I was concerned for this flood of anti-semitism because he refused to do anything at the beginning so talk a little bit about from historical sense how where those.
Because right now it's in the hands of just a few people and they have real problems with history they have real problems with knowledge beyond coding yeah I think the main issue. And set for some reason they all have penises but go ahead. So they are afraid the witches will steal them that's well no that's just Elon nobody wants your penis Elon.
Well. So how do you go about self correcting you talk about the importance of self correcting mechanisms that's what you call it I think again the key point about all these issues is not whether people are allowed to say these things yeah because here I will tend to actually agree with Zuckerberg with Elon Musk with others we should be very careful.
Before we start simply silencing people you cannot say that at all let me make a point they do silence when they feel like it just so you're aware it's a lot of policy I know but I think again when it comes to really censoring the reason there is a discussion to be to be had right.
The problem is not with people saying all kinds of things the problem is with the platforms deliberately promoting particular kinds of things particular kind of thing that spread hate and fear and anger and outrage at some point if Elon Musk that it's not freedom of speech is freedom of. He didn't say that he copied it from time ago I had it was said before he was willing to repeat it.
But the thing is that people produce an enormous amount of content all the time right and the question is what gets attention what gets spread and here the responsibility of somebody who manages a big information system whether it's a printing shop or whether it's a social media outlet is to be very careful about what they choose to spread what they choose to promote and if they don't know how to tell the difference between facts and and lies they are in the wrong business.
This is for instance what was built during the scientific revolution is exactly these mechanisms right how do we tell the difference between facts and fiction so how do we build those today when this is in the hands of some very troubled people like it with full control of these things or either uneducated or.
Just I don't know what they're doing actually it's someone competence some arrogance some narcissism it's in the hands of a very small amount of people and it's in the architecture of this stuff that to me it's the architecture because when you look at say a Google it's designed for speed context and accuracy like I'm searching for ADL I'm going to get ADL this is example I always use that's a utility right it comes you what social that was a divine for is virality.
By reality speed and engagement which is a different architecture all together and it always leads the bad direction so how do you create what should influence our thinking because the government refuses to step and we'll get to that in a minute. I personally should be clear that the platforms should be liable for the actions of their algorithms not for the content of the users yep.
And if somebody posts a hate field conspiracy online that's the responsibility of that human being right but then if the Facebook algorithm of the tiktok algorithm decides to promote that conspiracy theory to recommend it to auto play it this is no longer on the user this is the action of the algorithm and this is the main problem and I mean it's amazing to think about it but one of the first.
Jobs to be automated in the world was not taxi drivers and was not textile workers it was editors news editors I mean this used to be one of the most powerful positions in society if you edit a major news platform and newspaper you're one of the most important people because you shape the public conversation sure and we so throughout history how much power editors had like doing the French Revolutions.
The French Revolution Jean Paul Maral shape the course of the French Revolution by editing maybe the most important newspaper of Paris of France that that on in those time the public. Lenin before he was dictator of the Soviet Union is one job basically was editor of the newspaper is correct. Mussolini was editor of the newspaper advantage this is how he rose to fame and then became dictator of Italy so like the letter of promotion was like journalist editor dictator.
And now the job I haven't reached the top one yet because you're in the wrong period you're in the wrong. I mean now the job that was once done by Lenin Mussolini is done by algorithms it's one of the first jobs in the world to be completely automated and the it's still of course the humans are still in control they give the algorithms the goal.
And as I guess most people here know the goal given was increased user engagement right and the algorithms by trial and error discovered yeah that the easiest way to increase user engagement is spread outrage yeah and this is what they did and this they should be liable for that again not for the content of the users. We'll be back in a minute. Support for on with carousel.
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Anthropic leadership team was founded in AI research and built Claude with an emphasis on safety to learn more visit anthropic dot com slash Claude that's in the end of the day and then we'll talk about the topic dot com slash Claude talk about what happened you know in the most famous version of propaganda which is still probably not see Germany in terms of using the media using imagery using propaganda because I think we
really talking about propaganda yet but it's all part of the of the same kind of of toolkit because a key difference between dictatorships and democracies is that democracy's work on trust and especially trust and institutions or as dictatorships work on terror.
So dictators they don't really need you to believe in a particular theory in a particular version of reality they really need you to disbelieve everything if they can destroy all trust between people then the only system that can still function is a dictatorship.
So and we see it also today and we thought of course in Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union I mean there is like in with one hand they try to spread a particular conspiracy theory particular propaganda but with the other hand they just try to so distrust and unfortunately both historically and also today this is not that but the preserve say of Nazis or fascists of the extreme right we sit on the right and on the left.
As well was also something very common on the Marxist left and we and the key idea made the most important idea which is common here is the idea that the only reality is power and that all human relations are power struggles this is an idea which is common on both the extreme right and the extreme left which is corrosive of trust.
It implies that all human institutions whether it's the media whether it's science whether it's the courts they are just can elite conspiracies to gain power whenever somebody tells you something the question to ask is not easy the truth the question to ask is whose privileges does it serve.
It's obviously not the truth because nobody cares about the truth all humans care only about power so every time somebody says something the only question is who is who is gaining in power by this speaking of speaking of that in the hammer of witches for example the times in New York Times fact checked over 170 posts recently for me lawn musk who owns a big communications platform now along with the other stuff he should still be doing and not this.
On X in a week and he found that almost one third or false misleading or missing context this summer the Supreme Court sidestep whether social media should or should not away from us should or should not moderate content public opinion is split because of the at least in this country because of the first amendment they always get mushed in there in a way that's very deceptive I think conservatives think they're doing too much progressives think too little and proponents of less content moderation often as I said site the first amendment I don't think it's about free speech.
It's about as you said algorithms. I'm going to read a bit from your book you write the information network has become so complicated relies on to such an extent on opaque algorithmic decisions and intercomputer entities that has become very difficult for you to answer even most basic of political questions why are we fighting each other. So talk about the impact of these unfathomable our own that are owned by individual people who direct them in some fashion or control them.
But there is a big question here whether the danger is the individuals who own them or whether the danger potentially is the algorithms themselves and I agree that at the present moment the people who owned the technology probably pose the bigger danger but in the long term we have to take into account that this is the first technology in history
which can potentially make decisions and invent new ideas by itself that a eyes are agents and not tools and therefore down the road the main problem could be the a eyes and not the human creators or the human owners.
So that it becomes self what it does what it wants to do correct like in the case of the social media algorithms. I mean today they should know better but at least in the beginning the executives who gave the algorithms the task of increased user engagement they did not anticipate what will happen and I think that most of them definitely didn't want what happened that the corrosion of trust. And the collapse of the public conversation and the destabilization of democracy this was not their plan.
They certainly should have anticipated it wasn't very hard to figure that out correct I mean when you I was in a meeting with Facebook when they showed Facebook live and I said what what happens when people murder each other on this thing what happens when someone puts a GoPro on their head and does a mass murder what happens when there's bullying suicide and literally the person there was like your bummer care swish.
I was like yeah I am you know like human humanities that come sometimes a bummer so how do you then self correct that because the first your book is about AI and you say we're the critical moment of canonization that a eyes will become full fledge members of our information network.
Let me read this section because you're talking about the people are the problem now but the algorithm itself will be the AI could become the main problem on the road which makes you scared because they're doing a bad human's doing a bad job right now but in in coming years all information networks from armies to religions will gain millions of new AI members which will process data very differently in humans do the new members will make alien decisions and generate alien ideas that is decisions and ideas that are unlikely.
To occur to humans which is a plus for for AI for a lot of people the addition of so many alien members is bound to change the shape of armies religions markets and nations are political economic and social systems might collapse and new ones will take their place that's why a should be a matter of utmost urgency even to people who don't care about technology you think the most important political questions concern the survival of democracy or their fair distribution of wealth.
It sounds terrifying because people are doing a terrifically bad job right now so talk about you are not an optimist when it comes to AI you know you're saying marks that we're going to master one thing but boy we did you get a load of these AI kind of thing. I mean first of all it's obvious that AI also has enormous positive potential otherwise we would not be developing it right well there is money but go ahead.
No but even the money I mean you need to sell something I mean it does I mean in many cases people buy it because there is benefit and otherwise it's difficult to sell it but the key thing is that humans human societies are extremely adaptable if we give them enough time and this is just moving too fast.
We don't have time to adapt again to these completely new financial systems armies religions which are will feel be created by all these new AI agents you call them alien and not artificial intelligence why is that. Are there any not in the sense of coming from out of space of course there although I can't wait till they get here fix everything but go ahead.
So I think that's a very important thing to do is to get a complete and wrong idea that these things are artifacts and people when they think of artifacts they think we create them so we can control them we can anticipate them it's only AI if it can learn and change by itself which means that it's going to be very difficult to anticipate and to control what it's going to do.
Even though it's fueled by our own information we've been uploading the past two decades correct yes I mean it works I mean it eats all the information that humans have produced not just in the last two decades in the last tens of thousands of years if you think about AI their produce images so we feed them with all the images created since the cave art of 40 and 50 thousand years ago and they eat the whole of it within just a few months and then start creating new things.
The first kind of generation it's mostly similar to what humans have produced so far but I guess that very quickly they will start to become more and more creative which also means more and more alien more and more different from human creations now we have been used to living you know throughout history inside human culture like everything all the images all the poetry all the financial system.
All the other financial systems all the armies they all came ultimately from the human imagination from our mind and suddenly very quickly we will find ourselves living inside a culture which is more and more and alien culture coming out of the calculations and confabulations and imaginations of a non organic entity which was originally fed by us which was originally fed by us the same way that we originally
we eat the plants and we eat animals and still we can create things that plants and animals can't right tech people are using a term agent co pilot friend assistant like they're lesser than essentially than humans and we are completely in charge I just recently spoke with Microsoft a I CEO Mustafa Suleiman and they they have a new word at Microsoft called a gentick which is agent which is it's not a word I don't care I think it's a new words being fine but it's not.
You know and you're ringing the bell talk about what you think between the thinking of AI is a tool or agent because that's what they're leaning in on this is here that we're here to help you.
When you talk about this idea of a gentick you're talking about something very different and your teacher is an entity that can make decisions by itself that you can't anticipate and that can invent new ideas by itself that you can't anticipate right that can learn and change and you know you scale up and I'll give an example for more
that's happening in my home country now in Israel so there is a huge debate I'm not sure who is correct there about the role of AI in choosing bombing targets in Gaza you know in the Terminator you had the robots pulling the trigger right but what's really happening in wars today it's the humans pulling the trigger but the AIs are calling the shots literally calling the shots right I mean everybody that
talked with agree that at present the AI has the capability of choosing targets right and that it is being used to go over immense amounts of data they are that no human analyst is able to analyze and choose targets so let me read you with Suleiman said this is what he said to me it's going to be your teacher your medical report network ultimately it's going to take actions on your behalf this is the friendly version of that you're talking about a very unfriendly
target selector right and this is still extremely primitive AI right I mean this kind of bombing AI and chat GPT and GPT for this is like the annual bus of the AI world you write the easiest way for AI to seize powers not by breaking out the circumstance lab but by ingratiating itself with some paranoid tibary us dictator yeah I can think of one or two these days what risks you see talk about that
because you're talking about ingratiating and not we tend to talk about AI's in the context of democracies but dictatorships also have a huge problem with with AI's for dictators for human dictators the scariest thing in the world is not a democratic revolution the scariest thing is a powerful subordinate that takes power from them either assassinate them or manipulate them if you think about the roman empire for instance this is the reference to tibyrius not a single roman
emperor was ever toppled by a democratic revolution but a very large percentage of them were either killed or toppled or manipulated by powerful subordinates a general provincial governor their wife their son somebody right and this is still the number one problem for dictators around the world and for them to give a lot of
power to an AI that can then get out of their control is very very tricky because you know to to seize power in the democracy it's difficult because power is distributed between many organizations institutions how the AI deal with the Senate filibuster difficult but to seize power in a dictatorship you just need to learn how to manipulate a single very paranoid individual and paranoid people are usually the easiest to manipulate
so if you think again I know a few yeah so it's not just an issue for democracies so it's not good for dictatorships but democracy also creates chaos one of the selling points of the internet and social media was that it brought the world closer together that was at the beginning just so you're aware yes we're all going to get along if I have a dollar for every time march
that community to me I'd be very wealthy but somehow it didn't turn out that way there's you say right now diverging views on social media actually into more separation will get worse with AI talk about the see called it the silicon curtain and data colonialism so this is about what might happen on the international level not within countries but
but with between countries so the two main scenarios is that you'll have the world splitting into completely different information spheres after centuries of convergence and globalization you will have completely you know if the main metaphor in the early days of the web was the web that connects everything in community and la la la so now the main metaphor is the cuckoo like the web is closing in on us and we are enclosed within information cuckoo
and different people are inside different cuckoo and the silicon curtain is of course a reference to the iron curtain and to the idea that we will have entire countries or entire spheres which are in completely separate information which we have in this country right now which is which is which is developing at a very fast rate and then a complete breakdown in communication and understanding between human beings that you cannot agree on only there is no longer a shared human reality
and the other main danger is of the rise of new digital empires and data colonialism the same thing that happened in the 19th century with the industrial revolution the few countries that industrialized first they had then the power to conquer and dominate and exploit the rest of the world
this can happen again with a i technology that it doesn't have to be countries it can be people right it can be people inside the country but I mean I think the biggest worry is still on the international level you know some countries will become fabulously wealthy because of a i and the u.s. is in china are are the the the the front runners here but other countries could completely collapse
and they will not have the resources to reach the work force to rebuild to to to to adapt to the new a i economy so we can have a repeat of the imperialist drive of the 19th century and this time center that around data to control a country from afar you will no longer need to send in the soldiers and gun boats and and machine guns you will basically just need to take out the data
right if you have all the data of the country you have all the data of every journalist every politician every military officer and you also control the attention of the people in that country you control what they see what they hear you don't need to send in the soldier right this is become a data courtly we'll be back in a minute Fox creative this is advertiser content from zel when you picture an online scammer what do you see for the longest time we have these images of somebody sitting
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there are hundreds if not thousands of scam centers all around the world these are very savvy business people these are organized criminal rings and so once we understand the magnitude of this problem we can protect people better one challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them but Ian says one of our best defenses is simple
we need to talk to each other we need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize what you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive even my own father fell victim to a thank goodness a smaller dollar scam but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time so we are all all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other
learn more about how to protect yourself at vox dot com slash zel and when using digital payment platforms remember to only send money to people you know and trust Robinhood is introducing forecast contracts so you can trade the presidential election through Robinhood you can now trade financial derivatives contracts on who will win the US presidential election
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Out uncertainty self-doubt stressing about not knowing where to start in plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done out word art sorry with laugh lovers in knowing what to do when to do it and who to hire start caring for your home with confidence down the thumbtack today so before we go I want to talk about regulation you've been advocating for air regulation for a while so a last year you signed the open letter causing for a pause which very nice but it didn't happen just
that's why nobody really expected it lots of people is looking at my side it and then started their own their own thing I think of one of the people you didn't here in California Gavin News and recently beat out a bill that would have been the first legislation the nation put up a i guardrails it was a problematic bill it was it was somewhat unspecific but it required safety testing it mandated a kill switch turn off AI systems and many who criticizes it was focused too much on frontier models
and then Stanford professor faith a Lee who was one of the early AI people also warned that would disadvantage smaller developers and they're trying to rewrite it but there's almost no regulation anywhere and there's no global regulation there's some of banning bots deep fakes people are talking about what do you see as the regulatory scheme mark here to do this because it doesn't we haven't been able to do the last one yeah not one so I think that the three
things I can say I mean there are two regulations which should be obvious one is that corporations should be liable for the actions of their algorithms you developed it you deployed it you're reliable like with cars like with medicines like the other is that a eyes you should know you should then counterfeit humans a eyes and bots are welcome to interact with us only if they identify as a eyes the transparency yes right but I mean it's going to be impossible to just regulate
AI in advance because again it's an agent because it learns and changes very very rapidly the only thing that can work is to create living institutions not kind of dead regulations that are written in books but living institutions
staffed by at least some of the best talent on the planet and with enough budget to understand what is happening and to react on the fly and again before we even get to regulation the first step is observation when it eyes before teeth like most people even in this country are hardly understand
what is happening and why is it dangerous if you go to the rest of the world to the countries which might end up as data colonies they're even in a worse situation right because they have to rely on what the American or the Chinese companies or governments tell them so what we need urgently is an international institution again with the best talent and with enough budget to simply tell people what is happening and what are the dangers and now we can
discuss regulations nuclear regulatory commission is kind of what you're talking about right like but again with nukes it was relatively easy to understand the danger right with AI it's a very rapidly developing there's positive to it the surgeon general talked about this there's never been
technology that's both positive and possibly devastating to humanity so my last two questions you say also that unsupervised algorithms should be banned from curating public debates yeah absolutely people do such a good job at it already I mean still I would trust that the humans more than the we have thousands of years of experience with humans we don't have experience with a eyes I mean in the tech world I often hear the opposite arguments we have thousands of
years of experience with humans we know we can't trust them the a eyes we don't know so maybe they'll be good yeah and that's a huge huge gamble yeah yeah so I want to finish on this you said the the survival of democracies depends on their ability to regulate the information market which we have not done at all like at all yeah not one I was just recently on a sand and debate was and this guy who was a Trump spokesperson spokesperson model really
because they didn't know anything he said I said how many laws are regulating the internet and free speech because it was going on about free speech and he goes hundreds and I said zero but you're close you know so so you know the decisions we make in the coming years will determine whether summoning this alien intelligence proves to be a terminal error or the beginning of a hopeful new chapter of the evolution of life you you have it both ways there I see
so before we go what's your worst case scenario and what's your best case scenario you know the the the worst case scenario is that AI destroys not just human civilization but you know the very light of consciousness that a eyes
are highly intelligent but they are non-conscious entities at least so far right and we could have a scenario that they take over these non-organic highly intelligent entities take over the planet even spread from this planet to the rest of the galaxy but it's a completely dark universe
consciousness I mean the ability to feel things like love and hate and pain and pleasure this could be completely gone so this is like it's not a very high probability but it's the very simple so we'll call that the Thanos version
but go ahead yeah okay and that's the worst case scenario what's the best one the best case scenario is that we are able to harness the immense positive potential of AI you know in healthcare in solving climate change in education and the key is knowing which problems to solve one of the key
problems of humanity throughout history and you see it in particular in silicon valley is that we rush to solve problems we do it tremendous job and then we realize we solve the wrong problem because we did not spend enough time on just understanding what the problem is and you know we now have this
fabulous technology to say unimportant things to people we don't care about and we still don't have we still don't know how to say the most important things to the people we most love we most care about so we I mean it is a gain and a gain in history right that and we are so wise when it comes to
you know finding the technical solutions but we just don't spend enough time on choosing the right problems to solve right I have one more question so with sapiens you became like every tech bro was a fan boy of you like crazy I know I was like have you talked to you Val you know what you've all said I'm like no I took an anthropology course in college unlike you so I did know a lot of so but they were thrilled and you really did find a way to get them relatively
educated not very about some stuff so they loved you loved you like couldn't stop talking about you know that right they're your biggest fanboys this is critical yeah what are they saying about the they don't like me anymore they never did but what are they how do you out we wait and see what do you think what I think they will like it less than sapiens but but but again I think maybe I'm less critical than you are of them but I think many of them many of them
yet but go ahead I've met some of them and many of them are really deeply concerned about it they are because they are just I mean they understand almost better than anybody else what they are creating and they are very concerned they don't know how to stop again they have this basic argument
that we would most of them not all of them we would like to slow down we realize it's dangerous we would like to give you and society more time more time to think about it more time to develop the safety mechanisms but we can't stop we can't slow down they will say we are the good guys if we slow
down the bad guys on in the other company or in the other country will not slow down and then the bad guys will win the race and take over the world so we must do it first right but that's sort of the G or me argument that Mark
Zuckerberg is often made like is either G or us and I'm right is that my choice is there another is there is there's choice I think the I think there are more choices but I also think this is a serious argument and again I don't think they are kind of Hollywood science fiction villains just Dr.
Evil out to take over the world so I think they they they would appreciate to some extent a deep and meaningful conversation about it they have their opinions but I wouldn't write them off so quickly and so easily all right on that note you've all right it's a great book thank you
on with Cara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor Ravel Katari Yokem Jolly Myers and Megan Bernie special thanks to Corinne Ruff Kate Gallagher Kaelen Lynch and Claire Hyman our engineers are Rick Kwan Fernando Aruda and Alia Jackson and our theme music is by Tracademics
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