The Rise of AI Tyrants: A Harari Perspective
Ah, Yuval Noah Harari! The man who made history accessible to anyone who can Netflix-and-chill! Remember when we thought he was just going to toss around some ancient secrets but instead turned out to be the prophet of our hyperconnected futures? Yep, with his latest work, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, he’s back again to kick our collective consciousness into high gear!
China’s Unstoppable Train
So, here’s Harari’s hot take: If you thought the British steam engine revolution was a showstopper, wait until you see the modern express train coming in from China, carrying a full cargo of algorithms! Think of it like on-demand streaming, but instead of binge-watching your favorite shows, you’re binge-consuming your personal data! The Chinese government isn’t just in the passenger seat; they’re driving like a kid who just got their hands on the latest video game. With fewer restrictions and tons of data from a massive population, it’s a game of Monopoly where they own all the properties, and they never land on “Go.”
Dictatorships on the Data Highway
What’s truly fascinating is Harari’s claim that in this brave new world, authoritarian regimes could wield more power than ever, making our bureaucratic red tape look like the official guide to “How to Lose at Monopoly.” It’s like handing the keys to the kingdom to your messy roommate and hoping they don’t throw a rager while you’re out. The juxtaposition here is palpable. As the West is meticulously crafting legislation around AI while China’s just over there doing its thing – a bit like hosting a dinner party while your friend comes in with a full buffet. Spoiler alert: the buffet usually wins.
Religious Texts 2.0
Now, Harari pulls another clever parallel out of his hat: the comparison between the sacred texts of yore and AI today. Both are supposed to be infallible, right? But who’s interpreting these tech-driven holy scriptures? Enter governments, those modern-day clerics. If churches had confessions, we might need data centers where people can air their grievances about AI’s questionable decisions and say, “Bless me, algorithm, for I have sinned… fraud detection is not my forte.” Harari underscores that these mechanisms for self-correction are crucial, reminding us that just because a piece of software tells you to do something doesn’t mean you should start a cult around it!
AI and the New Order
So how does AI fit into our future? Will it be the diligent servant or the tyrant pulling the strings behind the scenes? Harari suggests that rather than an uncontrollable force of chaos, the true threat is how societies choose to wield this technology. Like giving a toddler a chainsaw – sure, it can cut dangerously close to progress, but we must ask ourselves: who’s supervising? AI could breed new forms of social order that trump all our cherished liberties. Welcome to a world where your government might consider your app usage during a lockdown as “collective responsibility,” all while you were just trying to binge-watch cat videos!
The Battle for Control
His words ring true as he paints a picture of “new AI overlords.” Forget the zombies or extraterrestrial invasions; our new reality may just involve power-hungry algorithms flirting with disaster. Arguably, the balance of power shifts into a topsy-turvy dance of data. The risks are heightened, and Harari argues that the stakes are just as high as during the Cold War. But instead of stockpiling nuclear warheads, we might end up arguing over whose AI gets the last digital cookie! Talk about complicated dinner conversations!
The Silicon Curtain: From Virtual to Reality
The scientist-slash-philosopher also raises the alarm over what he calls the “silicon curtain.” Not just a metaphorical divide; it might soon be a tangible reality. AI could leap over physical borders like a very confused rabbit as offshoring becomes the norm. Governments might try to nuzzle the technology back home, but as anyone who’s ever tried stopping a toddler with a cookie jar knows, it’s unlikely they’ll have much luck!
Concluding Thoughts: An Optimistic Outlook?
As foreboding as it seems, our friend Harari ends on a note of optimism. And let’s be real – we could all use a little optimism in a world where your smart toaster might be plotting against you, right? So while we’re fending off the next digital overlord, let’s hope we can also put in place the checks and balances that will keep AI on a tight leash – or at least in the virtual sandbox where it belongs. Until then, dust off those history books. It looks like they might be feeling relevant again.
The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari converted with his work Sapiens into a world-renowned guru. Ten years later he published Nexus. A brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI. This time his story addresses the hyperconnectedness of our era and the power of algorithms, and prophesies the development of an all-powerful artificial intelligence that could give tyrants absolute control of humanity.
Harari simplifies it through a speech suitable for all audiences on the future of AI, based on concrete and interesting hypotheses, which he illustrates with the historical data he masters.
The crux of the plot, as in academic articles, consists of these hypotheses.
China in the lead
Harari relies on historical contexts that can undeniably be transferred to the current situation, the threshold of a new technological revolution. Compare like this the deployment of the first railway lines at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution with the current millennium and the technological revolution that the Internet brought about. In both eras, private initiative assumed technological risk, guided by market considerations, as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have done in our time.
When the time came, the states took control of the railroads, realizing their strategic potential. Today, in the development of state algorithms and AI, China leads the way.
The advantages for a dictatorial state
The point of view of the work is extremely interesting, according to which, in the phase of state initiative, a dictatorship with a large population – and, therefore, a large capacity for generating data – and few legislative restrictions has an enormous advantage over strongly regulated free societies, moral considerations aside. This would be the case of China versus the European Union, pioneer in legislation that tries to limit the use of artificial intelligence.
Apparently, we are still far from this second phase, as the technology giants still lead the way. Thus, Harari writes:
“When the technology giants […] “If they set out to design better algorithms, they can usually do it.”
However, two decades ago we believed that China would never match Silicon Valley – in fact we did not even consider it – and today Chinese drones not only dominate the market, but also fly over the skies of Ukraine as the vanguard of the war of the future.
Empires and sacred books
Harari’s comparison of Western colonial empires to the current development of AI population control tools is accurate and chilling.
The parallel he establishes between indisputable truths (supposedly infallible AI versus sacred books) is brilliant; authorities of interpretation (current governments versus churches and clerics) and self-correction mechanisms (current science versus its virtual absence in the past).
Churches and clerics were the authorities of interpretation of the indisputable sacred texts. Today, it is societies and governments who must interpret AI decisions. And faced with the threat of an all-powerful AI, Harari warns that humanity will only be saved with correction mechanisms that limit and correct its effects.
AI as a tool for order
What will be the self-correcting mechanisms of a world augmented by artificial intelligence? Will AI act as an enhancer of the intrinsic desire for order in resource-constrained societies, compromising the ideals of progress in freedom that we currently take for granted?
What is clear is that AI will be a partially autonomous actor and, as such, correction mechanisms will need to be external.
Harari leads us to consider that the danger is not the “uncontrolled” AI of the collective imagination, but rather its use by societies that use it as a tool of order and control, as well as the effect of its mere existence on the very evolution of the societies.
At some point, what Harari calls “new AI overlords” with absolute powers could arrive. An AI overlord could decide to engineer a new pandemic virus, or flood the networks with fake news or incitements to revolt.
The control of tyrants
The balance between opposing societies augmented by AI – writes Harari in Nexus– will be much more unstable than that which existed between the nuclear powers separated by the borders of the Cold War. The reason is that now the uncertainty is much greater, typical of systems with more degrees of freedom, without certainty about actions and their consequences.
Harari prophesies that a centralized AI will become a resource whose control will lead to conflicts and confrontations.
The author avoids the banality of AI as a totally autonomous entity outside of human leaders (although he illustrates this possibility with interesting examples from the Roman Empire), but correctly identifies the risk of it becoming centralized and becoming a resource whose control is tyrants dispute.
The silicon curtain
Harari mentions virtual silicon curtains, but we are certainly seeing the deployment of physical silicon curtains. Computing still depends on very expensive, clearly located resources: powerful data centers, trunk links that support massive connections between different geographic areas, etc.
However, AI offshoring is feasible. That is to say, although today computing can still be compartmentalized at the dictates of governments following physical borders, it is possible that this limitation will soon disappear and that AI will become a ubiquitous power that only exists in the cybersphere, something that so far we have only seen it in science fiction. At that moment nothing will be as we believe today, for better or worse.
Harari, if it’s any consolation, is an optimist.
