Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book.

Preparation requires technical research and development, as well as adaptive, proactive governance.

Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, […], Andrew Yao, Dawn Song, […], Pieter Abbeel, Trevor Darrell, Yuval Noah Harari, Ya-Qin Zhang, Lan Xue, […], Shai Shalev-Shwartz, Gillian Hadfield, Jeff Clune, Tegan Maharaj, Frank Hutter, Atılım Güneş Baydin, Sheila McIlraith, Qiqi Gao, Ashwin Acharya, David Krueger, Anca Dragan, Philip Torr, Stuart Russell, Daniel Kahneman, Jan Brauner [email protected], and Sören Mindermann +22 authors +20 authors +15 authors fewer Authors Info & Affiliations

Science.

GPT-4 is already better at changing people’s minds than the average human is, according to new research. The gap widens the more it knows about us – and once it can see us in real time, AI seems likely to become an unprecedented persuasion machine.

We don’t tend to like thinking of ourselves as being particularly easy to manipulate, but history would appear to show that there are few things more powerful than the ability to sway people to align with your view of things. As Yuval Noah Harari points out in Sapiens, his potted history of humankind, “shared fictions” like money, religion, nation states, laws and social norms form the fundamental backbones of human society. The ability to assemble around ideas and co-operate in groups much bigger than our local tribes is one of our most potent advantages over the animal kingdom.

But ideas are mushy. We aren’t born with them, they get into our heads from somewhere, and they can often be changed. Those that can change people’s minds at scale can achieve incredible things, or even reshape our societies – for better and for much worse.

Historian and Sapiens author says sophistication of technology makes it difficult to forecast its dangers.

Join journalist Pedro Pinto and Yuval Noah Harari as they delve into the future of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Together, they explore pressing questions in front of a live audience, such as: What will be the impact of A.I. on democracy and politics? How can we maintain human connection in the age of A.I.? What skills will be crucial for the future? And what does the future of education hold?

Filmed on May 19 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal and produced by the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS), in what marks the first live recording of the show: “It’s not that simple.”

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Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ (2014), ‘Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow’ (2016), ’21 Lessons for the 21st Century’ (2018), the graphic novel series ‘Sapiens: A Graphic History’ (launched in 2020, co-authored with David Vandermeulen and Daniel Casanave), and the children’s series ‘Unstoppable Us’, (launched 2022).

Yuval Noah Harari and his husband, Itzik Yahav, are the co-founders of Sapienship: a social impact company specializing in content and production, with projects in the fields of education and entertainment. Sapienship’s main goal is to focus the public conversation on the most important global challenges facing the world today.

What does the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) look like and how will it impact democracy and society?

This question was explored by Prof. Yoshua Bengio, pioneer AI developer and Turing Award winner, and Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author and historian – in a live discussion moderated by political journalist Vassy Kapelos.

Recorded on May 24 2023, as part of the C2 Montreal conference, presented by Mila — Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. Professor Yoshua Bengio is recognized as one of the leading pioneers in AI research and development — known for his prestigious work in the field of deep learning.

In this keynote and Q&A, Yuval Noah Harari summarizes and speculates on ‘AI and the future of humanity’.

There are a number of questions related to this discussion, including:

In what ways will AI affect how we shape culture?

What threat is posed to humanity when AI masters human intimacy?

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The explosion of new generative AI products and capabilities over the last several months — from ChatGPT to Bard and the many variations from others based on large language models (LLMs) — has driven an overheated hype cycle. In turn, this situation has led to a similarly expansive and passionate discussion about needed AI regulation.

The AI regulation firestorm was ignited by the Future of Life Institute open letter, now signed by thousands of AI researchers and concerned others. Some of the notable signees include Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk; Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque; Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari; and Yoshua Bengio, founder of AI research institute Mila.

Whether this “complements or contradicts existing religious value systems depends largely on the interpretation of those systems by the people who have adopted them,” said Frank. “However, my interviews with astronauts of faith suggest that their religious perspective was strengthened, rather than being weakened.”

Frank notes that his cosmology has parallels with Yuval Harari ’s “dataism,” described by Harari as the “most interesting emerging religion.” Dataism, as defined by Harari, “says that the universe consists of data flows, and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to data processing.” This may sound kind of cold and metallic, but if life is an algorithm and self-awareness is data processing the parallels with Frank’s ideas are evident.

At the MVA webinar there wasn’t time to address all the points I wanted to discuss with Frank. So I had this new conversation with him. Please find below my comments and questions (all related to space philosophy, cosmic metaphysics, and religion), and listen to hear Frank’s thoughtful replies and other points that came up.

Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late November, technology companies including Microsoft and Google have been racing to offer new artificial intelligence tools and capabilities. But where is that race leading?

Historian Yuval Hararia—author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and Unstoppable Us —believes that when it comes to “deploying humanity’s most consequential technology,” the race to dominate the market “should not set the speed.” Instead, he argues, “We should move at whatever speed enables us to get this right.”

Hararia shared his thoughts Friday in a New York Times op-ed written with Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, founders of the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology, which aims to align technology with humanity’s best interests. They argue that artificial intelligence threatens the “foundations of our society” if it’s unleashed in an irresponsible way.