Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari’s “brief” (a word whose meaning he doesn’t quite grasp) history of information networks, doesn’t cover as much ground as his Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, but it does take us from clay tablets to thinking machines, by way of democracy, totalitarianism, the Bible, the industrial revolution and much else besides, “to provide a more accurate historical perspective on the AI revolution”.
The central tenet of Sapiens was that our species thrived because we’re the only animals that work together in large numbers, but can we actually act as one for our better interest? Harari questions how we can call ourselves homo sapiens – the wise humans – at all. We have “accumulated enormous power” but “power isn’t wisdom”, and we’re now “busy creating new technologies (AI) that have the potential to escape our control and annihilate us”.
In his opinion, and he provides convincing thought experiments, trust in AI algorithms will likely be more dangerous for totalitarian regimes because of a lack of checks and balances. The machine only has to convince the man (or woman) at the top. Would-be Stalins need to be careful, though, as algorithms can’t be terrorised into submission and don’t understand doublespeak.
His discussion of a possible Silicon Curtain, instead of the iron one of old, is equally fascinating, envisioning a world of data colonisation where use of different hardware and software by China and the United States, like railway companies of old employing incompatible track gauges, may split humanity by “enclosing different people in separate information cocoons”.
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It’s worrying to read how cyber warfare is not tempered by the mutually assured destruction that kept cold war superpowers from pushing buttons. One side may convince itself that their “logic bombs, Trojan horses and malware” might protect them from retaliation after a first strike, but Harari finds hope in declining military budgets (although Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine upset this trend) and the shift to a knowledge-based economy decreasing the potential gains of war.
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But “AI might extinguish not only the human dominion on Earth but the light of consciousness itself, turning the universe into a realm of utter darkness”. Harari counters this heavy thought with “the good news” that we’re capable of “creating balanced information networks that will keep their own power in check”. The question remains, will the “wise humans” pull it off?
Pat Carty is a freelance critic
