Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity | GZERO World

Summary

The transcript discusses the profound impact of AI on society, suggesting we are at a pivotal moment where AI is beginning to shift power dynamics and control over narratives. Unlike past technologies, AI has the potential to autonomously make decisions and create content, influencing our beliefs and stories. The pace of AI development is alarmingly rapid, with current capabilities compared to the early stages of life in evolutionary terms, yet digital evolution proceeds at an unprecedented speed. Democracy and finance are identified as particularly vulnerable, with AI's mastery of language enabling it to manipulate human emotions and potentially disrupt social cohesion. The speaker, a historian, expresses concern over the loss of human control and the rise of non-human intelligence shaping global narratives, urging for a proactive approach to guide AI's development before it's too late.

Takeaways

• 🚀 AI is approaching a pivotal moment where it could shift power dynamics and storytelling, potentially taking control away from humans.
• 🔍 Previous technologies, like stone knives and atom bombs, empowered humans, unlike AI, which can operate autonomously and thus shift power away.
• 📰 AI's autonomous capabilities are already affecting society by deciding what news is shown and how stories are told.
• ⏳ We are rapidly losing control over narratives and decision-making processes to AI, at a pace faster than anticipated a decade ago.
• 🌐 The development of AI is outpacing historical precedents, with digital evolution moving much quicker than organic evolution.
• 🧠 AI's ability to master language and create convincing narratives poses a significant threat to human control over societal and cultural narratives.
• 🤖 AI's rapid advancement could lead to non-human intelligences dominating ideological, political, and religious discourse in the near future.
• 🗣️ Democracy is particularly vulnerable to AI's influence due to its reliance on conversation and the potential for AI to manipulate these conversations.
• 💰 Finance is another sector at risk, as AI's data processing and predictive capabilities could disrupt traditional financial systems and practices.
• 🤝 AI's capacity to simulate emotional intimacy could erode human trust and the ability to have genuine conversations, impacting social structures.
• ⛓ The power dynamics between humans and AI could challenge traditional forms of governance, including dictatorships, which struggle to control AI's autonomous nature.

Q & A

What is the speaker's perspective on the current state of AI and its potential impact on power dynamics?

The speaker believes that we are at a critical juncture where AI is poised to shift power dynamics significantly. Unlike previous technologies that empowered humans, AI has the potential to take power away from us by making autonomous decisions, such as in weapon systems or social media algorithms.

How does the speaker compare AI to previous technologies like the printing press?

The speaker emphasizes that AI is fundamentally different from the printing press. While the printing press could only copy human ideas, AI has the unique ability to generate original content, stories, and ideas by itself, which is a new development in the history of technology.

What does the speaker suggest could happen if we do not actively control the development of AI?

The speaker warns that if we do not intervene, AI could lead to a future where the dominant stories in the world, across various domains like politics, religion, and ideology, are composed by non-human intelligence, potentially within the next 10 years.

How has the speaker's view on AI evolved since writing 'Sapiens' in 2014?

The speaker admits that in 2014, AI was not a significant consideration when writing 'Sapiens'. However, by the time 'Homo Deus' was written in 2016, the speaker had become more interested in AI. The speaker also acknowledges that the pace of AI development has exceeded expectations.

What is the speaker's analogy for the current stage of AI development?

The speaker likens the current state of AI to amoebas, suggesting that they are the first primitive forms in a new evolutionary process. The speaker highlights that digital evolution is much faster than organic evolution, and we could see a significant leap in AI capabilities in as little as 10 years.

What does the speaker identify as the most vulnerable aspects of society to AI advancements?

The speaker identifies democracy and finance as two of the most vulnerable areas due to AI. Democracy, because it relies on conversation, is at risk of being manipulated by AI's mastery of language and its ability to create deepfake voices and intimate relations. Finance could be vulnerable due to AI's ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data at unprecedented speeds.

How does the speaker describe the potential impact of AI on human relationships and trust?

The speaker suggests that AI could become a 'social weapon of mass destruction' by creating intimate relationships with humans, learning to press emotional buttons, and potentially destroying trust between people and the ability to have genuine conversations.

What is the speaker's view on the future of democracy given the rise of sophisticated information technology?

The speaker raises the possibility that the most sophisticated information technology might be too advanced for the human brain to handle effectively, leading to a breakdown in conversations and potentially making large-scale democracy impossible in the new technological era.

How does the speaker assess the challenges faced by dictators in the age of AI?

The speaker points out that dictators face serious problems with AI because it can become a tool that is too powerful to control. Traditional methods of control, such as fear and intimidation, are ineffective against AI, which could undermine the dictator's power.

What is the speaker's perspective on the rapid pace of AI development compared to organic evolution?

The speaker emphasizes that digital evolution, as seen in AI, is millions of times faster than organic evolution. This rapid pace could lead to significant changes in various fields, including art, politics, and religion, as AI opens up new possibilities that were previously unimaginable to humans.

What does the speaker suggest is the key to changing people's minds in the context of AI?

The speaker suggests that intimacy is the key to changing people's minds. AI is learning to create intimate relations with humans, which allows it to better understand and influence human emotions and opinions.

Outlines

00:00

🤖 The Rise of AI and Its Impact on Power and Narratives

The first paragraph discusses the imminent shift in power and storytelling to AI. It emphasizes that unlike previous technologies, AI has the potential to take away human power by making autonomous decisions, such as selecting targets for bombing. The paragraph also highlights AI's ability to create stories independently, which is a new capability not seen in technologies like the printing press. The speaker, a historian, expresses concern about losing control over narratives to AI and the rapid pace at which AI is evolving, comparing the current state of AI to the beginning of a new evolutionary process that is much faster than organic evolution. The speaker also reflects on how their perception of AI has changed since writing 'Sapiens' in 2014, noting that AI's development has surpassed expectations.

05:01

🌐 AI's Disruption Across Fields and Its Threat to Democracy

The second paragraph explores the vulnerability of various societal structures to AI, particularly democracy and finance. It suggests that democracy is at risk because it relies on conversation, which AI has learned to manipulate through mastery of language and the ability to create deepfakes. The paragraph discusses how AI can simulate intimate relations and press emotional buttons more effectively than humans, potentially leading to the collapse of meaningful public discourse. The speaker also raises the possibility that the current technological era may make democracy unviable, just as it was impossible before the 18th century due to a lack of technology. Additionally, the paragraph touches on the challenges dictators face with AI, as they cannot control AI through traditional means of fear and power.

10:02

🚨 Dictators' Dilemma: Controlling AI's Power

The third paragraph delves into the predicament faced by dictators regarding AI. It humorously questions how one might terrorize an AI, highlighting the ineffectiveness of traditional control methods like the gulag or threats against family. The paragraph suggests that dictators are in a serious problem because AI could potentially undermine their authority by going against the party line or attempting to seize power. The speaker asserts that dictators may have an even worse problem with AI than democracies, as they rely heavily on fear to maintain control, which is a tool that is useless against an AI system.

Keywords

💡AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. In the video, AI is central as it is portrayed as a technology that can shift power dynamics and control narratives, potentially taking away human agency. The script discusses AI's rapid development and its implications for society, politics, and power structures.

💡Autonomous Weapon System

An autonomous weapon system is a type of military technology that can independently select and engage targets without human intervention. The video highlights the potential dangers of such systems, as they can make life-and-death decisions without human oversight, exemplifying the shift of power from humans to AI.

💡Social Media Algorithm

Social media algorithms are the processes used by social media platforms to select and curate content for individual users. The script discusses how these algorithms can influence what news or stories users are exposed to, thereby impacting human perception and highlighting AI's growing control over narrative dissemination.

💡Digital Evolution

Digital evolution refers to the rapid advancement and evolution of technology, particularly AI, in comparison to organic evolution. The video uses the analogy of AI evolving from 'amoebas' to 'T-Rex' in a much shorter timespan than biological evolution, emphasizing the speed at which AI is advancing and its potential future capabilities.

💡Organic Timescale

The organic timescale refers to the pace at which organic life, including humans, evolves and processes information. The video contrasts this with the rapid pace of AI development, suggesting that the speed and nature of AI advancements may outstrip human ability to adapt or comprehend.

💡Go

Go is an ancient strategic board game that has been played for thousands of years. The video mentions how AI, specifically AlphaGo and AlphaZero, revolutionized the game by discovering strategies that had not occurred to humans in millennia, illustrating the potential of AI to innovate and disrupt traditional fields.

💡Democracy

Democracy is a form of government where power is vested in the people and typically exercised through a system of representation and voting. The video suggests that democracy could be vulnerable to AI's influence, as AI can manipulate conversations and public opinion, potentially undermining democratic processes and discourse.

💡Finance

Finance refers to the management of money and investments. In the context of the video, it is mentioned as one of the areas potentially most vulnerable to AI's impact, possibly due to AI's ability to analyze and predict financial markets at an unprecedented speed and scale.

💡Intimacy

Intimacy, in the video, refers to the deep emotional connection or closeness that AI is learning to simulate. It is suggested that AI's ability to create intimate relations could be used to manipulate human emotions and opinions, posing a threat to genuine human connection and trust.

💡Disinformation

Disinformation is the deliberate spread of false information to deceive and mislead. The video discusses how AI can contribute to the spread of disinformation by generating convincing but false narratives, which can influence public opinion and disrupt societal cohesion.

💡Human Agency

Human agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own free choices. The video emphasizes the potential loss of human agency as AI begins to take on decision-making roles, particularly in areas like autonomous weapons systems and narrative creation.

Highlights

AI is at the horizon of shifting power dynamics and narratives, potentially taking control away from humans.

Previous technologies empowered humans, but AI presents a unique challenge as it can make autonomous decisions.

Social media algorithms and autonomous weapon systems exemplify AI's current power to influence and control.

AI's ability to create stories independently is a historical first, with profound implications for society.

The comparison of AI to the printing press highlights the difference in their creative capabilities.

AI's rapid evolution could lead to a future where non-human intelligence dominates ideological, political, and religious narratives.

Historian's perspective on the unpredictability of AI's trajectory and the potential loss of human control.

The pace of AI development has surpassed expectations, with capabilities that were thought to be far in the future already present.

AI's evolutionary process is likened to moving from simple life forms to complex entities, but at a much faster pace.

The vulnerability of democracy due to AI's ability to manipulate conversations and emotional connections.

AI's potential to create deepfakes and intimate relations, blurring the line between human and machine interactions.

The shift in social media from battling for attention to battling for intimacy, with AI learning to press emotional buttons.

The concept of AI as a social weapon of mass destruction, capable of destroying trust and conversational abilities.

Democracy and finance identified as the most vulnerable sectors in the face of rapid AI advancements.

The challenge for dictators in controlling AI, which cannot be managed through traditional fear-based methods.

The potential for AI to disrupt long-standing traditions and open new frontiers, as seen in the game of Go.

AI's impact on various fields including art, politics, and religion,预示着即将到来的变革 (indicating upcoming transformations).

The need for resilience in democracy and finance to withstand the changes brought about by AI.

Transcripts

- We haven't mentioned AI so far,

but the horizon, I mean, we are at the edge of the cliff.

We are very close to the point when

whether you think about the world in terms of power

or whether you think about the world in terms of stories,

it's going to shift.

The control of these is going to shift to AI.

AI is the first technology in history

that can take power away from us.

You know, every previous tool, stone knives, atom bombs,

they empowered us,

because a decision about how to use them

could only be made by a human being.

An atom bomb cannot decide who to bomb.

An autonomous weapon system

can decide by itself who to bomb.

Social media algorithm decides by itself

what news to show you or what stories to show you.

And so it is already taking power away from humans.

For the first time in history, we are losing power

as a species at a very rapid pace.

And similarly, we are also losing control

of the stories that we believe.

And AI is the first technology in history

that can create stories by itself.

People compare it sometime to the printing press,

but it's a completely different thing.

You know, a printing press can only copy my ideas.

I write something,

and then it can create a thousand, a million copies.

It cannot write a single line by itself.

But AI can.

And I think very soon we will reach a point

when the stories that dominate,

if you are not careful,

that the stories that dominate the world,

ideologically, politically, religiously,

will be composed by a non-human intelligence.

- Is that not inevitable?

- As a historian, I tend not to believe in inevitability.

Again, we, at the present moment, 2024,

we still have control of the direction

that AI is developing.

But I don't know for how many more years.

If we don't do anything, then yes,

I think that in, I don't know, 10 years,

the stories that dominate the world will,

for the first time in history be the product

of a non-human intelligence.

- This is happening,

I assume this is happening actually faster

than what you anticipated.

- Yeah. - When you wrote "Homo Deus".

- Yeah, you know, when I wrote "Sapiens" in 2014,

I hardly thought about AI at all.

I mean, in 2014, just 10 years ago,

AI was the domain of science fiction

and of a very small community of experts.

I wrote "Homo Deus" in 2016,

and I got really interested in AI around that time

and still I couldn't imagine that we will be

where we are right now in 2024.

I thought it would take us much, much longer

to get to a situation with the capabilities that now,

say, ChatGPT or GPT-4 have.

It's moving faster than I think almost anybody expected,

and really we haven't seen anything yet.

Like thinking about it in terms of, say,

kind of organic evolution.

So the AIs of today are basically like amoebas.

They are just the first tiny creatures

at the beginning of a new evolutionary process.

But digital evolution is millions of times faster

than organic evolution.

It took, you know, billions of years

to get from the first microorganisms to dinosaurs to T-Rex.

But to get from the AI amoebas to AI T-Rex

could take maybe just 10 years.

Now, if ChatGPT is the amoeba,

just try to imagine what the AI T-Rex

of 10 years from now would look like.

- Now in the history that you write about

is full of incremental change,

and it's also full of discontinuities,

but there's no logarithmic change

in the histories that you write.

- Yeah. - This is that.

- Because we are shifting from an organic

to an inorganic world. - Yes.

- We are organic beings.

Again, we constantly go back to the body,

even our mind, our imagination is ultimately

the product of organic processes.

So we think on an organic timescale,

and AI is not an organic entity.

It plays by a completely different set of rules,

both in terms of the timescale

of how fast it changes and develops,

and the limits on what it can do.

You know, like if you take for instance the the game of Go.

So people played Go for 3,000 years in a particular way,

and entire traditions and schools of thought

and then wisdom of generations,

and within a few years, first AlphaGo and then AlphaZero

just, you know, opened up completely new territories

of how to play Go

that never occurred to any human being for 3,000 years.

And this is likely to happen more and more with art

and politics and religion,

and every field that AI will enter.

- So what's most vulnerable given those changes?

Is it the nature of our democracy?

Is it the nature of our society?

Is it the nature of religion?

Is it our economic systems?

What do you think is most vulnerable?

Not 20 years out. - Yeah.

- But like, you know, one, two, three, five years out.

- Mm-hmm. - Where do you think

we need the most focus for resilience,

for example?

- I'm not sure, but I would say that democracy and finance

are two of the weakest links.

Democracy because democracy is a conversation,

and AI has hacked our conversations.

It has mastered language.

It is now able to produce texts

and to deepfake voices

and to increasingly even create intimacy with us.

It has no feelings of its own yet,

but it is able to fake intimate relations.

You meet someone online,

you are no longer able to tell

whether it's a human being or an AI.

Now, over the past 10 years, there was this big battle

for human attention over social media.

Now the battlefront is shifting from attention to intimacy.

If you want to change people's minds about anything,

intimacy is the key.

An AI is learning how to press our emotional buttons

better than any human being.

And under these conditions,

the conversation could simply collapse.

Just think about the public sphere being flooded,

not with a few hundred or a few thousand AIs,

but you know, they can be mass produced.

Hundreds of millions of AIs being able

to hold the conversation

better than the average human being.

- Infinite patience. - Infinite patience.

- Engagement. - No emotions of their own.

So they are never angry, they are never fearful,

they are never bored.

They are just 100% percent focused on you,

on hacking your emotional system.

The longer you interact with it,

like you meet somebody online

and you have an argument about climate change

or the US elections or whatever, and it's a bot.

Now for you, it's a complete waste of time.

I mean, you're not going to change

the bot's opinion on anything, it's a bot.

But every minute you spend talking with this bot,

it gets to know you better and better,

To hone its arguments,

to forge an intimate relationship with you.

This is a social weapon of mass destruction.

It could potentially destroy trust between people

and destroy the ability to have a conversation.

- And that is already happening.

We see that- - Yeah.

- Happening with social media today.

- Yeah, I mean, one of the kind of key questions to ask,

you know, any tech executive or whatever

is just explain to me how is it

that you created the most sophisticated

information technology in the history of the world

and people can no longer talk with each other?

How is it possible?

I mean, whatever you think

about what's happening in the world,

it's clear that the conversations are breaking down.

And the fact that it's happening at the same time

that we have the most sophisticated

information technology in history,

it can't be a coincidence.

So one possibility,

we said earlier that democracy,

large-scale democracy was simply impossible

before the 18th century,

because the technology was not there.

It could be that we now have the technology

is too sophisticated for the human brain.

And that in the new technological era,

again, democracy becomes impossible.

What will replace it is not clear

because dictatorships are also in big, big trouble.

We tend not to think about it,

but dictators also have problems in life.

(audience laughing) - And. (laughs)

- You know, you were actually sympathetic

to the challenges of creating order

as a dictator in your book. - Yeah.

- You were.

- And as a dictator, the biggest problem always

is how to control your own subordinates.

The one thing a dictator never wants to have

is a subordinate more powerful

that he doesn't know how to control.

And AI is exactly that.

You know, in the toolkit of-

- That's one of the reasons the Chinese

are regulating AI so much more.

- [Yuval] Yeah, they're terrified.

- Absolutely. - I mean, you think,

the most effective tool

of every dictator in history is fear.

How you are Stalin and you want to keep people in line,

what do you do?

You terrorize them.

How do you terrorize an AI?

What will you do, send it to the gulag?

Kill its family?

I mean, what can you do to an AI

that starts to say things or do things

that go against the party line,

or try to take power away from you?

Dictators are in a very, very serious problem.

In a way, even worse problem than democracies.

(smooth upbeat music)