Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain.

After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centres in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’.

The American military is experimenting with such helmets in the hope of sharpening the focus and enhancing the performance of soldiers both in training sessions and on the battlefield.

what defined the experience was not feeling smarter or learning faster: the thing that made the earth drop out from

However, if and when such manipulations become routine, the supposedly free will of customers will become just another product to purchase.

If I look really deep within myself, the seeming unity that I take for granted dissolves into a cacophony of conflicting voices, none of which is ‘my true self’. Humans aren’t individuals. They are ‘dividuals’.

Suppose you can choose between two potential holidays. You can go to Jamestown,

Most people would opt for colonial Jamestown, because most people give their credit card to the narrating self, which cares only about stories and has zero interest in even the most mind-blowing experiences if it cannot remember them.

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we’ve seen, novels we’ve read, speeches we’ve heard, and daydreams we’ve savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself.

But in the end, they are all just stories.

human shields. It is telling that already today in many asymmetrical conflicts the majority of citizens are reduced to serving

Hence there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to replicate or surpass. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicon?

the algorithm makes the right decisions, it could accumulate a fortune, which it could then invest as it sees fit, perhaps buying your house and becoming your landlord. If you infringe on the algorithm’s legal rights – say, by not paying rent – the algorithm could hire lawyers and sue you in court. If such algorithms consistently outperform human capitalists, we might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. This may sound impossible, but before dismissing the idea, remember that most of our planet is already legally owned by non-human inter-subjective entities, namely nations and corporations. Indeed, 5,000 years ago much of Sumer was owned by imaginary gods such as Enki and Inanna. If gods can possess land and employ people, why not algorithms?

Classical Music Composed by Computer –

Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives,

and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.

What will they do all day? One answer might be drugs and computer games.

Unnecessary people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual-reality worlds, that would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the drab reality outside.

The ruling party hires the best copywriters to lead a brilliant campaign, with a well-balanced mixture of threats and promises that speak directly to the fear centre in my brain.

induces me to prefer security and stability over all other considerations.

For according to liberalism, the peasant’s unique experiences are still just as valuable as the billionaire’s. That’s why liberal authors write long novels about the experiences of poor peasants – and why even billionaires avidly read such books.

However, will this solution still work once rich and poor are separated not merely by wealth, but also by real biological gaps?

Did the decline in our capacity to smell, pay attention and dream make our lives poorer and greyer?

just as we have lost our ability to smell, dream and pay attention.

For millions of years we were enhanced chimpanzees. In the future, we may become oversized ants.

The hand of the market is blind as well as invisible, and left to its own devices it may fail to do anything at all about the threat of global warming or the dangerous potential of artificial intelligence.

Yet power vacuums seldom last long. If in the twenty-first century traditional political structures can no longer process the data fast enough to produce meaningful visions, then new and more efficient structures will evolve to take their place.

Increasing the number of processors.

Increasing the variety of processors.

Increasing the number of connections between processors.

Ray Kurzweil’s book of prophecies is called The Singularity is Near, echoing

We mustn’t confuse freedom of information with the old liberal ideal of freedom of expression.

However, humans can write poems and blogs about their experiences and post them online, thereby enriching the global data-processing system. That makes their bits count.