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In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.
My first book, Sapiens, surveyed the human past, examining how an insignificant ape became the ruler of planet Earth.
But the overarching question remains the same: what is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of events?
mechanism. Terrorism works by pressing the fear button deep in our minds and hijacking the private imagination of millions of individuals.
Each of us is ensnared within numerous all-encompassing spider webs, which on the one hand restrict our movements, but at the same time transmit our tiniest jiggle to faraway destinations.
How can I find a firm ethical ground in a world that extends far beyond my horizons, that spins completely out of human control, and that holds all gods and ideologies suspect?
The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality.
Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation, but from something far worse – irrelevance.
though the technological challenges are unprecedented, and though the political disagreements are intense, humankind can rise to the occasion if we keep our fears under control and are a bit more humble about our views.
This may sound overambitious, but Homo sapiens cannot wait. Philosophy, religion and science are all running out of time. People have debated the meaning of life for thousands of years. We cannot continue this debate indefinitely. The looming ecological crisis, the growing threat of weapons of mass destruction, and the rise of new disruptive technologies will not allow it.
Philosophers are very patient people, but engineers are far less patient, and investors are the least patient of all. If you don’t know what to do with the power to engineer life, market forces will not wait a thousand years for you to come up with an answer.
We need to protect human rights, to grant everybody the vote, to establish free markets, and to let individuals, ideas and goods move throughout the world as easily as possible.
According to this liberal panacea – accepted, in slight variations, by George W. Bush and Barack Obama alike – if we just continue to liberalise and globalise our political and economic systems, we will produce peace and prosperity for all.
In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand the complexity of our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might break down.
Democracy is based on Abraham Lincoln’s principle that ‘you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time’.
Right-wing extremists in France and Britain may well rely on Russian help and express admiration for Putin, but even their voters would not like to live in a country that actually copies the Russian model – a country with endemic corruption, malfunctioning services, no rule of law, and staggering inequality.
Rather, we are witnessing a shift from a ‘set-menu approach’ to a ‘buffet mentality’.
We are still in the nihilist moment of disillusionment and anger, after people have lost faith in the old stories but before they have embraced a new one.
The first step is to tone down the prophecies of doom, and switch from panic mode to bewilderment.
Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that I know exactly where the world is heading – down. Bewilderment is more humble, and therefore more clear-sighted. If you feel like running down the street crying ‘The apocalypse is upon us!’, try telling yourself ‘No, it’...
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We don’t know of any third field of activity – beyond the physical and the cognitive – where humans will always retain a secure edge.
Vaunted ‘human intuition’ is in reality ‘pattern recognition
Two particularly important non-human abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updateability.
Jobs that require specialisation in a narrow range of routinised activities will be automated.
But it will be much more difficult to replace humans with machines in less routine jobs that demand the simultaneous use of a wide range of skills, and that involve dealing with unforeseen scenarios.
Alternatively, if you don’t trust yourself, you can instruct the algorithm to follow the recommendation of whichever eminent psychologist you do trust. If your boyfriend eventually dumps you, the algorithm may walk you through the official five stages of grief, first helping you deny what happened by playing Bobby McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’, then whipping up your anger with Alanis Morissette’s ‘You Oughta Know’, encouraging you to bargain with Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne me quitte pas’ and Paul Young’s ‘Come Back and Stay’, dropping you into the pit of depression with Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’
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We might actually get the worst of both worlds, suffering simultaneously from high unemployment and a shortage of skilled labour.
Many people might share the fate not of nineteenth-century wagon drivers – who switched to driving taxis – but of nineteenth-century horses, who were increasingly pushed out of the job market altogether.
For centuries, chess was considered one of the crowning glories of human intelligence. AlphaZero went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours, without the help of any human guide.
By 2050 a ‘useless’ class might emerge not merely because of an absolute lack of
Leads me to believe that Sports will be one of the sector which will remain untouched with this infotech/biotech influence. I am sure no one is excited to see robots play soccer/football etc alongside humans as it kills all the fun.
Maybe we need to turn a switch in our minds, and realise that taking care of a child is arguably the most important and challenging job in the world.
Alternatively, governments could subsidise universal basic services rather than income. Instead of giving money to people, who then shop around for whatever they want, the government might subsidise free education, free healthcare, free transport and so forth.
Those who have already crossed it – graduating from cheap labour to high-skill industries – will probably be OK.
What do you do when nobody needs your cheap unskilled labourers, and you don’t have the resources to build a good education system and teach them new skills?
If biotechnology enables parents to upgrade their children, would this be considered a basic human need, or would we see humankind splitting into different biological castes, with rich superhumans enjoying abilities that far surpass those of poor Homo sapiens?
Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations.
In Western political discourse the term ‘liberal’ is sometimes used today in a much narrower partisan sense, to denote those who support specific causes like gay marriage, gun control and abortion.
Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality.
Democracy assumes that human feelings reflect a mysterious and profound ‘free will’, that this ‘free will’ is the ultimate source of authority, and that while some people are more intelligent than others, all humans are equally free.
For once somebody (whether in Beijing or in San Francisco) gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show.
feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren’t based on intuition, inspiration or freedom – they are based on calculation.
To put it succinctly, we can use the following formula: b × c × d = ahh! Biological knowledge multiplied by Computing power multiplied by Data equals Ability to Hack Humans.
The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century – the attempt to concentrate all information in one place – might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first century.
The algorithm discriminates against you not because you are a woman, or an African American – but because you are you.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love and anger.
In this, humans are similar to other domesticated animals. We have bred docile cows that produce enormous amounts of milk, but are otherwise far inferior to their wild ancestors. They are less agile, less curious and less resourceful.
By 2100, the richest 1 per cent might own not merely most of the world’s wealth, but also most of the world’s beauty, creativity and health.
In countries such as France and New Zealand, with a long tradition of liberal beliefs and welfare-state practices, perhaps the elite will go on taking care of the masses even when it doesn’t need them. In the more capitalist USA, however, the elite might use the first opportunity to dismantle what’s left of the American welfare state.
Though in the twenty-first century humans might be upgraded into gods, as of 2018 we are still Stone Age animals.
In order to flourish we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities.
