Cameron

“If three years of up to 25 percent unemployment could turn a seemingly prospering democracy into the most brutal totalitarian regime in history, what might happen to democracies when automation causes even bigger upheavals in the job market of the twenty-first century?”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Prior to the rise of AI, one human could pretend to be another, and society punished such frauds. But society didn’t bother to outlaw the creation of counterfeit humans, since the technology to do so didn’t exist. Now that AI can pass itself off as human, it threatens to destroy trust between humans and to unravel the fabric of society. Dennett suggests, therefore, that governments should outlaw fake humans as decisively as they have previously outlawed fake money.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Novel technology often leads to historical disasters, not because the technology is inherently bad, but because it takes time for humans to learn how to use it wisely.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Stalinism and Nazism were also extremely costly experiments in how to construct industrial societies. Leaders like Stalin and Hitler argued that the Industrial Revolution had unleashed immense powers that only totalitarianism could rein in and exploit to the full. They pointed to World War I—the first “total war” in history—as proof that survival in the industrial world demanded totalitarian control of all aspects of politics, society, and the economy. On the positive side, they also claimed that the Industrial Revolution was like a furnace that melts all previous social structures with their human imperfections and weaknesses and provides the opportunity to forge perfect societies inhabited by unalloyed superhumans. On the way to creating the perfect industrial society, Stalinists and Nazis learned how to industrially murder millions of people. Trains, barbed wire, and telegraphed orders were linked to create an unprecedented killing machine. Looking back, most people today are horrified by what the Stalinists and Nazis perpetrated, but at the time their audacious visions mesmerized millions. In 1940 it was easy to believe that Stalin and Hitler were the models for harnessing industrial technology, whereas the dithering liberal democracies were on their way to the dustbin of history. The”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI