Communications of the ACM
Yuval Noah Harari: 'The Idea of Free Information is Extremely Dangerous'
In an interview, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari explores some of the difficulties that confront us at present.
Credit: Antonio Olmos
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian who has written two bestsellers: Sapiens, which examined the course of early human history, and Homo Deus, which speculated on where we might be heading as a post-human species. His new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, is an exploration of the difficulties that confront us at the present.
You are now a highly successful public intellectual. In what ways has international recognition changed you?
Well I have much less time. I find myself travelling around the world and going to conferences and giving interviews, basically repeating what I think I already know, and having less and less time to research new stuff. Just a few years ago I was an anonymous professor of history specializing in medieval history and my audience was about five people around the world who read my articles. So it's quite shocking to be now in a position that I write something and there is a potential of millions of people will read it. Overall I'm happy with what's happened. You don't want to just speak up, you also want to be heard. It's a privilege that I now have such an audience.
How do you set about deciding what are the most pressing questions of the age?
Actually in a way this was the easiest book to write because it was written in conversation with the public. Its contents were decided largely by the kinds of questions I was asked in interviews and public appearances. My two previous books were about the long-term past of humankind and the long-term future. But you can't live in the past and you can't live in the future. You can live only in the present. So unless you can take these long-term insights and say something abut the immigration crisis, or Brexit or fake news, what's the point?
Do you think people understand the implications of the bio- and infotech revolutions that are under way?
Five years ago artificial intelligence sounded like science fiction. Even though in the academic world and private business people were aware of the potential at least, in the political field and public discourse you hardly heard anything about it. Then a couple of governments realized what is happening. My impression is that the Chinese realised first what was going on. I think this stems from their national trauma from the industrial revolution, when they missed the train and they were left behind and suffered terribly. They will do anything to be in the front of the AI revolution. Over the last year or so, the Europeans and Americans also realized. And now we are heading towards a full-scale arms race of artificial intelligence, which is very, very bad news.
From The Guardian
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