01 · STEM
Yuval Noah Harari
«We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls – we are now hackable animals. That's what we are.»
«We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls – we are now hackable animals. That's what we are.»
«A system that understands us better than we understand ourselves can predict our feelings and decisions, can manipulate our feelings and decisions, and can ultimately make decisions for us.»
«Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new “useless class” – people who are useless not from the viewpoint of their friends and family, but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system.»
«Because as humans will rely on AI to make more and more decisions for us, authority will shift from humans to algorithms and this is already happening.»
«And if you ask why you were not given a loan, and why you the bank didn't raise the interest rate the answer will always be the same – because the computer says no.»
«In the coming decades, AI and biotechnology will give us godlike abilities to reengineer life, and even to create completely new life-forms.»
«Whenever a leader says something like “My Country First!” we should remind that leader that no nation can prevent nuclear war or stop ecological collapse by itself, and no nation can regulate AI and bioengineering by itself.»
«Just imagine North Korea in twenty years, when everybody has to wear a biometric bracelet which constantly monitors your blood pressure, your heart rate, your brain activity twenty-four hours a day.»
«Not only because it might normalise the deployment of mass surveillance tools in countries that have so far rejected them, but even more so because it signifies a dramatic transition from “over the skin” to “under the skin” surveillance.»
«By closely monitoring people’s smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognising cameras, and obliging people to check and report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with.»
«We aren’t their customers—we are their product.»
«Do the data collected about my DNA, my brain, and my life belong to me, or to the government, or to a corporation, or to the human collective?»
«Algorithms analyze the gathered data, helping the Israeli security forces pinpoint and neutralize what they consider to be potential threats.»
«Homo sapiens is an obsolete algorithm.»
«Its second commandment is to connect everything to the system, including heretics who don't want to be connected.»
«The tipping point is when you have an external algorithm that understands you—your feelings, emotions, choices, desires—better than you understand them yourself.»
«I am definitely not a post-humanist, and I think using bioengineering and AI to change humans is an extremely dangerous idea.»
«The lesson to the apprentice – and to humanity – is clear: never summon powers you cannot control.»
«AI isn’t a tool – it’s an agent.»