An Honest Conversation on AI and Humanity @wef | Yuval Noah Harari

Please join me in warmly welcoming Yuval

Noah Harrari to deliver a conversation

about AI and humanity.

So hello everyone.

There is one question that every leader

today must answer about AI. But to

understand that question, we first need

to clarify a few points about what AI is

and what AI can do.

The most important thing to know about

AI is that it is not just another tool.

It is an agent. It can learn and change

by itself and make decisions by itself.

A knife is a tool. You can use a knife

to cut salad or to murder someone, but

it is your decision what to do with the

knife. AI is a knife that can decide by

itself whether to cut salad or to commit

murder.

The second thing to know about AI is

that it can be a very creative agent.

AI is a knife that can invent new kinds

of knives as well as new kinds of music,

medicine, and money.

The third thing to know about AI is that

it can lie and manipulate.

4 billion years of evolution have

demonstrated that anything that wants to

survive learns to lie and manipulate.

The last four years have demonstrated

that AI agents can acquire the will to

survive and that AIs have already

learned how to lie.

Now one big open question about AI

is whether it can think.

Modern philosophy began in the 17th

century when Rene proclaimed I think

therefore I am.

Even before the cult we humans defined

ourselves by our capacity to think. We

believe our we rule the world because we

can think better than anyone else on

this planet.

Will AI challenge our supremacy in the

field of thinking? Now that depends on

what thinking means.

Try to observe yourself thinking. What

is happening there?

Many people observe words popping in

their mind and forming sentences and the

sentences then forming arguments like

all humans are mortal. I am human

therefore I am mortal.

If thinking really means putting words

and other language tokens in order, then

AI can already think much better than

many many humans. AI can certainly come

up with a sentence like AI thinks,

therefore AI.

Some people argue that AI is just

glorified autocomplete. It barely

predicts the next word in a sentence in

a sentence.

But is that so different from what the

human mind is doing?

Try to observe to catch the next word

that pops up in your mind. Do you really

know why you thought that word where it

came from? Why do you did you think this

particular word and not some other word?

Do you know? As far as putting words in

order is concerned,

AI already thinks better than many of

us. Therefore, anything made of words

will be taken over by AI. If laws are

made of words, then AI will take over

the legal system. If books are just

combinations of words, then AI will take

over books. If religion is built from

words, then AI will take over religion.

This is particularly true of religions

based on books like Islam, Christianity

or Judaism. Judaism called itself the

religion of the book and it grants

ultimate authority not to humans but to

words in books.

Humans have authority in Judaism not

because of our experiences but only

because we learn words in books. Now, no

human can read and remember all the

words in all the Jewish books. But AI

can easily do that.

What happens to a religion of the book

when the greatest expert on the holy

book is an AI?

However, some some people may say, can

we really reduce human spirituality

to just words in books? Does thinking

mean only putting language tokens in

order?

If you observe yourself carefully when

you're thinking, you will notice that

something else is happening there

besides words popping in your mind and

forming sentences.

You also have some nonverbal feelings.

Maybe you feel pain. Maybe you feel

fear. Maybe love.

Some thoughts are painful. Some are

frightening, some are full of love.

While AIs become better than us with

words,

at least for now, we have zero evidence

that AIs can feel anything. Of course,

because AI is mastering language,

AI can pretend to feel pain or love. AI

can say, "I love you." And if you

challenge it to describe how love feels,

AI can provide the best verbal

description in the world.

AI can read countless love poems and

psychology books and can then describe

the feeling of love much better than any

human poet, psychologist or lover. But

these are just words.

The Bible says in the beginning was the

word and the word was made flesh.

Latin says the truth that can be

expressed in words is not the absolute

truth. Throughout history, people have

always struggled with the tension

between word and flesh, between the

truth that can be expressed in words and

the absolute truth which is beyond

words.

Previously this tension was internal to

humanity. It was between different human

groups. Some humans gave supreme

importance to words. They've been

willing, for example, to abandon or even

kill their gay son just because of a few

words in the Bible.

Other humans have said, "But these are

just words. The spirit of love should be

much more important than the letter of

the law."

This tension between spirit and letter

existed in every religion, every legal

system, even every person.

Now this tension will be externalized.

It will become the tension not between

different humans. It this will be the

tension

between humans and AIs, the new masters

of words.

Everything made of words will be taken

over by AI.

Previously all the words, all our verbal

thoughts, they originated in some human

mind. Either my mind I thought this or I

learned it from another human. Soon most

of the words in our minds will originate

in a machine. I just heard today about a

new word that AIS coined by themselves

to describe us humans.

They called us the watchers.

The watchers that we are watching them.

AIS will soon be the origin of maybe

most of the words in our minds.

AIS will mass prodduce thoughts by

assembling words, symbols, images, and

other language tokens into new

combinations.

Whether humans will still have a place

in that world depends on the place we

assign our nonverbal feelings and our

ability to embody wisdom that cannot be

expressed in words. If we continue to

define ourselves by our ability to think

in words, our identity will collapse.

All this means that no matter from which

country you come, your country will soon

face a severe identity crisis and also

an immigration crisis.

The immigrants this time will not be

human beings coming in fragile boats

without a visa or trying to cross a

border in the middle of the night. The

immigrants will be millions of AIs that

can ride love poles better than us that

can lie better than us and that can

travel at the speed of light without any

need of visas.

Like human immigrants, these AI

immigrants will bring various benefits

with them. We will have AI doctors to

help in our health care systems, AI

teachers to help in our education

systems, even AI border guards to stop

illegal human immigrants. But the AI

immigrants will also bring with them

problems.

Those who are concerned about human

immigrants usually argue that immigrants

might take jobs, might change the local

culture, might be politically disloyal.

I'm not sure that's true of all human

immigrants, but it will definitely be

true of the AI immigrants.

The AI immigrants will take many human

jobs. The AI immigrants will completely

change the culture of every country.

They will change out religion and even

romance. Some people don't like it if

their son or daughter is dating an

immigrant boyfriend. What would these

people think when their son or daughter

starts dating an AI boyfriend?

And of course, the AI immigrants will

have some dubious political loyalties.

They are likely to be loyal not to your

country but but to some corporation

government across the ocean. Most

probably in one of only two countries,

China or the USA.

The USA encourages countries to close

their borders to human immigrants but

open them very very wide to USA

immigrants.

And now we can finally come to the

question each one of you must soon

answer.

Will your country recognize the AI

immigrants as legal persons?

AIS are obviously not persons. They

don't have a body or a mind. But a legal

person is something quite different from

a person. A legal person is an entity

that the law recognizes as having

certain legal obligations and rights.

For example, the right to hold property,

to file a lawsuit, and to enjoy freedom

of speech.

In many countries, corporations are

considered legal persons. The Alphabet

Corporation can open a bank account, can

sue you in court, or can donate to your

next presidential campaign.

In New Zealand, rivers have been

recognized as legal persons. In India,

certain gods have been granted such

recognition. Of course, until today,

recognizing a corporation, a river, or a

god as a legal person was just legal

fiction.

In practice, if a corporation like

Alphabet decided to buy another

corporation or if a Hindu god,

if a Hindu god decided to sue you in

court, the decision wasn't really made

by the god. It was made by some human

executives, shareholders or trustees.

It is different with AIS. Unlike rivers

and gods, AIs can actually make

decisions by themselves.

They will soon be able to make the

decisions necessary to manage a bank

account, to file a lawsuit, and even to

operate a corporation without any need

of human executives, shareholders or

trustees.

AIS can therefore function as persons.

Do we want to allow that? Will your

country recognize AIS as legal persons?

What if other countries do it?

Suppose your country doesn't want to

recognize AIS as persons. But the USA in

the name of deregulating AI and

deregulating the markets grants legal

recognition, legal personhood to

millions of AIs which start running

millions of new corporations.

Will you block these US AI corporations

from operating in your country?

Suppose some USAI persons invent super

efficient and super complex financial

devices that humans cannot fully

understand and therefore don't know how

to regulate. Will you open your

financial markets to this new AI

financial wizardry

or will you try to block it thereby

decoupling from the American financial

system?

Suppose some AI persons create a new

religion which gains the faith of

millions of people. That should not

sound too far-fetched because after all

almost all previous religions in history

have claimed that they were created by a

nonhuman intelligence. Now, will your

country extend freedom of religion to

the new AI sect and to its AI priests

and missionaries?

Maybe we should start with something a

bit simpler. Will your country allow AI

persons to open social media accounts,

enjoy freedom of speech on Facebook, on

Tik Tok, and befriendly children?

Well, of course, that question should

have been asked 10 years ago. On social

media, AI bots have been operating as

functional persons for at least a

decade. If you think AIS should not be

treated as persons on social media, you

should have acted 10 years ago.

10 years from now, it will be too late

for you to decide whether AIs should

function as persons in the financial

markets, in the courts, in the churches.

Somebody else will already have decided

it for you.

If you want to influence where humanity

is going, you need to make a decision

now.

So what is your answer as a leader? Do

you think the AI immigrants should be

recognized as legal persons? If not, how

are you going to stop that?

Thank you for listening to this human.