A most remarkable book. Harari is an historian by training and profession, but he is a very aware of philosophy, economics, neuroscience and politics, to name a few areas. This book is his musing on the problems of our current times, and the potential future paths which we may choose to undertake. If you are trying to figure that out as well, I highly recommend that you read it. You can also learn a lot about our human history, and his other future prognostications in these two books - also worth your time: Sapiens Homo Deus
My hope would be that the ideas herein will give rise to a slightly better debate among scientists and politicians and philosophers about where we should be going as a species! I think he sees the path and would like others to join. This is no “On the Origin of Species” or “Das Kapital”, but it is a good reading of the current time and a hopeful path forward.
To read a fine "review" of the book, look here: https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/yuval-noah-harari-sapiens-facebook-silicon-valley-hollywood.html
In many ways, this is the scariest book I have ever read, and the most hopeful. What humans are about has more potential for lasting harm than at any point in our history. And we have more potential for good than we have ever had. He brings this perspective from studying thousands of years of history and different cultures. He managed to surprise me in every chapter. The potential downside of the advancing technology we have unleashed is enormous. The potential upside, and the fact that we are where we are is similarly amazing.
Please read it to the last chapter, which IMHO is the best part of the book. But you cannot just skip to that - work up to it and it will have the desired effect.
Having finished the book, I feel like I have just embarked on another phase of life. Just briefly, here are some of the past events that radically changed EVERYTHING.
- I felt I wanted or had to be a priest - and I did that.
- I and the deity had a falling out, and I needed to find other employment!
- I fell in love with a remarkable woman, and married her.
- I had some amazing children, loved them, raised them, and continue to wish them well.
- I loved studying law, but hated practicing it.
- I received some beautiful grandchildren, who have given me great joy and wonder at how humans work.
- I realized how poorly the human species has been treating women.
- I learned that all of us do not approach life in the same way - we have totally different “world views.” Africa taught me that plus a bit of reading.
- I discovered that the “science” of economics is a big shell game - until I found behavioral economics.
- I learned that we are barely rational beings, driven by our evolutionary history to respond without thinking for 99% of what we do. We are gene replicators.
- I learned that my 3 blocked arteries are going to kill me, unless I undertake a whole new way of eating and thinking about food.
- I understand the power of the practice of meditation that I was trained in for many years, and now I want to take it to a new level.
Jobs - my paraphrase
It seems patently obvious that the world will eventually get beyond the point where we need a large mass of workers to accomplish anything. Governments have educated the masses to provide a capable workforce, and a willing armed forces - but we are rapidly approach the point where we need neither, given the advancements of intelligent machines. A Basic Economic Income might provide us with a mass of consumers, but that provides us with a whole population without real meaning and purpose, which is often found in their jobs and accomplishments. And, if the advance of science is such that the truly wealthy can buy an escape from death, what is to prevent us from creating two separate worlds - the elite and the mass? And if the elite no longer need the mass of us for anything - what then?
There is nothing inherent in human beings that says we have implicit value in an economy where we are surplus. Individual human rights are really recent on the ground. They might well disappear in the next round of social evolution.
What happens to advertising when Google can immediately refer you to the perfect product for you, based on all the data it has been accumulating? What does Google do for income then? My bet is that they have thought of this and are working on it.
Quotes
The Future of Advertising. In the medium term, this data hoard opens a path to a radically different business model, whose first victim will be the advertising industry itself. The new model is based on transferring authority from humans to algorithms, including the authority to choose and buy things. Once algorithms choose and buy things for us, the traditional advertising industry will go bust. Consider Google. Google wants to reach a point where we can ask it anything and get the best answer in the world. What will happen once we can say to Google, “Hi, Google. Based on everything you know about cars, and based on everything you know about me (including my needs, my habits, my views on global warming, and even my opinions about Middle Eastern politics), what is the best car for me?” If Google can give us a good answer to that, and if we learn by experience to trust Google’s wisdom instead of our own easily manipulated feelings, what could possibly be the use of car advertisements?
(p. 78)
Class Divide. Throughout history the rich and the aristocracy always imagined that they had skills superior to everybody else’s, which is why they were in control. As far as we can tell, this wasn’t true. The average duke wasn’t more talented than the average peasant—he owed his superiority only to unjust legal and economic discrimination. However, by 2100 the rich might really be more talented, more creative, and more intelligent than the slum-dwellers. Once a real gap in ability opens between the rich and the poor, it will become almost impossible to close it. If the rich use their superior abilities to enrich themselves further, and if more money can buy them enhanced bodies and brains, with time the gap will only widen. By 2100, the richest 1 percent might own not merely most of the world’s wealth but also most of the world’s beauty, creativity, and health.
(p. 75)
The two processes together—bioengineering coupled with the rise of AI—might therefore result in the separation of humankind into a small class of superhumans and a massive underclass of useless Homo Sapiens. To make an already ominous situation even worse, as the masses lose their economic importance and political power, the state might lose at least some of the incentive to invest in their health, education, and welfare. It’s very dangerous to be redundant. The future of the masses will then depend on the goodwill of a small elite. Maybe there will be goodwill for a few decades. But in a time of crisis—like climate catastrophe—it would be very tempting and easy to toss the superfluous people overboard. 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 United States, however, the elite might well use it as the first opportunity to dismantle what’s left of the American welfare state. An even bigger problem looms in large developing countries such as India, China, South Africa, and Brazil. There, once common people lose their economic value, inequality might skyrocket.
(pp. 75-76)
Algorithms Rule. People might argue that algorithms will never make important decisions for us, because important decisions usually involve an ethical dimension, and algorithms don’t understand ethics. Yet there is no reason to assume that algorithms won’t be able to outperform the average human even in ethics. Today, as devices such as smartphones and autonomous vehicles undertake decisions that used to be a human monopoly, their creators are already starting to grapple with the same kinds of ethical problems that have bedeviled humans for millennia.
Trust in Algorithms and AI. You may well list the many problems that beset algorithms, and conclude that people will never trust them. But this is a bit like cataloguing all the drawbacks of democracy and concluding that no sane person would ever choose to support such a system. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst political system in the world, except for all the others. Rightly or wrongly, people might reach the same conclusions about Big Data algorithms: they have lots of glitches, but we have no better alternative.
Learning AIs. (AlphaZero is a learning AI which learned how to play chess by playing itself. It beat the best programmed opponent - Stockfish.)
Can you guess how long it took AlphaZero to learn chess from scratch, prepare for the match against Stockfish, and develop its genius instincts? Four hours. That’s not a typo. 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.
Inequality. Globalization has certainly benefited large segments of humanity, but there are signs of growing inequality both between and within societies. Some groups increasingly monopolize the fruits of globalization, while billions are left behind. Today, the richest 1 percent own half the world’s wealth. Even more alarmingly, the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion.
(p. 74) Read those numbers again - please.Thanks.
Conclusion
There is lots more - read the book. Let me know what you think of it.
And, thanks. Thanks for taking a few minutes to THINK and REFLECT on what we are about and we were are going. It’s a rare privilege that most of us never undertake.
Remember, I’m pulling for you. We really are all in this together.
No comments:
Post a Comment