A short interview with the author of Homo Deus: a Brief History of Tomorrow.
HUMANITY HAS HAD astonishing success alleviating famine, disease, and war. (It might not always seem that way, but it’s true.) Now, Homo sapiens is on the brink of an upgrade—sort of. As we become increasingly skilled at deploying artificial intelligence, big data, and algorithms to do everything from easing traffic to diagnosing cancer, we’ll transform into a new breed of superhuman, says historian and best-selling author Yuval Harari in his new book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Which is great, except that we might also become so dependent on these tools that our species will become irrelevant—our value determined only by the data we generate. WIRED spoke to Harari about this coming life in the Matrix just before he left for his annual 45-day tech-free meditation retreat.
Can we opt out?
The simplest answer is no. It will become extremely difficult to unplug, and it has to do with health care, which will increasingly rely on internet-connected sensors. People will be willing to give up privacy in exchange for medical services that tell you the first day cancer cells start spreading in your body. So we might reach a point when it will be impossible to disconnect.
What can we be hopeful about?
There’s a lot to be hopeful about. In 20 to 30 years the hundreds of millions of people who have no health care will have access to AI doctors on their mobile phones offering better care than anyone gets now. Driverless cars won’t eliminate accidents, but they will drastically reduce them.
Phew … so we’re not doomed?
Humanity has proven its ability to rise to the challenge posed by dangerous new technologies—in the 1950s and ’60s many people expected the Cold War to end in a nuclear holocaust. That didn’t happen. After thousands of years in which war seemed to be an inevitable part of human nature, we changed how international politics functioned. I hope we’ll also be able to rise to the challenge of technologies like AI and genetic engineering, but we don’t have any room for error.
For a longer interview there is a podcast available via the link below.
Homo Deus: A conversation between Yuval Harari and Azeem Azhar
Leave a Reply