Yuval Noah Harari in the news

[LanDroid]

Yuval Noah Harari is in the news commenting on the conflict with Hamas. This thread lists a few examples, please add more.

Hamas wants to assassinate any chance for peace and have this conflict continue for generations. 3:20 minute video
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/1 ... -world.cnn

"In the Middle East, we are witnessing a war of souls" 21:00 minute video
"Don't be intellectually or emotionally lazy, don't just see one part of the reality. Try to appreciate the complexity of the situation and try to think constructively about how we might one day reach a place of peace."
https://video.sky.it/news/mondo/video/i ... ari-871429

[LanDroid]

In contrast to the Laws of the Jungle and Chekov, as we're discussing in his book, Harari now states we may be just 24 hours from nuclear war. (Japanese TV interview 10/19/2023)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTQ2Hn9uyxg

[LanDroid]

AI could cause ‘catastrophic’ financial crisis, says Yuval Noah Harari
"AI is different from every previous technology in human history because it’s the first technology that can make decisions by itself, that can create new ideas by itself and that can learn and develop by itself. Almost by definition, it’s extremely difficult for humans, even the humans who created the technology, to foresee all the potential dangers and problems.”

...“What happens if AI is not only given greater control over the financial system of the world, but it starts creating new financial devices that only AI can understand, that no human being can understand?” said Harari, adding that the 2007-08 financial crisis was caused by debt instruments such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) that few people understood and were thus inadequately regulated.

“AI has the potential to create financial devices which are orders of magnitude more complex than CDOs. And just imagine the situation where we have a financial system that no human being is able to understand and therefore also not able to regulate,” he said. “And then there is a financial crisis and nobody understands what is happening.”

11/9/23
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ial-crisis

This might be giving away part of the book we're discussing, but it's an update on his thoughts since it was published. He includes a positive note about last week’s multilateral declaration at the global AI safety summit in Bletchley Park.

[LanDroid]

"In the early 21st century largely thanks to the global liberal order humanity has experienced the most peaceful and prosperous era in history. That era is now over."

11/17/2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nn5pYczJM0&t=173

Harari repudiates some statements he made in 2017 in the book we're reviewing. This indicates a flexible mind reacting to sudden change, not resorting to a stubborn intellectual tautness or worried about defending previous statements to the death. Such stubbornness can be associated with intellectual rigor or stupidity depending on the circumstances. He says humanity must not forget our greatest strength is cooperation; if we lose that humanity may not survive the challenges of the 21st century. The video may be a little hard to follow since the graphics are in German.

[LanDroid]

History is not the study of the past. History is the study of change. It's also about understanding about how things change. And also history is not about remembering the past, it's about liberating ourselves from it. Often we live our lives trapped inside the dreams of dead people. And history can show us a way out of that.

11/30/23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlni04mpDdg