In 2002, Wired magazine’s Kevin Kelly quizzed Google’s Larry Page about why his search engine was free, reports philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in ‘Nexus – A Brief History of Information Networks From The Stone Age to AI’ (Random House).
“Where does that get you?” he asked. Page replied that Google wasn’t about search at all.
“We’re really making an AI,” he said. “Having lots of data makes it easier to create an AI. “And AI can turn lots of data into lots of power.”
In ‘Nexus’, Harari explores information networks from the early days of language through to Google and beyond and predicts where this “information revolution” is heading. “Since the current information revolution is more momentous than any other, it’s likely to create unprecedented realities on an unprecedented scale,” he adds.
It’s nothing new. “The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started with the invention of religion,” he writes. “Prophets have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.”
Harari also warns of the profound implications of AI’s capabilities. “It has been only eighty years since the first digital computers were built and we are nowhere close to exhausting their full potential,” he writes “What happened in the past eighty years is nothing compared with what’s in store.”
While tech firms have a direct line to world governments, they also have what Harari calls a “a direct line to people’s emotional system.” And that’s dangerous.
“If the tech giants obey the wishes of voters and customers, but at the same time also mold these wishes, then who really controls whom?” he asks.
While humankind’s ability to adapt offers hope, there’s also threats from bad actors. “Human civilization could also be destroyed by weapons of social mass destruction,” he concludes.
“An AI developed in one country could be used to unleash a deluge of fake news, fake money, and fake humans so that people lose the ability to trust anything or anyone.
“AI is a global problem.” — Gavin Newsham
