[MUSIC PLAYING]
WILSON WHITE: Good afternoon,
everyone, especially
for those of you who
are here in California.
My name is Wilson White,
and I'm on the public policy
and government relations
team here in California.
We have an exciting talk for
you today as part of our Talks
at Google series, as well
as a series of conversations
we're having around AI ethics
and technology ethics more
generally.
So today, I'm honored to
have Professor Yuval Noah
Harari with us.
Yuval is an Israeli historian
and a professor at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
He is a dynamic speaker,
thinker, and now
an international
bestselling author.
He's the author of three books.
We're going to talk about
each of those books today.
The first book he published in
2014, "Sapien," which explored
some of our history as humans.
His second book in 2016 had an
interesting take on our future
as humans.
It was "Homo Deus."
And then recently
published a new book,
the "21 Lessons for
the 21st Century,"
which attempts to grapple
with some of the issues,
the pressing issues that
we are facing today.
So we'll talk about some of the
themes in each of those books
as we go through
our conversation.
But collectively, his writings
explore very big concepts
like free will and
consciousness and intelligence.
So we'll have a lot to
explore with Yuval today.
So with that, please join me
in welcoming Professor Yuval
to Google.
[APPLAUSE]
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Hello.
WILSON WHITE: Thank you,
Professor, for joining us.
Before getting
started, I have to say
that when the
announcement went out
across Google about this
talk, I got several emails
from many Googlers around
the world who told me
that they had either read
or are currently reading
one or multiple of your books.
So if you are contemplating
a fourth book,
maybe on the
afterlife, no spoilers
during this conversation.
I want to start with maybe
some of the themes in both
your current book,
"21 Lessons," as well
as "Homo Deus," because I'm
the father of two young kids.
I have two daughters,
a five-year-old
and a three-year-old.
And the future that you paint
in "Homo Deus" is interesting.
So I'd like to ask
you, what should I
be teaching my daughters?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
That nobody knows
how the world would
look like in 2050,
except that it will be
very different from today.
So the most important things
to emphasize in education
are things like
emotional intelligence
and mental stability,
because the one thing
that they will need
for sure is the ability
to reinvent
themselves repeatedly
throughout their lives.
It's really first
time in history
that we don't really know what
particular skills to teach
young people,
because we just don't
know in what kind of
world they will be living.
But we do know they will
have to reinvent themselves.
And especially if you think
about something like the job
market, maybe the greatest
problem they will face
will be psychological.
Because at least
beyond a certain age,
it's very, very difficult for
people to reinvent themselves.
So we kind of need
to build identities.
I mean, if previously, if
traditionally people built
identities like stone houses
with very deep foundations,
now it makes more sense to build
identities like tents that you
can fold and move elsewhere.
Because we don't know where
you will have to move,
but you will have to move.
WILSON WHITE: You
will have to move.
So I may have to go
back to school now
to learn these things so that
I can teach the next generation
of humans here.
In "21 Lessons for
the 21st Century,"
you tackle several themes
that even we at Google,
as a company who are on the
leading edge of technology
and how technology is
being deployed in society,
we wrestle with some
of the same issues.
Tell me a bit
about your thoughts
on why democracy is in crisis.
That's a theme in
the current book,
and I want to
explore that a bit.
Why you think liberal
democracy as we knew
it is currently in crisis.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Well, the
entire liberal democratic
system is built on philosophical
ideas we've inherited
from the 18th century,
especially the idea
of free will, which
underlies the basic models
of the liberal world view
like the voter knows best,
the customer is
always right, beauty
is in the eye of the
beholder, follow your heart,
do what feels good.
All these liberal
models, which are
the foundation of our
political and economic system.
They assume that the ultimate
authority is the free choices
of individuals.
I mean, there are, of course,
all kinds of limitations
and boundary cases
and so forth, but when
push comes to
shove, for instance,
in the economic field,
then corporations
will tend to retreat behind
this last line of defense
that this is what
the customers want.
The customer is always right.
If the customers want
it, it can't be wrong.
Who are you to tell the
customers that they are wrong?
Now of course, there
are many exceptions,
but this is the basics
of the free market.
This is the first and
last thing you learn.
The customer is always right.
So the ultimate authority
in the economic field
is the desires of the customers.
And this is really based on a
philosophical and metaphysical
view about free will, that the
desires of the customer, they
emanate, they represent the
free will of human beings,
which is the highest
authority in the universe.
And therefore, we
must abide by them.
And it's the same in
the political field
with the voter knows best.
And this was OK for the
last two or three centuries.
Because even though free will
was always a myth and not
a scientific reality--
I mean, science knows
of only two kinds
of processes in nature.
It knows about
deterministic processes
and it knows about
random processes.
And their combination results
in probabilistic processes.
But randomness and probability,
they are not freedom.
They mean that I can't
predict your actions
with 100% accuracy, because
there is randomness.
But a random robot is not free.
If you connect a robot, say,
to uranium, a piece of uranium,
and the decisions of
the robot is determined
by random processes of the
disintegration of uranium
atoms, so you will never
be able to predict exactly
what this robot will do.
But this is not freedom.
This is just randomness.
Now this was always true from
a scientific perspective.
Humans, certainly
they have a will.
They make decisions.
They make choices.
But they are not free
to choose the will.
The choices are not independent.
They depend on a
million factors,
genetic and hormonal and social
and cultural and so forth,
which we don't choose.
Now up till now in
history, the humans
were so complicated that
for a practical perspective,
it still made sense to
believe in free will,
because nobody could
understand you better
than you understand yourself.
You had this inner realm
of desires and thoughts
and feelings which you
had privileged access
to this inner realm.
WILSON WHITE: Yeah, but that
hasn't changed today, right?
Like, that--
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
It has changed.
There is no longer--
the privilege access now belongs
to corporations like Google.
They can have access to
things happening ultimately
inside my body and brain,
which I don't know about.
There is somebody out
there-- and not just one.
All kinds of corporations and
governments that maybe not
today, maybe in five years,
10 years, 20 years, they
will have privileged access
to what's happening inside me.
More privileged than my access.
They could understand what
is happening in my brain
better than I understand it,
which means-- they will never
be perfect.
WILSON WHITE: Right.
But you will, as a
free person, like, you
will have delegated that
access or that ability
to this corporation or
this machine or this--
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: No, you don't
have to give them permission.
I mean, in some countries maybe
you have no choice at all.
But even in a democracy
like the United States,
a lot of the information that
enables an external entity
to hack you, nobody
asks you whether you
want to give it away or not.
Now at present, most
of the data that
is being collected on humans is
still from the skin outwards.
We haven't seen nothing yet.
We are still just at the
tip of this revolution,
because at present, whether it's
Google and Facebook and Amazon
or whether it's the government
or whatever, they all
are trying to
understand people mainly
on the basis of what I search,
what I buy, where I go,
who I meet.
It's all external.
The really big revolution,
which is coming very quickly,
will be when the AI
revolution and machine
learning and all that,
the infotech revolution,
meets and merges with
the biotech revolution
and goes under the skin.
Biometric sensors or
even external devices.
Now we are developing
the ability, for example,
to know the blood
pressure of individuals
just by looking at them.
You don't need to put
a sensor on a person.
Just by looking at
the face, you can
tell, what is the blood
pressure of that individual?
And by analyzing tiny movements
in the eyes, in the mouth,
you can tell all kinds of
things from the current mood
of the person--
are you angry, are you bored--
to things like
sexual orientation.
So we are talking about
a world in which humans
are no longer a black box.
Nobody really understands what
happens inside, so we say, OK.
Free will.
No, the box is open.
And it's open to others,
certain others more
than it is open to-- you
don't understand what's
happening in your brain,
but some corporation
or government or organization
could understand that.
WILSON WHITE: And
that's a theme that you
explore in "Homo Deus" pretty--
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: They're
both in "Homo Deus"
and in "21 Lessons."
This is like, maybe the most
important thing to understand
is that this is
really happening.
And at present, almost all
the attention goes to the AI.
Like, now I've been on a
two-week tour of the US
for the publication of the book.
Everybody wants
to speak about AI.
Like, AI.
Previous book, "Homo Deus" came
out, nobody cared about AI.
Two years later,
it's everywhere.
WILSON WHITE: It's
the new hot thing.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah.
And I try to
emphasize, it's not AI.
The really important thing
is actually the other side.
It's the biotech.
It's the combination.
It's only the combination-- it's
only with the help of biology
that AI becomes
really revolutionary.
Because just do a
thought experiment.
Let's say we had the best, the
most developed AI in the world.
But humans, we're not animals.
We're not biochemical
algorithms.
But they were something
like transcendent souls
that make decisions
through free will.
In such a world, AI would
not have mattered much,
because AI in such a world could
never have replaced teachers
and lawyers and doctors.
You could not even
build self-driving cars
in such a world.
Because to put a self
driving car on the road,
you need biology,
not just computers.
You need to understand humans.
For example, if somebody's
approaching the road,
the car needs to tell, is
this an eight-year-old,
an 18-year-old,
or an 80-year-old,
and needs to understand
the different behaviors
of a human child, a human
teenager, and a human adult.
And this is biology.
And similarly, to have really
effective self-driving taxis,
you need the car to
understand a lot of things
about human psychology.
The psychology of the passengers
coming in, what they want,
and so forth.
So if you take the biotech out
of the equation AI by itself
won't really go very far.
WILSON WHITE: So I
want to push you there,
because I think it's easy
to arrive at a dystopian
view of what that
world would look
like with the bio and AI and
cognitive abilities of machines
when they meet.
Like, how that
can end up, right?
And we see that in Hollywood,
and that dystopian view
is well documented.
But I want to explore
with you, like,
what are some of the
benefits of that combination?
And how can that lead to
an alternative world view
than what's explored more
deeply in "Homo Deus?"
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
Well, it should
be emphasized that there
are enormous benefits.
Otherwise, there would
be no temptation.
If it was only bad,
nobody would do it.
Google won't research it.
Nobody would invest in it.
And it should also be emphasized
that technology is never
deterministic.
You can build either paradise
or hell with these technologies.
They are not just--
they don't have just
one type of usage.
And as a historian and as
a social critic and maybe
philosopher, I
tend to focus more
on the dangerous
scenarios, simply
because for obvious
reasons, the entrepreneurs
and the corporations and
the scientists and engineers
are developing
these technologies.
They naturally tend to focus
on the positive scenarios,
on all the good it can do.
But yes, definitely
technology, it
can do a tremendous
amount of good
to humanity, to take the example
of the self-driving cars.
So at present, about
1.25 million people
are killed each year
in traffic accidents.
More than 90% of these accidents
are because of human errors.
If we can replace humans
with self-driving cars,
it's not that we'll
have no car accidents.
That's impossible.
But we'll probably save a
million lives every year.
So this is a tremendous thing.
And similarly, the
combination of being
able to understand what's
happening inside my body, this
also implies that you can
provide people with the best
health care in history.
You can, for example,
diagnose diseases
long before the
person understands
that there is something wrong.
At present, the human
mind or human awareness
is still a very critical
junction in health care.
Like, if something
happens inside my body
and I don't know about it,
I won't go to the doctor.
So if something like,
I don't know, cancer
is now spreading in my liver
and I still don't feel anything,
I won't go to the doctor.
I won't know about it.
Only when I start feeling
pain and nausea and all kinds
of things I can't explain.
So after some time,
I go to the doctor.
He does all kinds of tests.
And finally, they discover,
oh, something's wrong.
And very often,
by that time, it's
very expensive and painful.
Not necessarily too
late, but expensive
and painful to take care of it.
If I could have an AI
doctor monitoring my body
24 hours a day with biometric
sensors and so forth,
it could discover this
long before I feel anything
at this stage when
it's still very
cheap and easy and
painless to cure it.
So this is wonderful.
WILSON WHITE: But
in that world, it's
an AI doctor, and
not a human doctor.
And I think one of
the potential outcomes
that you warn about is AI or
machines or that combination
of bio and AI replacing
us, replacing us as humans.
And I'd like to think that
one thing that makes us human
is having meaning in life or
having a purpose for living.
That's kind of a unique
thing that humans have.
And I don't think it's
something that we would readily
want to give up, right?
So as this technology
is evolving
and we're developing
it, it's likely
something that we'll
bake in this need
to have meaning and
purpose in life.
You talk about in "21 Lessons"
this notion that God is dead,
or is God back?
And the role that
religion may play
in how we progress as humans.
Is there a place for
that notion of God
or religion to
capture and secure
this notion of meaning in
life or purpose in life?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Well, it
all depends on the definitions.
I mean, there are
many kinds of gods,
and people understand
very different things
by the word religion.
If you think about
God, so usually people
have very two extremely
different gods in mind
when they say the word God.
One god is the cosmic mystery.
We don't understand why there is
something rather than nothing,
why the Big Bang happened.
What is human consciousness?
There are many things we don't
understand about the world.
And some people choose
to call these mysteries
by the name of God.
God is the reason there is
something rather than nothing.
God is behind human
consciousness.
But the most characteristic
thing of that god
is that we know absolutely
nothing about him,
her, it, they.
There is nothing concrete.
It's a mystery.
And this is kind
of the god we talk
about when late at night in the
desert we sit around a campfire
and we think about
the meaning of life.
That's one kind of god.
I have no problem at
all with this god.
I like it very much.
[LAUGHTER]
Then there is another god
which is the petty lawgiver.
The chief characteristic
of this god,
we know a lot of extremely
concrete things about that god.
We know what he thinks about
female dress code, what kind
of dresses he likes
women to wear.
We know what he thinks
about sexuality.
We know what he thinks
about food, about politics,
and we know these
tiny little things.
And this is a god people talk
about when they stand around,
burning a heretic.
We'll burn you because
you did something
that this god-- we know
everything about this god,
and he doesn't like it that
you do this, so we burn you.
And it's like a
magic trick that when
you come and talk
about God-- so how
do you know that God
exists, and so forth?
People would say, well, the Big
Bang and human consciousness,
and science can't explain this,
and science can't explain that.
And this is true.
And then like a magician
swapping one card for another,
they will, shh!
Take out the mystery god and
place the petty lawgiver,
and you end up with
something strange like,
because we don't
understand the Big Bang,
women must dress
with long sleeves
and men shouldn't
have sex together.
And what's the connection?
I mean, how did you
get from here to there?
So I prefer to use
different terms here.
And it's the same with religion.
People understand very
different things with this word.
I tend to separate
religions from spirituality.
Spirituality is about questions.
Religion is about answers.
Spirituality is when you have
some big question about life
like, what is humanity?
What is the good?
Who am I?
WILSON WHITE: Our
purpose in life.
Like, why are we here?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: What
should I do in life?
And this is kind of--
and you go on a quest,
looking deeply into
these questions.
And you're willing to
go after these questions
wherever they take you.
WILSON WHITE: You
could just Google it.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah.
Maybe in the future.
But so far, at least
some of these questions,
I think when you type, like,
what is the meaning of life,
you get 42.
Like, it is the number one
result in Google search.
So you go on a spiritual quest.
And religion is
the exact opposite.
Religion is somebody comes and
tells you, this is the answer.
You must believe it.
If you don't
believe this answer,
then you will burn in
hell after you die,
or we'll burn you here
even before you die.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's really opposite things.
Now I think that at the
present moment in history,
spirituality is
probably more important
than in any previous
time in history,
because we are now forced to
confront spiritual questions,
whether we like it or not.
WILSON WHITE: And do you
think that confrontation
with those questions, that will
inform how we allow technology
to develop and be deployed?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Exactly
Now throughout history,
you always had a small
minority of people
who was very interested
in the big spiritual
and philosophical
questions of life,
and most people just ignored
them and went along with their,
like, you know, fighting
about who owns this land
and who this goad herd, to
whom it belongs, and so forth.
Now we live in a very
unique time in history
when engineers must tackle
spiritual questions.
If you are building a
self-driving car, by force,
you have to deal with
questions like free will.
By force, you have to deal with
the example everybody gives.
The self-driving car.
Suddenly two kids jump--
running after a ball
jump in front of the car.
The only way to save the two
kids is to swerve to the side
and fall off a cliff and
kill the owner of the car who
is asleep in the backseat.
What should the car do?
Now philosophers
have been arguing
about these questions
for thousands of years
with very little
impact on human life.
But engineers, they
are very impatient.
If you want to put the
self-driving car on the road
tomorrow or next
year, you need to tell
the algorithm what to do.
And the amazing thing
about this question
now is that whatever you decide,
this will actually happen.
Previously, with philosophical
discussions, like you had,
I don't know, Kant and
Schopenhauer and Mill
discussing this issue,
should I kill the two kids
or should I sacrifice my life?
And even if they
reach an agreement--
and very little impact
on actual behavior.
Because even if you
agree theoretically,
this is the right thing to
do, at a time of crisis,
philosophy has little power.
You react from
your gut, not from
your philosophical theories.
But with a self-driving car,
if you program the algorithm
to kill the driver--
and not the driver, the
owner of the car, and not
the two kids, you
have a guarantee,
a mathematical
guarantee that this is
exactly what the car will do.
So you have to think far more
carefully than ever before,
what is the right answer?
So in this sense, very old
spiritual and philosophical
questions are now practical
questions of engineering,
which you cannot escape
if you want, for example,
to put a self-driving
car on the road.
WILSON WHITE: I want to go back
to this concept of religion
versus spirituality
and the role they play
in "Sapiens," your first book.
You talk about this concept
of human fictions or stories
that we create as humans, I
guess to get us through life
and to get us through our
interactions with each other.
Those fictions, those
stories, as you put it,
they've served us well.
They've resulted in a lot
of good for humankind,
but have also been the
source of wars and conflict
and human suffering.
How do you square
that with this moment
we're in where spirituality
is an integral part in how
we think about integrating
technology in our lives?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Phew.
That's a big question.
Well, so far in
history, in order
to organize humans
on a large scale,
you always had to have some
story, some fiction which
humans invented, but which
enough humans believed in order
to agree on how to behave.
It's not just religion.
This is the obvious example.
And even religious
people would agree
that all religions except
one are fictional stories.
[LAUGH]
Except for, of
course, my religion.
If you ask a Jew, then
he will tell you, yes.
Judaism is the truth.
That's for sure.
But all these
billions of Christians
and Muslims and Hindus, they
believe in fictional stories.
I mean, all this story about
Jesus rising from the dead
and being the Son of
God, this is fake news.
WILSON WHITE: Wait,
that's not true?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: If you
ask a Jew, like a rabbi.
Even though rabbis tend to be,
like-- to hedge their bets.
[LAUGH]
So maybe not.
But then you go
to the Christians.
They will say, no,
no, no, no, no no.
This is true.
But the Muslims, they
believe in fake news.
All this story about
Muhammad meeting
the archangel Gabriel and
the Quran coming from Heaven,
this is all fake news.
And then the Muslims, they'll
tell you this about Hinduism.
So even in religion,
it's very clear.
The more interesting
thing is that the same
is true in something
in the economy.
Corporation, you can't
have a modern economy
without corporations like
Google and without money,
like dollars.
But corporations
and currencies, they
are also just
stories we invented.
Google has no physical
or biological reality.
It is a story created
by the powerful shamans
we call lawyers.
[LAUGHTER]
Even if you ask a
lawyer, what is Google,
like, you push them
to, what is it,
they will tell you
it's a legal fiction.
It's not this chair.
It belongs to Google, I think.
But it's not it.
It's not the money.
It's the manager.
It's not the workers.
It's a story created by lawyers.
And for example,
I mean, if somehow
with some natural
calamity destroys--
like, there is an earthquake
and the Googleplex collapses,
Google still exists.
Even if many of the workers
and managers are killed,
it just hires new ones.
[LAUGHTER]
And it still has
money in the bank.
And even if there is no money
in the bank, they can get a loan
and build new buildings
and hire new people,
and everything is OK.
But then if you have
the most powerful shaman
like the Supreme Court of the
United States comes and says,
I don't like your story.
I think you need to be broken
into different fictions.
Then that's the end.
WILSON WHITE: So-- so you--
[LAUGHTER]
That's a lot to unpack.
[LAUGHTER]
So the advent that we're
in now with fake news
and really seriously
questioning what veracity means
and how veracity impacts these
kind of foundational things
that you laid out earlier in
your remarks that have allowed
us to work with each other,
work across borders, et cetera,
with this, where you are on this
notion of stories and fictions
that we have, is this advent of
fake news, is that a reality?
Is that where we should be in
terms of questioning what's
true and what's not true?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: On the one
hand, fake news is old news.
We've had them
throughout history,
and sometimes in much worse
form than what we see today.
WILSON WHITE: But is
there such thing as truth?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yes,
there is absolutely.
I mean, there is reality.
I mean, you have
all these stories
people tell about reality.
WILSON WHITE: I see.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: But
ultimately, there is reality.
The best test of reality that I
know is the test of suffering.
Suffering is the most
real thing in the world.
If you want to know
whether a story is
about a real entity
or a fictional entity,
you should just ask, can
this entity actually suffer?
Now Google cannot suffer.
Even if the stock goes down,
even if a judge comes and says,
this is a monopoly, you have to
break it up, it doesn't suffer.
Humans can suffer
like the managers,
the owners of the stocks, the
employees, they can suffer.
WILSON WHITE: My girls.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah.
They can certainly suffer.
But we know, we can very easily
that Google is just a story
by this simple test
that it cannot suffer.
And it's the same of nations.
It's the same of currencies.
The dollar is just a
fiction we created.
The dollar doesn't suffer
if it loses its value.
WILSON WHITE: Let me
push you on that, right?
So oftentimes, like
just in the US,
they say kind of the
system we set up in the US
is an experiment.
It's often styled as
an experiment democracy
with checks and
balances, et cetera.
Under one view of that, you can
say that that's kind of a story
that we've created
in America, right?
We've created this kind
of really nice story.
But if that was
broken apart, like,
that entity is not suffering.
But if that experiment is the
thing, the proper functioning
of those institutions
and the things
that support that--
so that's the thing.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: We know
that it functions properly
because it alleviates suffering.
It provides health care,
it provides safety.
And if it doesn't,
then we would say
the experiment doesn't work.
The experiment--
WILSON WHITE: So would you say
that experiment is a fiction?
Or is that experiment reality?
Is it a thing?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
The experiment
is a story that we share.
It's things that we humans
have invented and created
in order to serve certain
needs and desires that we have.
It is a created story, and
not an objective reality.
But it is nevertheless one
of the most powerful forces
in the world.
When I say that something
is a fiction or a story,
I don't mean to imply it's bad
or that it's not important.
No.
Some of the best
things in the world
and the most powerful
forces in the world
are these shared fictions.
Nations and corporations
and banks and so forth,
they are all stories
we created, but they
are the most powerful
forces today in the world,
far more powerful than any
human being or any animal.
And they can be a
tremendous force for good.
The key is to remember that
we created them to serve us,
and not that we are here
in order to serve them.
The trouble really
begins when people
lose sight of the simple reality
that we are real, they are not.
And a lot of people
throughout history and also
today, they kind of
take it upside down.
They think the nation
is more real than me.
I am here to serve
it, and not it is here
to serve me and
my fellow humans.
WILSON WHITE: Very interesting.
So we're going to open
it up for questions
from the audience in
a few minutes here,
but I want to try
to get an easy win.
So in "21 Lessons," you
tackle really big challenges
and questions that we're
wrestling with today.
Of those questions, which do you
think is the easiest to solve?
And what should we be doing
to go about solving them?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Ooh.
What is the easiest to solve?
[EXHALE]
[LAUGH]
WILSON WHITE: Trying to get
quick wins on the board here.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah.
I'll address the
fake news question,
not because it's the
easiest to solve, but also
maybe because it's one of
the most relevant to what
you're doing here in Google.
And I would say that the current
incarnation of the fake news
problem has a lot to do
with the model of the news
and information market, that we
have constructed a model which
basically says,
exciting news for free
in exchange for your attention.
And this is a very
problematic model,
because it turns human attention
into the most scarce resource,
and you get more and more
competition for human attention
with more and more
exciting news that-- again,
and some of the smartest
people in the world
have learned how to
excite our brain,
how to make us click
on the next news story.
And truth gets
completely pushed aside.
It's not part of the equation.
The equation is
excitement, attention.
Excitement, attention.
And on the collective
level, I think
the solution to
this problem would
be to change the model
of the news market
to high-quality news that
costs you a lot of money,
but don't abuse your attention.
It's very strange that we are
in a situation when people
are willing to
pay a lot of money
for high-quality food
and high-quality cars,
but not for high-quality news.
And this has a lot to
do with the architecture
of the information market.
And I think there are many
things that you here in Google
can do in order to help society
change the model of the news
market.
WILSON WHITE: I'd want to
continue to explore that,
and whether that would create,
like, an economic divide
or exacerbate the
current divide,
but I'm going to open it up
now for audience questions.
We have a microphone
here on the side.
Start with you.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thank you so much for
writing your books.
They are completely
wonderful, and I've
had a joy reading them.
So one of the things that
you kind of explored here
is we are facing a couple
of global problems.
And historically, we have never
created global organizations
which are responsible for
solving global problems who had
any ability to enforce them.
And even when
we've created them,
they have come after
great tragedies.
So how can we sort of make
that happen and make somebody
responsible, and
have the ability
to have those organizations
enforce those solutions?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah.
I mean, it's not
going to be easy.
But I think the
most important thing
is to change the
public conversation
and focus it on the
global problems.
If people focus
on local problems,
they don't see the need for
effective global cooperation.
So the first step is to
tell people again and again
and again, look.
The three biggest problems
that everybody on the planet
is now facing are nuclear
war, climate change,
and technological disruption.
And even if we are able to
prevent nuclear war and climate
change, still AI and
biotech are going
to completely disrupt the job
market and even the human body.
And we need to figure
out how to regulate this
and how to prevent the
dystopian consequences,
and make sure that
the more utopian
consequences materialize.
And for that, we need
global cooperation.
So it would be
obvious to everybody,
you cannot prevent climate
change on a national level,
and you cannot regulate
AI on a national level.
Whatever regulation
the US adopts,
if the Chinese are not adopting
it, it won't do much help.
So you need cooperation here.
And then it goes into
practical political issues.
I mean, you have
elections coming up,
mid-term elections in the US.
So if you go to a town meeting
with an inspiring congressman
or congresswoman, so you just
ask them, if I elect you,
what will you do about the
danger of climate change,
about the danger of nuclear
war, and about getting
global regulations for
AI and for biotech?
What's your plan?
And if they say, oh, I
haven't thought about it,
then maybe don't
vote for that person.
[LAUGHTER]
WILSON WHITE: Question.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Yuval.
Thanks for coming here today.
So in one of your
talks, you suggested
that to avoid getting
our hearts hacked,
we need to stay ahead by
knowing ourselves better.
And it seems to me that the
process of knowing yourself
needs a lot of intelligence.
And in some ways, it's a
skill that needs to developed.
I mean, the intellect
that we have as humans
seems fairly new when
compared to other properties
like we got evolutionarily.
So how do you
suggest that we can
learn to think and use our
intelligence better, and also
do that at a scale?
Because if only some
people know themselves
but millions around you
or billions or on the
don't, then you
can only go so far.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: No, I don't
think that knowing yourself
is necessarily all
about intelligence.
Certainly not in the narrow
sense of intelligence.
If you include emotional
intelligence and so forth,
then yes.
But in the more narrow sense
of IQ, I think this is not--
there are many very
intelligent people
in the world who
don't know themselves
at all, which is an extremely
dangerous combination.
Now some people explore
themselves through therapy.
Some use meditation.
Some use art.
Some use poems.
They go on a long hike, go for
a month to the Appalachian Trail
and get to know
themselves on the way.
There are many ways to do
it, which are not necessarily
about intellect.
It's not like reading
articles about brain science.
That's going to
help in some ways.
And in this sense, I
think it's a very kind
of democratizing ability or
force to get to know yourself.
After all, you-- you're
always with yourself.
It's not like you need some
special observatory and to get
some very rare machines
from, I don't know,
that cost millions of dollars.
You just need yourself.
AUDIENCE: Sure.
But what about the
art of thinking?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: What about?
AUDIENCE: The art of thinking.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
The art of thinking.
AUDIENCE: I mean, people
are very intelligent,
but they don't really
use their intelligence
to understand
themselves [INAUDIBLE]..
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Yeah.
Again, there is no
easy way to do it.
If it was easy to get
to know yourself better,
everybody would do
it long ago, and we
would be living in a very,
very different world.
WILSON WHITE: We
have folks joining us
from around the world as
well, so I have a question
from the question bank.
Compassion is the
critical underpinning
of any successful
society, yet I believe
that technology is reducing
our capacity for empathy.
It feels that we no longer value
compassion, perhaps even seeing
compassion as weak.
What are, in your
view, effective ways
to motivate members of society
to develop their compassion?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
No, I don't think
that technology is inherently
undermining compassion.
It can go both ways.
Certainly,
communication technology
can make you aware of
the plight of people
on the other side of the world.
And without that,
you may be extremely
compassionate about your
immediate, like, family members
and neighbors, and won't
care at all about people
on the other side of the world.
So I don't think there is
an inherent contradiction
or collision between
technology and compassion.
But it is true that the
way we design technology
can make us less
compassionate, and even the way
that we design ourselves.
For most of history, you had
economic and political systems
trying to shape people.
And in the past, they
did it with education
and with culture.
And in the present
and future, we
are likely to do
it more and more
with biotech and with
brain computer interfaces.
So our ability to manipulate
ourselves is growing.
And therefore, it's
extremely important
to remember to take
compassion into account.
Otherwise, the danger is
that armies and corporations
and government in
many cases, they
want something
like intelligence.
They want more intelligent
workers and soldiers.
They want more decisive workers.
And sort of, don't take
a whole day to decide.
I want you to decide
this in half an hour.
And as our ability to
manipulate humans--
and I mean manipulate--
re-engineer the body and
the brain as it grows--
we might engineer more
decisive and intelligent humans
at the price of compassion.
Which many corporations
and armies and governments
find either irrelevant
or even problematic,
because it causes
people to be hesitant
and to take more time
about the decisions,
and so on and so forth.
So we need to remember
the enormous importance
of compassion.
And again, it goes back
also to the question
about getting to
know yourself, which
I think is the key to
developing compassion.
Not just because when
you understand your own,
that this makes me miserable,
then you understand, oh.
The same thing may make
other people also miserable.
It's even much deeper than that.
When you really get
to know yourself,
you realize that when
you ignore others
and when you mistreat others,
very often, it harms you
even before it harms them.
It's a very unpleasant
experience to be angry.
So your anger may harm
other people, or maybe not.
Maybe you're boiling with
anger about somebody,
and you don't do anything about
it because she's your boss.
But you don't harm her,
but your anger harms you.
So the more you understand
yourself, the greater incentive
you have to do something about
my anger, about my hatred,
about my fear.
And most people discover that
as they develop more compassion
towards others, they also
experience far more peace
within themselves.
WILSON WHITE: Wow.
Another live question.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
After reading your
books, it occurs to me
that you've most likely
educated yourself both broadly
and deeply to be the
foundation for your ideas.
For those of us that are
interested in cultivating
our mind similarly,
wondering if you could share
a little bit about
your reading habits
and how you choose
what to consume.
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
My reading habits.
I read very eclectically.
Like, no book is barred
from entering the book list.
But then I tend to be extremely
impatient about the books I
actually read.
I would begin, like, 10
books and drop nine of them
after 10 pages.
It's not always
the wisest policy,
but it's my policy that if a
book didn't really teach me
something new, had some
interesting insight
in the first 10 pages,
the chances it will--
it could be that
on page 100 there
will be some mind-blowing
idea that I'm now missing.
But there are so many--
I keep thinking, there
are so many books,
wonderful books out there
that I will never read,
so why waste time on
the less optimal book?
So I will try, like, a book
on biology and then economics
and then psychology and
then fiction and whatever,
and just go through them
quite quickly until I find
something that really grabs me.
WILSON WHITE: Another
live question.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Mr. Harari.
Thanks for being here.
Fascinating talk as always.
I do a little bit of
meditation myself,
and I've heard that you
do a lot of meditation
on the order of hours a day.
Is that right?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: I try
to do two hours every day,
and I try to go every year to a
long retreat of 45 or 60 days.
AUDIENCE: So I
was wondering, how
do you feel that has influenced
your life and the ideas
that you have?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: Oh, it's
had a tremendous influence,
I think both on my
inner peace of mind,
but also on my work
as a scientist.
And maybe the two most
important influences
is that first it
enabled me to have
more clarity and more focus.
And certainly when you write
about such big subjects
like trying to summarize the
whole of history in 400 pages.
So having a very,
very focused mind
is very important, because
the great difficulty
is that everything
kind of distracts you.
You start writing
about the Roman Empire
and you say, well,
I have to explain
this and this and this
and this, and you end up
with 4,000 pages.
So we have to be very--
what is really important,
and what can be left outside?
And the other thing is that
at least the meditation
that I practice, which is
with passive meditation,
it's all about really
knowing the difference
between the fictions
and stories generated
by our mind and the reality.
What is really
happening right now?
And when I meditate,
the thing that happens
is that constantly, the mind is
like a factory that constantly
generates stories about
myself, about other people,
about the world.
And they are very attractive.
Like, I get
identified with them.
And the meditation
is constantly, don't.
It's just a story.
Leave it.
Just try to stay with what is
really happening right now.
And this is the central
practice in meditation.
It's also a guiding principle
when I study history
or when I study what's
happening in the world.
AUDIENCE: Great.
Thank you.
WILSON WHITE: Let's take
another question from the Dory.
With inequality rising
across most nations
in the last few decades,
what is your perspective
on how we can use technological
growth to solve this problem
and create a more
equitable world?
Do we need a different economic
paradigm to achieve this?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
Yes, we probably
need a different economic
paradigm, because we
are entering kind
of uncharted waters,
especially because of
the automation revolution
and the growing likelihood
that more and more people might
be completely pushed
out of the job market,
not just because there
won't be enough jobs,
but simply because the pace
of change in the job market
will accelerate.
So even if there
are enough jobs,
people don't have the
psychological balance
and stamina to constantly
retrain, reskill, or reinvent
themselves.
And so I think the biggest
problem in the job market
is really going to be the
psychological problem.
And then what do you do when
more and more people are
left out?
And there are
explorations of new models
like universal basic
income and so forth, which
are worth exploring.
I don't have the answers.
I will just say that
anybody who thinks
in terms like
universal basic income
should take the word universal
very, very seriously,
and not settle for
national basic income.
Because the greatest
inequality we
are facing will probably be
inequality between countries,
and not within countries.
Some countries are likely
to become extremely wealthy
due to the automation
revolution,
and California is certainly
one of these places.
Other countries might
lose everything,
because their entire
economy depends
on things like money or labor,
which will lose its importance,
and they just don't
have the resources
and the educational system
to kind of turn themselves
into high-tech hubs.
So the really crucial
question is not,
what do we do
about, I don't know,
Americans in Indiana
who lose their jobs?
The really important
question is,
what do we do about people
in Guatemala or Bangladesh
who lose their jobs?
This should be, I
think, the focus
of this question of inequality.
WILSON WHITE: OK.
We'll take another
live question.
AUDIENCE: Hello, Mr. Harari.
Thank you for doing
this Q&A. So at Google,
we have a responsibility to
build products and services
which not only achieve
results for our shareholders,
but also that actually
benefit our end users.
So in order to spend
less time hacking humans
and spend more time
reducing suffering,
we need to understand what type
of future we want to build.
So what I wanted
to ask you is, what
are your personal methodologies
for making predictions
about the future?
And what suggestions
would you give
to Googlers who want to have
a more versed understanding
of the future?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: As I
said in the very beginning,
I don't think we can
predict the future,
but I think we can influence it.
What I try to do as a
historian-- and even
when I talk about the future,
I define myself as a historian,
because I think that history
is not the study of the past.
History is the
study of change, how
human societies and political
systems and economies change.
And what I try to do is to
map different possibilities
rather than make predictions.
This is what will
happen in 2050.
And we need to keep a
very broad perspective.
One of the biggest
dangers is when
we have a very
narrow perspective,
like we develop a new
technology and we think,
oh, this technology
will have this outcome.
And we are convinced
of this prediction,
and we don't take into account
that the same technology might
have very different outcomes.
And then we don't prepare.
And again, as I said
in the beginning,
it's especially important
to take into account
the worst possible outcomes
in order to be aware of them.
So I would say whenever
you are thinking
about the future, the future
impact of a technology
and developing, create a map
of different possibilities.
If you see just one possibility,
you're not looking wide enough.
If you see two or three, it's
probably also not wide enough.
You need a map of, like, four
or five different possibilities,
minimum.
WILSON WHITE: Let's take
another live question.
AUDIENCE: Hey, Mr. Harari.
So my question is--
I'll start very
broad, and then I'll
narrow it down for the focus.
I'm really interested
in, what do
you think are the
components that
make these fictional
stories so powerful in how
they guide human nature?
And then if I narrow
it down is, I'm
specifically interested in
the self-destruction behavior
of humans.
How can these fictional
stories led by a few people
convince the mass to
literally kill or die
for that fictional story?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: It again
goes back to hacking the brain
and hacking the human animal.
It's been done throughout
history, previously just
by trial and error, without the
deep knowledge of brain science
and evolution we have today.
But to give an
example, like if you
want to convince
people to persecute
and exterminate some other group
of people, what you need to do
is really latch onto the disgust
mechanisms in the human brain.
Evolution has
shaped homo sapiens
with very powerful disgust
mechanisms in the brain
to protect us against diseases,
against all kinds of sources
of potential disease.
And if you look at the
history of bias and prejudice
and genocide, one
recurring theme
is that it repeatedly
kind of latches
onto these disgust mechanisms.
And so you would find things
like women are impure,
or these other
people, they smell bad
and they bring diseases.
And very, very often
disgust is at the center.
So you'll often find comparison
between certain types of humans
and rats or cockroaches,
or all kinds
of other disgusting things.
So if you want to
instigate genocide,
you start by hacking the disgust
mechanisms in the human brain.
And this is very, very deep.
And if it's done
from an early age,
it's extremely
difficult afterwards.
People can-- they
know intellectually
that it's wrong to say that
these people are disgusting,
that these people,
they smell bad.
But they know it intellectually.
But when you place them,
like, in a brain scanner,
they can't help it.
If they were raised--
I mean, so we can still
do something about it.
We can still kind
of defeat this.
But it's very difficult,
because it really
goes to the core of the brain.
WILSON WHITE: So I'll
end on a final question,
because we're at time.
When Larry and Sergey,
when they founded Google,
they did so with
this deep belief
in technology's ability
to improve people's lives
everywhere.
So if you had a magic wand
and you could give Google
the next big project for us to
work on, in 30 seconds or less,
what would you grant
us as our assignment?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
An AI system that
gets to know me in order to
protect me and not in order
to sell me products or make me
click on advertisements and so
forth.
WILSON WHITE: All right.
Mission accepted.
[LAUGH]
Thank you, guys.
[APPLAUSE]
