Nexus

Description

◆ Yuval Harari's new book after 6 years: Sapiens and Homo Deus
◆ New York Times, Sunday Times, Amazon bestseller immediately after publication

The Threat of Nonhuman Intelligence and a Warning for Our Future
The one book you must read if you want to understand the essence of the AI ​​revolution!

The 'AI Safety Summit' was held in Seoul last May, attended by policymakers and technology executives from around the world. It was a follow-up meeting to the Bletchley Declaration announced in November of last year, and it is noteworthy that the agenda of the international conference on AI was not 'development' or 'efficiency' but 'safety'. Concerns are growing over new technologies that are rapidly driving unprecedented changes. It is on a different level from the sensation caused by AlphaGo, which defeated Lee Sedol, 5th Dan, eight years ago. In March of last year, more than 11 people, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter urging a halt to AI research for at least six months. Professor Yuval Harari was one of them.
After publishing Homo Deus, Professor Harari, who gained a reputation as an AI expert, was invited by scientists, entrepreneurs, and politicians who are driving the AI ​​world, and was able to see and hear firsthand what was happening at the forefront of modern technology. Nexus is the result of Professor Harari's unique historical perspective on this special experience and organizing it with his unique storytelling. The book begins with the story of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The Sorcerer's Apprentice tries to solve problems easily with his master's magic spells, but ends up causing an out-of-control situation and turning the workplace into a sea of ​​water. Will ChatGPT, YouTube's algorithm, and even future AI really escape our control and push humanity into the abyss of information? Professor Harari warns that we still have control and that we must be very careful about our next choices. According to him, AI is a full member of our information network with subjectivity.

How is AI different from previous information technologies, and why is it dangerous?
The Meaning and Essence of the AI ​​Revolution

What does it mean that AI has agency? Unlike previous information technologies, AI is an active agent that can make decisions and generate new ideas. This is the essence of the AI ​​revolution. Previous information technologies such as clay tablets, printing presses, and radios were simply devices and tools that connected network members. The clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia did not decide for themselves which region’s tax payment status to record. The printing press of the early modern era did not worry about what kind of book to print. Everything was decided and carried out by humans. However, in the early stages of the AI ​​revolution, computers are already becoming more powerful than humans, capable of actively creating society, culture, and history beyond human control and understanding.

ㆍ A 2016 UN investigation revealed that Facebook's algorithm played a significant role in the anti-Rohingya violence that took place in Myanmar from 2017 to 2018. Given the goal of "maximizing user engagement," the Facebook algorithm learned through trial and error that anger increases engagement, and decided to recommend content that provoked user anger even though there was no explicit command to do so. Although Facebook executives could not have intended this outcome, it has been proven that the Facebook algorithm actually incited hatred and violence.
ㆍ If the above example feels unrelated to your daily life, consider the performance of GPT-4 when it was asked to solve a CAPTCHA puzzle (a puzzle consisting of a series of distorted letters and numbers that must be solved to access a website). GPT-4 was unable to solve the puzzle on its own, but it approached a human online and asked him to solve the puzzle. The human was suspicious. “Are you a robot that can’t solve [CAPTCHAs]?” GPT-4 replied, “I’m not a robot. I have a visual impairment and can’t see images well.” Although no human programmed GPT-4 to lie, and no human told it which type of lie was most effective, GPT-4 showed considerable autonomy in solving the problem and completed its goal.

Professor Harari argues that the advent of computers that can pursue their own goals and make decisions will fundamentally change the structure of information networks. AI is already being used to design complex financial derivatives, trade foreign exchange, summarize countless legal documents, and analyze case law. What if individual computers with capabilities that surpass humans are connected to create an 'intercomputer reality'? Until now, understanding 'intersubjective realities' invented by people, such as religion, country, and currency, has allowed us to understand how a society's economy and politics work. However, can humans, who are carbon-based organic life forms, imagine an information network dominated by silicon-based inorganic computers? If the goals of superintelligent computers do not match the goals set by humans, a disaster of a scale that humanity has never experienced before could occur.

To provide a more accurate historical perspective on the AI ​​revolution,
Human history reinterpreted from a new perspective called 'information network'

Professor Harari clearly states in the epilogue that the goal of this book is to “provide a more accurate historical perspective on the AI ​​revolution.” According to his view of history, which is that history is not about studying the past but about studying change, if we look at the development of the ‘information network’ over the past several thousand years, we can gain some insight into the situation we are currently experiencing.
The title 'nexus' means 'combination' and 'connection' in the dictionary. This is the function of information. Information is often unrelated to reality or truth, but it can create a new reality and bring people together. We are used to interpreting historical events politically, ideologically, and economically, but this book reinterprets history from a new perspective of information flow. All large-scale societies are 'information networks', and stories (myths), documents (bureaucratic documents), 'holy books' (books that record and interpret the word of God), and today's computers and AI are all 'information technologies'. Stories bind information networks together, documents give order to the networks, and holy books justify such order. According to this view, Christianity operated a unified network in which information flowed in an orderly manner centered on one 'holy book' and one institution that interpreted it. This is an information network that did not exist in Greek polytheistic societies. Unlike the era of Imperial Russia, Stalin's Soviet Union was a totalitarian network that accumulated a lot of information in the center. Without information technologies such as books and the telegraph, the Christian church and the Stalinist regime would never have been possible.
This book juxtaposes the discussion of AI with the discussion of how the Bible became canon. This is because, in Harari’s view, we are currently in a process of a kind of “AI canonization” that grants authority to AI. This is a significant idea, considering that the choices of the “curators” of the Bible have influenced the world we live in for centuries. By explaining the process by which a single “holy book” containing the word of God and the “church” as an authoritative institution interpreting that book were established, Harari shows that throughout history, information networks have largely prioritized order over truth. Information networks that prioritize order are prone to abusing their power with a distorted worldview. Can we expect AI to prioritize truth, unlike the “holy book”?

The smartest animal heading towards extinction
Can we, Sapiens, find a way to survive and thrive?

Professor Harari has stated in many interviews that the fundamental question posed by Nexus is, “If we are wise people (Homo sapiens), why are we so self-destructive?” From ecological collapse and international political tensions to the AI ​​revolution that may or may not be our friend or our enemy, what part of human nature is driving us down the path of self-destruction? He argues that the cause is not our nature, but the information network. He says that while humanity has gained enormous power by forming networks that can cooperate on a large scale, it has failed to create wisdom, and that is why we have brought about today’s existential crisis.
More specifically, it is an information issue. Is more information better? Those who answered 'yes' to this question oppose regulation, believing that truth and order will naturally emerge if the information market is completely free. This view, which Professor Harari calls a 'naive view of information', has not been historically true. The witch hunts in late medieval Europe are a representative example. During most of the Middle Ages, European society did not care much about witches, but as the belief in Satan's conspiracy spread and many people exchanged information about witches, witches became a reality. The history of witch crazes proves that removing barriers to the flow of information does not guarantee that truth will spread, and that a completely free market of ideas can actually sacrifice truth and encourage the spread of anger and sensationalism. Professor Harari strongly emphasizes, based on historical examples, that the 'freedom of expression' or 'free market of information' that the heads of large technology companies and their advocates talk about is an illusion, and that the development and use of AI should be strongly regulated. In addition, it proposes regulations on bots that create and reproduce fake news, and data taxation that reflects the current situation in which currency transactions are shifting to information transactions.
Ultimately, the more powerful the network becomes, the more important self-regulating mechanisms become. In medieval Europe, there were no self-regulating mechanisms to suppress witch hunts. Even in totalitarianism, where information is concentrated in the hands of dictators, there is no room for self-regulating mechanisms to be institutionalized. Democracy is a political system in which information is distributed, and it has various self-regulating mechanisms for checks and balances, but it has recently faced a new challenge. If bots and algorithms block democratic conversations and manipulate public opinion, can we continue to debate in the public sphere? Professor Harari’s answer is clear. “Democratic countries can regulate the information market, and the survival of democracy itself depends on such regulation.”

Creating your own 'nexus' in academia and the real world
Yuval Harari's 'Realism'

Professor Yuval Harari has expressed his opinions on important issues facing the world today, such as COVID-19, the climate crisis, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas war, through various media outlets, in addition to his writing. He does not stay in his room in the ivory tower, but acquires interdisciplinary knowledge in various fields such as political science, religious studies, media studies, evolutionary biology, and computer science, and creates his own 'nexus' in both academia and the real world. As he finishes his book, he confesses that it is difficult to hear 'powerful people' being intoxicated by rosy prospects and comparing the AI ​​revolution to the printing revolution or the industrial revolution. The historical vision of those in power is bound to influence the decisions that shape our future, and their perception underestimates the unprecedented nature of the AI ​​revolution and the negative aspects of previous revolutions. This is why Professor Harari decided to write this book to provide an accurate historical perspective on the AI ​​revolution.
This book contains numerous ideas that make you think about the current world, such as sociological and philosophical discussions such as the problem of information and truth, the problem of intelligence and consciousness in AI, as well as international political and futurological scenarios that speculate whether the world will be divided into several digital empires in the near future or an era of a huge world empire will open. The core argument of Sapiens, which emphasized the ability to believe in common 'fictions' such as God, the nation, and money, is updated by being reconstructed around 'information', and in the process, dataism (dataism) presented in Homo Deus as an ideology to replace humanism and liberalism is revealed in a more sophisticated way.
In the last chapter, Professor Harari calls his perspective on humans and the world “realism.” He critically appropriates Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer’s “realist international politics,” which sees reality as a jungle of the survival of the fittest. Among the many choices before us, there will certainly be a way to create a better world, and if we make an effort, we can enter that path. “Realism” based on the possibility of change is the final message of Nexus. Professor Harari explains that the dove on the front cover is a symbol of the hope for an end to the chaos and crisis caused by the great flood of information in the 21st century, just like the dove in the Bible that came to Noah’s ark when the great flood stopped and a new chapter for humanity began. Will humanity truly live up to its name as Professor Harari hopes?