Have you ever wondered what the future holds for humanity? What is the concept of War in the modern world? What will become of humanity in the face of artificial intelligence? What will we be like in a volatile, dopamine-starved world like today?
Well, imagine having the opportunity to delve into the depths of the brilliant mind of one of the most influential philosophers of our era. Yuval Harari, the author behind the phenomenal best sellers 'Sapiens', 'Homo Deus' and '21 Lessons for the 21st Century', was recently at an HSM corporate event, where he unveiled an impressive panel on the destiny of humanity.
Today, we bring you the complete transcription of this philosopher's speech, a dive into the thoughts of the renowned Israeli historian. get ready tolet's explore the ideas that shape our present and what awaits us in the future. If you want to understand the world in a whole new way, this is the video you don't want to miss. Yuval Harari is about to challenge your perception of reality.
I want to use this opportunity to talk about the new challenges that our species will face in the 21st century. But first, perhaps it would be good to mention all the great achievements of humanity in the recent past, as inspiration to overcome this new moment. I believe that humanity's greatest achievement was overcoming hunger, for many years considered our great enemy. In the past, most people lived with hunger. Today, even with natural disasters like droughts, no one will die of hunger. Even in developing countries, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little. Hunger disappeared from the world. Today the only hunger that exists is political hunger. In countries like Yemen, Sudan, Syria, people still die of hunger, but only because politicians and governments want their people to starve. The second point was overcoming infections. Today, more people die from diseases associated with old age than from infections.In the past, people died younger, they didn't live long enough to die of cancer. The third point was that we managed to overcome war and violence. In the past, war was understood as something natural in an imperfect world, and that only God could resolve things through a miracle.It may not seem like it, but we are living in the most peaceful era in history. So peaceful that the meaning of peace in the world has changed. In the past, peace meant a temporary lack of war. Today it means the unlikelihood of war. There are some wars in the world, of course – I come from Israel and the Middle East – but we must not blind ourselves to the global context. This is less common than at any other time. Even including Syria and Afghanistan, today war crimes kill less than suicide in statistical terms. In other words, today you are your own worst enemy. Sugar is a bigger threat to your life than the gun. And the next challenges are also 3: ecological collapse, return to war and technological disruption. In terms of war, if some humans make stupid decisions, war comes back in an even worse format. With more powerful forces, in a blatant imbalance between wisdom and stupidity. Only one fool is enough to start a war, and this is a great danger. Ecological collapse, unlike war, is already a reality around us. Nobody wants it, of course, but at the same time there is something inevitable that everyone wants, which is economic growth. The only realistic hope is that new eco-friendly technologies will emerge. And this brings us to the third and most complicated challenge: technological disruption. The technological fantasy of a few can become the nightmare of billions. Artificial intelligence and biotechnology can contribute to our evolution, of course. For example, today 1.5 million people die from car accidents every year, 90% of which are due to human error. Autonomous vehicles will save 1 million people. However, I don't want to spend too much time talking about the promises of technologies, because we've already heard a lot about that. My work as a historian and philosopher is different: it is necessary to highlight the dangers that are not taken into account by companies and corporations. The disruption of human life can happen in different ways. Perhaps we will face something very complicated from a social and economic point of view. With the industrial revolution, the 19th century created the urban working class. It runs the risk of becoming a useless class in the 21st century. Not useless from the point of view of family and emotional relationships, but from an economic and political perspective. Nobody knows what the job market will be like in 2050. All we know is that it will be completely different from what it is today. Artificial intelligence and robotics will change virtually every profession, and many jobs will disappear. Some will emerge, but we don't know if they will be enough. And it will be necessary to retrain people to fill these vacancies. For example, a driver who loses his job. You can teach yoga or become a software engineer, but how do you deal with this change at age 40? And even if you do, it won't be a long-term solution, because the automation will be continuous, not just a single event. In other words, with automation there will be a cascade of disruptions, one followed by another, continuously.Us we will have a revolution in 10 years, then in 20, and so on. So people will have to reinvent themselves not once in their lives but perhaps several times, practically every decade. In the past people had to fight against exploitation; In the 21st century the biggest struggle is against being irrelevant. Being exploited is less bad, because at least you are needed. This revolution could create unprecedented inequalities. Not only between people but also between different countries. In the 19th century, some countries industrialized first, such as Great Britain and Japan. If we are not careful, the same will now happen with artificial intelligence. We are already in the middle of the race with China leading, and most other countries far behind. In the 19th century, whoever didn't care about industrialization, about steamships and roads, in the first 30 years, turned into a colony. Today, there is immense wealth in hubs like California and China. I believe that those most impacted will be developing countries. Because automation will reduce unskilled labor, even if it is cheap. There will be many new jobs for software engineers in San Francisco and Beijing, and far fewer for textile or truck driving trades… But the greater danger is at the political level of the rise of digital dictatorships – governments and totalitarian regimes controlling everyone all the time. The equation is very simple: biological knowledge multiplied by data processing results in hacking of human beings. The fusion of biology and technology could result in enough data to hack millions. These are algorithms that will understand you better than you understand yourself. With the power to manipulate your feelings and completely override your decisions. They don't need to know you perfectly – to hack you just need to know you a little better. Which is reasonable because you don't know yourself that well. I, for example, only discovered I was gay at the age of 21, after a long time of denial as a teenager. The fact is that I missed something extremely important about myself during this period, and that is not uncommon among gay people. So imagine a situation in which the algorithm can tell if a teenager is on the gay spectrum, for example by controlling the movement of the eyes in front of an image showing a sexy man and woman. The algorithm can monitor and hack in the service of governments and companies. Coca-Cola will already know your preference. When she creates an advertisement designed for you, she will choose whether the image features a man in swim trunks or a girl in a bikini. This knowledge will be worth billions and could have more serious consequences. In Iran, for example, there is the death penalty for homosexuals. What would it mean for a gay man to be detected by this government? All these secrets worth knowing could lead to the rise of the worst totalitarian regime in history. It will be necessary to prevent and protect yourself not only from your own government, but from other governments and powerful institutions. Imagine what Brazilian politics would be like when someone in China knows all the medical and personal history of politicians, judges and journalists, including sexual escapades and mental illnesses. You don't need to send your army, just collect data. Hacking can increasingly impact our freedom, with artificial intelligence making decisions for us. This change is already underway. Today billions trust the Facebook or Google algorithm to tell us the truth. Netflix tells us what to watch... In the future they will tell us where to work, who to marry, or whether or not the Central Bank should lower interest rates. And the answer will always be the same: “because the algorithm said so”. The human brain is limited. We will not be able to understand the algorithm and its decisions, we will not have this ability to process data. We are at risk of losing control over our lives and the ability to understand public policies. Today let's say that 1% of humanity understands the financial system. In the future maybe it will be zero. But what will human life mean when all decisions are made by an algorithm? We do not have philosophical and existential models to understand and interpret a life like this. Politicians will be able to create heaven or hell. We philosophers are dealing with the difficulty of conceptualizing what will be heaven and what will be hell. If we fail in these utopias, we will find ourselves trapped inside them with no way out. And the disruption will not just be about economics, politics or philosophy, but biology too. We will have the ability to create new inorganic life forms after 4 billion years of organic life. We will enter an era of inorganic life created by design. We could make serious mistakes. Governments, corporations and armies can try to develop models in which intelligence and discipline prevail, but neglecting compassion, sensitivity and spirituality. A kind of “super humans”, intelligent and disciplined. Which could represent a downgrade of our species. What to do about all this? First, it is necessary to emphasize that these are not prophecies, just possibilities. And it's not too late to act. Technology is not deterministic. Everyone can do what they want with it, just compare the two Koreas, for example. What can we create now? Perhaps the most important and ancient advice is still valid: know yourself. Buddha, Socrates and Jesus had no competition. Today, right now, several governments and corporations are trying to hack you. They want to know more about you so they can sell products or politics. Therapy and meditation can be a way to get to know yourself better. Others prefer to go hiking in the mountains. I personally practice 2 hours of meditation a day, in addition to going on retreats that can last a few days. Each person can find their own method, and it is important to invest time and effort into it quickly. Because if hackers get there first, they will own you. The most manipulable people are precisely those who think they have free will. 50 people together can do more than 500 alone. Too much data and power concentrated in one place can have a negative impact. Some countries and people will certainly lose a lot, so there is a need to create a global safety net to protect the weakest members of humanity. It is important, at the same time, to strengthen global corporations, they are more important than ever. No nation will be able to resolve these environmental and technological issues alone, because no government has the power to do so. No one wants to make a killer robot or use genetic engineering of babies with bad intentions. No matter who will win this race, the loser will be humanity. And large corporations can contribute to reversing this process. Trump says there is a contradiction between nationalism and globalism, and proposes to reject globalism. This is a very serious error – there is no contradiction, because nationalism does not mean hating foreigners. It's about loving your countrymen, and in the 21st century the only way is to cooperate with foreigners. In the 21st century, good nationalists must be good globalists. In the 20th century we learned to create a more peaceful world through difficult lessons. There were two wars and Stalin. In the 21st century, if we don't achieve a more peaceful world on the first try, the species may not survive. And if it disappears, it won't be the end of the world. Maybe the mice will take over and learn from our mistakes. I hope I trust people and not rats. (End of lecture; applause) Final considerations: It will be easier to replace doctors than nurses, and not the other way around. Some doctors only process diagnostic data from exams and articles they read. Nurses, in contrast, deal with people skillfully. Many people still have their heads in the 20th century, thinking about social protection. More than that, education and training will be necessary, and this should be a classic task for governments. There is no point in building a wall on the border. Nationalist governments must think globally. There is no contradiction between one and the other, because today, no issue can be resolved by a single country. Sweden and Switzerland are not a concern. They have the means to deal with this entire transformation. As for poor countries… The richer the country, the easier. And you often become rich by exploiting others. But then it becomes easier to deal with the problems you caused. The great responsibility for climate change, for example, lies with the richest countries. But they are at less risk because they have more resources. Bangladesh is less responsible for climate change, but the United States has more resources.
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