Reality is just the fiction in our own minds

When I wrote Digital Human, the book was partly inspired by Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Hariri.

Yuval’s moved on since then, written several more great books, and is now focused upon artificial intelligence (AI). So, I just watched a fascinating presentation from Yuval at the Frontiers conference.

Most of the presentation is about how AI could destroy us, something we’ve heard from many in recent years. But it finishes on a positive which is that, if we regulate AI properly, it will be good for us.

The presentation starts with how the media and entertainment industry has warned us for years about the threat of AI, dating back to 2001: A Space Odyssey and before (did you notice that the AI in the film is called HAL which is one letter before IBM?).

Yuval makes the point that there is a big challenge for AI, which is how does it become sentient and can robots move around with the physical abilities of humans? More on that later but, right now, it’s not here. It will come.

Yuval goes on to make a number of catchy quotes (these are not exact, but my take on his speech):

• AI has just hacked the operating system of humans.
• AI has just mass produced the ability to create intimacy with everyone on Earth.
• Why bother searching yourself when you can just ask the AI oracle?
• Why bother looking for news when you can just the AI oracle?
• Why bother shopping when you can just the AI oracle what to buy?
• Will AI take over human cultures?
• AI will speak every language of the world and then talk back to us in our native cultures.
• AI can eat our culture and then gush out a flood of new cultural ideas.
• AI is different to every invention in history because it can create stories.
• The printing press and telephone couldn’t create content, but AI can.
• We grew up with cultures created by humans but, in the near future, we may grow up with cultures created by the computer network.
• Historically, priests and politicians have used story telling to shape society. Now, machines can do it.

Reality is just the fiction in our own minds.

I often make this point in my own presentations, which is that countries, companies, time and money have all just been creations of the human mind.

Yuval goes on to make a specific point about money. Again, this is an inexact quote but it goes something like this:

Money is not a biological or physical reality. Banknotes are just worthless pieces of paper and, right now, 90% of the money in the world is not even banknotes. It’s just electronic information in computers, passing from here to there. What gives money value of any kind is only the stories that bankers and finance ministers and cryptocurrency gurus tell us about money. Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff didn’t give us anything of value. They were just extremely good storytellers.”

He then finishes with a view that there are a few positives for AI. It can improve our lives and abilities, but he underscores this by saying that, like nuclear bombs, we have to regulate it. Nuclear bombs are bad, so we ban them, but nuclear energy is good, so we promote it. In a similar way, AI could destroy humans but also enable them. The key is that we need to regulate AI and how it is used. We must not unleash hell, until we understand what hell it could create and regulate it. We need to regulate AI before it regulates us. For example, an AI dialogue must start with the other person saying whether they are an AI or not.

In conclusion, he ends by asking: can you be sure my presentation was created by me? The answer is that the slides weren’t but maybe the text was?

It’s well worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWiM-LuRe6w