Yuval Noah Harari says AI could enslave humanity, author warns against its rapid growth

“As for the threat of AI, whereas 10 years ago it was still a science fiction scenario that interested only a very small community of experts, it is now already upending our economy, our culture, and our politics. Within a few more years, AI could escape our control and either enslave or annihilate us,” Harari said during his presentation at the recently held panel discussions hosted by the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) and King’s College, University of Cambridge.

In his speech, the 48-year-old Israeli author said that humanity is facing many problems today. He pointed out that three existential problems put the very survival of the human species at risk. These threats are – ecological collapse, technological disruption by technologies like AI, and global war.

He went on to say that two of these threats are already present realities that have been unfolding around us. Harari said that the ecological system is collapsing, with thousands of species going extinct each year. “ We might be just a few years away from crossing critical thresholds that could put human civilization at risk of extinction.”

Talking about the rapid pace of developments in AI, the author said that the AI we know today is at a very early amoeba stage. He said that organic life took billions of years to evolve from amoebas to dinosaurs. However, AI is not organic, and digital evolution is millions of times faster than biological evolution. The author said that today’s AI amoebas may take just decades to reach the T-Rex stage.

While saying that the future is uncertain, Harari said that there could be models and theories that argue that eventually, AIs will become conscious or sentient. He warned that they could destroy not just human civilisation, but could destroy the whole of the very light of consciousness. According to the author, AIs may reconfigure the entire ecological system to their needs for which they may not necessarily need consciousness.

As a countermeasure, Harari suggested that we cannot anticipate the type of threats and dangers that AI will create. “What we need is to build regulatory institutions that are living institutions that can understand and react to things as they develop.

The celebrated author also spoke at length about the ecological state and wars. He said that as a historian, he did not believe in historical determinism. “For a few more years before potential AI takeover, war and peace are still human choices. Rarely are wars fought over objective needs like food or territory, but over historical and mythological narratives we invent and believe,” he said.