Yuval Harari's latest speech: Artificial intelligence has just invaded the operating system of human civilization!

While the latest progress in artificial intelligence technology has amazed people, it has also brought issues such as “machines replacing human brains” and “threats and supervision of artificial intelligence” into focus again.

On April 29, 2023, at the Frontiers forum, Yuval Harari, the author of "A Brief History of Humanity", "A Brief History of the Future" and "A Brief History of Today" also published about artificial intelligence and the future of mankind. Keynote speech, putting forward his views.

He believes that artificial intelligence is mastering language beyond the average human level. By mastering language, artificial intelligence is holding the key to invading human civilization systems.

The threat of artificial intelligence to us may be more serious than imagined.

In 2016, Yuval Harari came to Chaos to teach the course "The Rise and Future of Humanity". Today, many of the conclusions are still thought-provoking, "Cognition is the weapon for human progress" and "Intelligence" Design will determine human evolution.” You can watch the class by opening the Chaos app.

The following is the full text of the speech.

Author丨Axin

This article is jointly produced by "CITIC Publishing" and Chaos Academy. At the end of the article, Chaos Lord sends out 2 sets of books

I know that the focus of this conference is the ecological crisis that humanity is facing, and artificial intelligence is part of this crisis, for better or worse. Artificial intelligence can help us solve the ecological crisis in many ways, but it can also exacerbate it.

In fact, artificial intelligence may change the meaning of ecosystems. Because for 4 billion years Earth's ecosystems have only contained organic life forms, and now or in the near future we may see the emergence of the first inorganic life forms, or at least the emergence of inorganic media.

Since the beginning of the computer age in the mid-20th century, people have always been afraid of artificial intelligence. This fear inspired the birth of many classic science fiction works, such as "Terminator" and "The Matrix".

Although such science fiction scenes have become cultural icons, they are not typically taken seriously in academic, scientific and political debates. This is also understandable, because science fiction works generally make the assumption that before artificial intelligence poses a major threat to mankind, it must jump Two important milestones——

First, AI must become sentient, develop consciousness, feelings and emotions, otherwise why would it want to take over the world? Second, AI must adapt to orient itself in the physical world, and robots must be able to be as efficient as humans The earth moves and operates in houses, cities, mountains, and forests. If they can't move in the physical world, how can they possibly take over the world?

Artificial intelligence appears to be far from reaching these two milestones before April 2023, and despite the hype surrounding ChatGPT and other new AI tools, there is no evidence that these tools have the slightest Awareness, feeling or emotion. As for activities in the physical world, although self-driving technology has always been a hot topic, the time for cars to dominate human roads has been delayed.

The bad news, however, is that for artificial intelligence to threaten the survival of human civilization does not really require consciousness, nor the ability to move in the physical world. In the past few years, new artificial intelligence tools have been introduced into the public domain that may threaten the survival of human civilization from a very unexpected direction. It’s hard to even comprehend what these new AI tools are capable of, and how quickly they continue to evolve.

In fact, because AI is able to learn and improve itself, even the developers of these tools do not know the full capabilities of what they create, and they themselves are often surprised by the new capabilities and high quality of these tools .

I think everyone here already understands New Artificial Intelligence Tools Some of the most basic abilities, such as writing, painting, composing and coding. But there are many other capabilities coming, such as deepfaking people’s voices and images, drafting bills, and finding loopholes in computer code, contracts, and legal documents. But perhaps most importantly, new AI tools have the ability to build deep and intimate relationships with humans.

Each of these abilities deserves a full discussion, and it’s hard to understand what they all mean, so keep this question simple. If you take all these abilities as a whole, they can be summed up into one very, very big thing - The ability to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, images or sounds.

The most important aspect of the current artificial intelligence revolution is that artificial intelligence is mastering language with an ability that exceeds the average human level. By mastering language, AI is holding the master key that unlocks the doors of all institutions, from banks to temples. Because language is the tool we use to give instructions to the bank and the tool we use to make big decisions in our minds.

Looking at this problem from another perspective, that is Artificial intelligence has just invaded the operating system of human civilization. The operating system of every human culture in history is language. At the beginning of this civilized world, we used language to create myths and laws, gods and money, art and science, friendship and country.

For example, human rights are not biologically objective facts, they are not engraved in our DNA, human rights are something we create with language by telling stories and making laws; 神It is not a biological or physical reality, but something created by us humans using language and through legends and scriptures; MoneyOf course, it is not a physical existence. Banknotes are just pieces of nothing. Value of paper, and currently more than 90% of the money in the world is not even banknotes. It is just electronic information transmitted in computers. The only thing that can give money various values ​​is stories. Many bankers, finance ministers, and cryptocurrency tycoons have not created much of real value, but they are extremely capable storytellers.

Today, no one can beat a computer in a game like chess. What if the same thing happened in our political, economic or even religious spheres?

When people think of ChatGPT and other new artificial intelligence tools, they are often attracted by examples such as children using ChatGPT to write papers. What kind of disaster would the school system face if kids used ChatGPT to write essays? It's downright chilling.

But this type of question misses the big picture. Let’s put aside the school paper. For example, we should talk about the next US presidential election in 2024 and try to imagine the impact that new artificial intelligence tools can have. Can be exploited by a new cult to mass-produce political manifestos, fake news stories, and the sect’s own bible. In the future, we may see the first religion in history where a non-human intelligence created the Bible.

Of course, religions throughout history have claimed that their Bibles were created by non-human intelligence, which was impossible before but would soon become a reality with far-reaching consequences.

Now, on a more prosaic level, we may soon find ourselves spending long hours online discussing abortion, climate change, or the Russia-Ukraine conflict with people you think are fellow human beings, but are actually It's an artificial intelligence robot.

Yuval Harari’s wonderful lessons are in the Chaos app,

The problem is that there is no point in wasting our time trying to convince an AI robot to change its political views, but the longer we talk to it, the better it learns about us and how to hone its messages to change Our political views, our economic views, or whatever.

Through mastery of language, artificial intelligence can also build intimate relationships with people and use the power of intimacy to influence our opinions.

As I said, there is no indication that an AI has any consciousness or emotions of its own, but in order to have a false intimacy with humans,

an AI doesn't need to have emotions of its own, it just needs to be able to inspire our emotions ,

Let us become attached to it. In June 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine publicly claimed that the artificial intelligence chat robot LaMDA he was working on already had sentient capabilities. The most interesting thing about this story isn't LeMoyne's version of events. He was probably wrong and he ended up losing his job. What’s really interesting is that he’s willing to risk losing his high-paying job to protect this AI chatbot.

If AI can influence people to risk losing their jobs, what else can it induce us to do?

In every political battle of hearts and minds, intimacy is the most effective weapon. Artificial intelligence has just gained the ability to create intimate relationships with hundreds of millions of people on a large scale.

As you probably all know, over the past decade, social media has become a battleground for controlling human attention. Now, with the advent of a new generation of artificial intelligence, the battleground is shifting from attention to intimacy, and that's very bad news.

What will happen to human society and human psychology as artificial intelligence fights to establish an intimate relationship with us? These relationships can also be used to persuade us to buy specific products or vote for specific politicians.

Even without creating false intimacy, new artificial intelligence tools will have a drastic impact on human opinions and worldviews,

and become the source of all the information humans need.

Why search for it myself when I can have an AI tell me anything I want? Why read the newspaper when I can have artificial intelligence tell me what’s news? What is the point and purpose of advertising when I can have AI tell me what to buy?

It is very possible that within a very short period of time, the entire news advertising industry will collapse, and AI, or the people and companies that control AI, will become very, very powerful.

We may be talking about the end of human history, but this is not the end of history but just the end of the era of human dominance.

What will happen to the course of history when artificial intelligence takes over culture? Within a few years, artificial intelligence can digest the entire human culture, digest everything we have created over thousands of years, and begin to produce a large number of new cultural creations and new cultural products. Remember, we

humans have never really had direct contact with reality

. We are always bound by culture, and we always experience reality through the cage of culture. Our political views are influenced by what journalists report and the stories of our friends, our sexual orientation is influenced by movies and fairy tales, and even the way we walk and breathe is influenced by cultural traditions. Before this, this

cultural cocoon

was always woven by others. Previous tools, such as the printing press, radio, or television, helped spread human cultural ideas and creations, but they could never create something new on their own. A printing press cannot produce a new book, that is done by people. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally different from the printing process, different from radio, and different from any invention in history, because

it can create completely new ideas and a new culture

. In its first few years, AI may largely imitate the human prototypes that “nurtured” it in its early days, but over time,

AI culture will boldly go in directions humans have never ventured before field of.

For thousands of years, we humans have essentially lived in the dreams and fantasies of others. We worship gods, pursue beautiful ideas, and dedicate our lives to the fantasies of some human poet, prophet, or statesman. Soon, we may find ourselves living the dreams and fantasies of artificial intelligence.

How to deal with this potential danger is very different from the imagination of science fiction works. Previously, people were mainly worried about the physical threats posed by intelligent machines, so in "Terminator" robots ran on the streets and shot people; "The Matrix" assumed that in order to completely control human society, artificial intelligence first needs to control The human brain and connect the brain directly to computer networks, but this is wrong.

As long as it masters human language, artificial intelligence can survive in a fantasy world like the Matrix

. There is really no need to implant chips in human brains in order to control and manipulate humans. For thousands of years prophets, poets and politicians have been using language and storytelling to control, manipulate humans and reshape society. Now artificial intelligence It's possible to do just that. It doesn’t need to let killer robots shoot us. If it really needs to,

it can let humans pull the trigger themselves.

Today’s fear of artificial intelligence has only plagued the last few generations of human beings, almost 200 years from the mid-20th century to the era when the image of Frankenstein appeared. But for thousands of years, humans have been haunted by a deeper fear.

Humans have always valued the power of stories, images and language to manipulate human thoughts and create illusions.

Therefore, since ancient times, humans have been afraid of being trapped in a world of fantasy. In the 17th century,

Descartes

was afraid that the devil would trap him in various hallucinations, creating everything he saw and heard; in ancient Greece, Plato told a story The famous "Allegory of the Cave", in which a group of people are locked in a cave and face a blank wall. They see various shadows cast on the wall and mistake these shadows for reality; in ancient India , Buddhism and Hinduism believe that humans live in a place they call "Maya" - Maya is a world full of fantasy. The Buddha said that what we usually think of as reality is often just a fiction in our own minds.

People may start all-out wars, kill others, and even be willing to kill themselves because they believe in these fictions, so the AI ​​revolution brings us face to face with the card devil, Plato’s cave, and the Maya, and if we’re not careful,

The curtain of illusion may envelope the entire human race

, and we will never be able to tear back that curtain, or even realize that it exists, because we think this is reality. If this sounds far-fetched, just look at

social media

over the past few years. Social media gives us a little taste of what's to come, where raw artificial intelligence tools are not used to create content. Content creation is where humans create stories, videos, etc., and artificial intelligence chooses which stories and videos will enter our sights - Those that get the most attention and the most viral content.

Although these artificial intelligence tools are very primitive, they are enough to create a curtain of illusion, exacerbating social polarization, damaging our mental health, and destabilizing democracy. Thousands of people mistake these hallucinations for reality.

Yuval Harari’s wonderful lessons are in the Chaos app,

The United States has powerful information technology, but its citizens cannot agree on who won the last election, whether climate change is real, or whether vaccines can prevent disease. Potentially more damaging is a new generation of artificial intelligence tools that are more powerful than those social media algorithms.

Of course, artificial intelligence has huge positive potential. I don't talk about it because people who develop artificial intelligence will naturally talk about it, and I need to add that the job of historians and philosophers like me is often to point out the dangers.

Of course, artificial intelligence can help us in countless ways, from finding new ways to treat cancer to discovering solutions to the ecological crises we face.

To

ensure that new AI tools are used to do good rather than bad, their true capabilities first need to be understood and they need to be regulated very carefully .

Since 1945, we have realized that nuclear technology has two sides. It can benefit mankind by producing cheap and abundant energy, but it can also destroy human civilization by physical means. We have reshaped the international order to ensure our own security and promote the just application of nuclear technology.

We must now fight a

new weapon of mass destruction that can wipe out our spiritual and social world. The biggest difference between nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence is that nuclear weapons cannot create more powerful nuclear weapons. But AI can produce more powerful AI, so we need to act quickly before AI gets out of control.

Similarly,

The government must immediately ban any of the more revolutionary AI tools from being released into the public domain before confirming their safety.

Again, I am not talking about stopping research on artificial intelligence. The first step is to stop releasing it to the public. You can work on viruses without releasing it to the public. You can work on artificial intelligence but don't release it to the public too quickly.

Without slowing down the race in artificial intelligence , we won’t even have time to understand what’s going on, let alone effectively regulate this incredibly powerful technology. You might ask, wouldn’t slowing down the public deployment of AI cause democracies to fall behind more ruthless authoritarian regimes? Absolutely not, quite the opposite. Unregulated deployment of AI will cause democracies to lose out to authoritarian regimes, because if we unleash chaos, authoritarian regimes can contain it more easily than open societies.

Democracy is essentially a public dialogue, and dialogue relies on language. When artificial intelligence has language, it means that it may destroy our ability to have meaningful public dialogue, thereby

Destroying democracy.

If we wait for chaos to happen, it will be too late to manage it democratically. Without timely regulation of AI, we will no longer be able to have meaningful public conversations.

To sum up, we basically

encountered alien intelligence

on the earth, not in outer space. We know little about them except that they could destroy our civilization. Therefore, this irresponsible deployment of them into our society should be faced up to and

regulated before AI controls us.

There are many regulatory measures we could propose, but my top recommendation would be to

force an AI to disclose itself as an AI

If I talk to someone, I don’t know if it’s a human or an AI, This is the end of democracy, because it means the end of meaningful public dialogue. What do you think of the speech you just heard? I think some of you might be alarmed, and some of you might be angry at the companies that develop these technologies or the governments that fail to regulate them. Others may be angry with me and think I am exaggerating the threat or misleading the public.

I'm sure that no matter how you feel about this, my words will definitely have an impact on you emotionally, not just intellectually. I just told you a story that might change the way you think about things and might even lead you to take some action.

Who created the speech story you just heard? I assure you that although the images used were created with the help of artificial intelligence, the text of this

speech

was written by me myself with the help of several people, at least the words you heard is a cultural product of human thought, a product of several human thoughts, but can you be absolutely sure?

A year ago, nothing on earth but the human mind could have created such a complex and powerful text in the public domain. But that's different now, and the text you're hearing could be generated by non-human intelligence.

So spend a little time or more time thinking about this issue, thank you!

The picture accompanying this article is an excerpt from the video of Yuval Harari’s speech. The video is officially provided by the Yuval Harari team. Thanks to Ms. Chen Guangyu for her strong support. Any unauthorized use is copyright infringement.

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The "A Brief History of Humanity Trilogy" is written by Yuval Harari, an Israeli historian, philosopher and best-selling author, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University. The preface to the new edition is written by the author himself, based on the present moment, and rethinking the destiny of mankind.

Combined with chaotic "one" thinking, do you think humans will be replaced by AI in the future? How do humans maintain their uniqueness?

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