The above phrase said by Yuval Noah Harari (author, historian and philosopher) has become the titles of many newspapers and YouTube videos. The speaker, during a recent keynote speech about AI and the future of humanity, warned of the dire consequences of not regulating the development of artificial intelligence (AI), saying that it is a threat to the human civilization.

The speaker highlighted the superiority that generative artificial intelligence based on the language model (Generative AI) has reached. Yuval described this superiority in language as having actually surpassed humans.

He pointed out that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilization by mastering language, a tool that has shaped most aspects of our human culture, if not all, through storytelling. He said that there are many examples of human-made stuffs that are essentially the product of human use of language and these stuffs have greatly affected our culture and become an essential part of our lives. He gave as an example “human rights” and said that they have become part of our culture and that language is the tool that made this content that has shaped our culture dramatically. And by allowing AI to share us this feature will greatly affect our lives and future in a way that no one would wish.

He added that we are currently witnessing how AI has been affecting a number of fields such as economy, politics and culture. It actually affects our understanding and vision of the world around us. For instance, it is true that the contents on social media are created by humans; nonetheless algorithms are the ones which determine what we watch or read.

Yuval stressed his saying that governments should act promptly to take the necessary measures to regulate and organize the development of this industry. Yuval also said that there is no need to implant an electronic chip in people’s brains to control them, AI being able to build deep and emotional communication with humans, which is the current status, will accomplish the mission. In view of the capabilities of generative AI such as ChatGPT and others, humans are being manipulated to take decisions and act accordingly.

Harari also described AI, in his keynote speech at the Frontiers Forum held in Switzerland at the end of last April, as “alien” and said that this external force could destroy human civilization from an unexpected direction, especially if general artificial intelligence or AGI was developed at one moment.

And at the end of his speech, the author presented a set of proposals to regulate the work of this technology, such as obliging companies that use AI to communicate with people to identify themselves as artificial intelligence-based robots. He considered this step a very important matter because what distinguishes humans is dialogue or discussion. He argued that the difference between democracy and dictatorship is the practice of the right to dialogue and it is a human feature that should not be left for non-human forms to tamper with, such as when humans reach to a level where they cannot distinguish between humans and robots or AI when they communicate through modern means of communication.

To watch his full speech, here is the link:

Written by Mohammed Alashwal