I was much looking forward to this new Yuval Noah Harari book, having greatly enjoyed Sapiens and 21 Lessons For The 21st Century, and it's proven to be another really good one. The outstanding feature of Sapiens was the clarity of analysis that it maintained over the time periods it dealt with. That clarity, to my mind, was not present in Homo Deus. It certainly is in Nexus.
Nexus is a history of information and the networks information moves in. Harari's definition of information is significant - not that it relates to reality or truth, but how it connects 'nodes,' which may be individuals, computers or other foci. Information can relate to truth, but its other, equally as important function is creating order. One of the main themes of this book is how it shows human societies balancing truth & democracy and order & authoritarianism.
It is also, to use the author's words, a canary in a mine. I've long thought that the defining dangerous feature of AI (which, tellingly, the author calls Alien Intelligence) is that it is active. Newspapers, television and other forms of media are passive, though they can be actively consumed. But AI is active. It naturally and automatically generates its own concepts, and, in the right sort of network, could therefore become highly problematic. Harari wishes to warn us of this before it's too late.
The analysis is clear, concise, authoritative and well written. Over the majority of the book Harari discusses the interplay of information and political systems. He is clear-sighted when it comes to the multitude of ways religion has abused information networks to further its own twisted ends. It lambasts totalitarian regimes likewise. But this author, though he recognises the fundamental gift of democracy to the human world - that it has many self-correcting mechanisms - still sees democracy as vulnerable to the many flaws of AI. These include goal setting, fallibility and bias, and the tendency of human beings not to bother asking awkward questions - or, in the case of authoritarian regimes, to be fearful of the consequences of asking.
Harari mostly points out the potential problems of AI, which is one of the main briefs of his book. He does recognise its positive uses, for instance, in medicine. But since this is akin to "A Warning From History," it is mostly about what we are doing wrong right now.
The book's main takeaway is pedestrian, as the author wryly admits. Above all, the frameworks in which algorithm-using AIs exist must have robust, varied and plentiful self-correcting mechanisms. Without them, an authoritarian or even totalitarian future is a distinct possibility.
For anybody concerned about AI, who perhaps doesn't know much about it, or who is interested out of professional or personal interest, this is an essential text; far better than any more computer-focused book out there. It's about how we, computers, history and politics interact. It comes across as one of those groundbreaking books that for some reason (as with Sapiens) the public latches on to; most likely, that is because such things happen to the right book at the right time. Nexus is one of these books: relevant, insightful, essential.
While reading this book, I was often reminded of my own 2019 novel The Autist, which has as its themes most of those in Nexus: AI lacking consciousness and therefore empathy; AI as unfathomable black box; AI acting in the political and religious spheres; the erosion of human privacy; the change from AI as a "bad actor" to the digital environment itself. Harari even uses the same word as I did for a super-influential node - an Oracle. I was rather taken aback by that! And The Autist is very much a dystopian view. Although Harari speaks fairly on both sides of the AI fence, he is clear that Nexus is, and should be taken as a warning of dystopia.
SF always has this possibility. It can illustrate the present by travelling into the future. Nexus is a bit like a nonfiction SF book in that regard. Highly recommended!
Nexus is a history of information and the networks information moves in. Harari's definition of information is significant - not that it relates to reality or truth, but how it connects 'nodes,' which may be individuals, computers or other foci. Information can relate to truth, but its other, equally as important function is creating order. One of the main themes of this book is how it shows human societies balancing truth & democracy and order & authoritarianism.
It is also, to use the author's words, a canary in a mine. I've long thought that the defining dangerous feature of AI (which, tellingly, the author calls Alien Intelligence) is that it is active. Newspapers, television and other forms of media are passive, though they can be actively consumed. But AI is active. It naturally and automatically generates its own concepts, and, in the right sort of network, could therefore become highly problematic. Harari wishes to warn us of this before it's too late.
The analysis is clear, concise, authoritative and well written. Over the majority of the book Harari discusses the interplay of information and political systems. He is clear-sighted when it comes to the multitude of ways religion has abused information networks to further its own twisted ends. It lambasts totalitarian regimes likewise. But this author, though he recognises the fundamental gift of democracy to the human world - that it has many self-correcting mechanisms - still sees democracy as vulnerable to the many flaws of AI. These include goal setting, fallibility and bias, and the tendency of human beings not to bother asking awkward questions - or, in the case of authoritarian regimes, to be fearful of the consequences of asking.
Harari mostly points out the potential problems of AI, which is one of the main briefs of his book. He does recognise its positive uses, for instance, in medicine. But since this is akin to "A Warning From History," it is mostly about what we are doing wrong right now.
The book's main takeaway is pedestrian, as the author wryly admits. Above all, the frameworks in which algorithm-using AIs exist must have robust, varied and plentiful self-correcting mechanisms. Without them, an authoritarian or even totalitarian future is a distinct possibility.
For anybody concerned about AI, who perhaps doesn't know much about it, or who is interested out of professional or personal interest, this is an essential text; far better than any more computer-focused book out there. It's about how we, computers, history and politics interact. It comes across as one of those groundbreaking books that for some reason (as with Sapiens) the public latches on to; most likely, that is because such things happen to the right book at the right time. Nexus is one of these books: relevant, insightful, essential.
While reading this book, I was often reminded of my own 2019 novel The Autist, which has as its themes most of those in Nexus: AI lacking consciousness and therefore empathy; AI as unfathomable black box; AI acting in the political and religious spheres; the erosion of human privacy; the change from AI as a "bad actor" to the digital environment itself. Harari even uses the same word as I did for a super-influential node - an Oracle. I was rather taken aback by that! And The Autist is very much a dystopian view. Although Harari speaks fairly on both sides of the AI fence, he is clear that Nexus is, and should be taken as a warning of dystopia.
SF always has this possibility. It can illustrate the present by travelling into the future. Nexus is a bit like a nonfiction SF book in that regard. Highly recommended!
