Yuval Noah Harari on Israel, AI, and the future of humanity
PoliticsJOE
122,055 views Premiered Sep 7, 2025
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In this interview, world-renowned historian and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari shares his insights on some of the most urgent issues facing humanity today — from the rapid rise of artificial intelligence to the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the treatment of Palestinians under Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime.
Harari, author of global hits like Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century,
warns of the transformative power of AI technologies and the challenges they pose to democracy, freedom, and the very fabric of society. He explores how governments, corporations, and citizens alike must grapple with the implications of machine intelligence, surveillance, and automation in shaping the future.
The conversation also turns to the destruction of Gaza amid Israel’s military campaign and blockade, with Harari
reflecting on the humanitarian catastrophe and the international community’s responsibility to hold those in power to account.
He speaks candidly about
- the Netanyahu government’s treatment of Palestinians,
- the erosion of democratic norms inside Israel, and
- the dangers of allowing cycles of violence and occupation to continue unchecked.
Looking beyond today’s crises, Harari considers the future of humanity — asking what choices we must make to avoid catastrophe and build a world that balances technological innovation with human rights, peace, and global cooperation.
This wide-ranging interview offers a rare opportunity to hear Yuval Noah Harari speak on both immediate geopolitical realities and the long-term trajectory of our species, making it essential viewing for anyone interested in politics, philosophy, and the future of our world.
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Transcript
CHat GPT is the amoeba of the AI world. But we
might encounter Tyrannosarus Rex in 40 or 50 years. We already see how the
battle lines are shifting. You know, over the last 10 years, the main battle
was about attention. Now with the rise of the new generation of AI, the battle
line is shifting to intimacy. Countries like the UK are being flooded now by
potentially millions and millions of AI immigrants coming from places like uh uh
California without visas without any border controls. These AI AI immigrants
will take people's jobs a lot of jobs. They have the potential to take over
politically either in the service of some masters across the Atlantic or in
their own service. When I look at at a leader like Benjamin Netanyao, this is a person who built his political career in
Israel on dividing the nation against itself. He has done enormous damage to
the Israeli nation, to the Israeli people and to the Jewish people more generally. A lot of people in Israel
would tell you today the number one problem of the country is not Hamas. It's not Iran. It's the inner division
really the inner hatred. Okay. So you have a Jewish people. It has a right to self-determination. It has a connection
to this land. It doesn't mean that you must deny the existence or the rights of
the Palestinian people. We are now living in the midst maybe of the biggest changes in human history. You know Harrari. Hello. Welcome to
Politics Show. Hello. It's good to be here. It's a pleasure to have you here. Um before we start, how would you like to introduce yourself?
Um I'm a historian basically but the historian who also writes about the
present and the future because I think that history is not just the study of the past. It's the study of
change of how things change in the world. Um and we are now living in the
midst maybe of the biggest changes in human history. Yeah, absolutely. I wasn't planning to start with this but no it's fine. I was
watching um I was watching you you were in conversation with um Savo X quite recently. I think it was an I AI event
and he was kind of you know saying I'm a Hegelian so what matters to me is not
what is going to happen. What matters is now and the kind of dissent and chaos and sort of disintegration of things is
more important. H if only I'm just raising it to to sort of propose that notion to you and why
you think there is more value in trying to understand what is going to happen not just what is happening or what has
happened. I don't think it's possible to predict the future. It's uh um but thinking
about the future makes it makes it possible to reflect on the
meaning of what is happening right now of the choices the decisions we make we make right now because many of these
choices will have an effect for decades maybe centuries to come. Um so again the
the present cannot be understood separately from the past but neither can be understood separately from the
future. Yeah. And it feels at times in modern times that history is unfolding
happening before us at a slightly terrifying rate. It's accelerating. I mean
processes that used to take centuries are now happening within decades maybe even a few years. I mean for most of
history the big changes took longer than a human
lifespan. So people had the impression that things are more or less as they always were.
And you know when grandparents talked with grandchildren there wasn't this sense that we are now living in a
completely different world than when we were kids. But now it's accelerating so
much that even people who are like in their 30s and 40s think about their
children or about people you know in their teens as inhabiting a different world. And for
the first time in history we have really no idea whatsoever how the world would
look like in 10 years. I'm not talking about politics. I mean on the on the kind of political level, it was always
impossible to predict how the world would look like in 10 years. Like if you live in 11th century England, you have
no idea maybe the Vikings will invade next year, maybe the Normans, maybe whatever there will be all these wars,
revolutions. But about the more the deeper structures of society, what would
people do for a living in 10 years or in 15 years? It doesn't matter if the Vikings invade. I mean, most people will
still be farmers. So, you would teach your kid how to uh uh sew wheat and how
to grind and and harvest and bake bread. This will still be necessary 50 years
from now. Doesn't matter if it's the Normans or the the the Norwegians or whoever. Now, this is no longer the
case. We have really no idea how the job market would look like in 10 years and
what kind of skills people will need. I think about my own family, my
childhood, I have a young daughter who already understands, you know, the glass square in my pocket shows her her family
who, you know, who don't live with her. Uh she's one year old. Mhm. And I think about my childhood, the
first time a computer appeared in the house and that to access the internet, you know, it made this sort of horrible
loud clicking sound. Yeah. And in the space of one lifetime, well not even one lifetime, one
generation, the pace of technological change is extraordinary. I want to talk to you over the course of
this hour about artificial intelligence, about that pace of change. I also at the end want to have a brief conversation
with you about wheat. So I'm glad you brought it up as well. Oh yeah. Um but I'd like to start with a remark you
made uh recently. I think you were in conversation with Jonathan Freedelland. You recently described Vadimir Zilinski
as the greatest Jewish leader of our time and I'd like to explore the underlying
assumptions in that statement with you because to my mind not just to my mind I think
you can make the argument that Zilinski is losing albeit courageously and slowly
but nonetheless losing a war to Russia. And I think the
obvious point of comparison when you say the greatest Jewish leader of our time is to Ben Netanyahu
who however horrifically is remaking the geopolitics of the Middle East. And so I
just like to interrogate and understand why it is that you would say that Zilinsky is a greater leader if the
impact of what he's doing perhaps is not as significant as what's happening in Israel and the border region right now. Oh, there's a lot to unpack here. I
mean, first of all, which wars are won or lost depends still on the decisions
we make now. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is still ongoing. And nobody
knows what the outcome of this war will be. It depends on the decisions of the
Ukrainians and Russians, but also of the British, of the Americans, of many other countries. And what is at stake in
Ukraine um is really the shape of the entire global order
because the previous global order of the liberal order of recent decades was uh
had many many problems but it had one big historical achievement. It made it a
taboo to invade and conquer other countries.
For most of human history, the you know the the the basic events of
geopolitics was that stronger countries would just invade and conquer their
weaker neighbors. This was standard. This was how all the big empires were created. After 1945,
even though there are lots of different kinds of other wars, civil wars and
rebellions and so forth, this type became taboo. It was no longer
legitimate for a strong country to simply invade and conquer a weaker one.
And you saw it perhaps most clearly in government budgets that countries all
over the world felt for the first time in history safe enough to invest a
greater percentage of their budget in health care and welfare and education
than in the military and in defense. And now this is at stake because what is
happening in Ukraine is the kind of old-fashioned imperialism.
It's a country invading its neighbor with a clear intent of just destroying
and annexing it. Every piece of territory conquered by the Russian army is annexed by the Russian state. If this
is allowed to to pass to happen, we will see more and more of that all over the
world and this is what it is at stake there and I hope that enough countries
will continue to support Ukraine to make sure that Russia is not allowed to win.
Um but the issue of comparing Sea Zalinski and Netanyahu is deeper than
just winning and losing. It's a question of what is your value system? What kind
of world do you want to live in? If you judge leaders simply by the yard stick
of military success, then your heroes of history are Jenghis Khan and Napoleon
and Hitler and these kinds of people were extremely successful in military terms. But is this your value system?
And speaking specifically about uh uh Judaism and the Jewish people, is this
the new Jewish value system of might is right and violence is the most admired
quality. Um if that's your value system, then yes, maybe Netanyahu is the
greatest Jew of at the present moment. But if it's that if that's not your value system, then I I think uh uh uh
there is reason to think that Zalinski is a far more admirable leader than
Benjamin. Yeah. I I want to talk to you a little bit about rail politique in a second,
but considering you're talking about leadership, I just slightly broader question about what it is that you
personally value in in leaders. Is there are there people that you admire? I mean, you've singled out already, but what do you think it means to be a
leader? Taking responsibility. Taking responsibility.
Uh, also for your mistakes. You know, you have people that when
something goes right, they are the first person on on the spot to claim all credit for themselves. When something
goes wrong, they will always blame somebody else. You have that style of leadership and that's a terrible style
of leadership. uh leaders should be the opposite that when something good happens they know how to give credit
when something bad happens they are willing to take responsibility.
The other I think important task of leaders is to build trust between people
first and foremost within their own group. the leader of of a group should
know how to build connection and trust within the group but also with other
groups. Um and when I look at at a leader like Benjamin Netanyahu, this is a person who
built his political career in Israel on dividing the nation against itself. You
can argue about his other policies, achievements, uh uh wrongdoings. But I
think there is one thing that you cannot argue about that if you look at the
level of trust within Israeli society,
he has done enormous damage to the Israeli nation, to the Israeli people
and to the Jewish people more generally. He's if you think a lot of people in
Israel would tell you today the number one problem of the country is not Hamas, it's not Iran, it's the inner division
really the inner hatred. And if you think who can heal these this
rift, the last person on earth, you you you would be Benjamin. go out of of of
this studio, go to a random person on the street, pick them. They're a better
candidate to reunify the Israeli people than
Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is true of a lot of the leaders that we now see around the world who present themselves
as big patriots, but they are the exact opposite. If patriotism means hatred of
foreigners, then okay. But I don't think that's the meaning of patriotism. Patriotism is mainly first and foremost
about love, about loving and caring uh about the other people in your group.
And we now have this type of leaders who present themselves as patriots even
though most of the what they do like their job basically from the moment they
wake up to the moment they go to sleep is to sow discord and disunityity and
hatred between different groups and segments of their own nation. It's so
interesting to hear you talk about patriotism in those terms because I particularly quite often um people of a
leftwing persuasion who criticize their country are accused of you know talking the country down or you know possibly in
the most extreme terms being traitors or treasonous and I actually believe you know uh self-reflection critique to be
one of the sort of the most noble acts of patriotism because what you're actually saying is I love this country and I want it to be better. Mhm.
What's interesting about what you were saying about these kind of nakedly bad political actors, I recently
interviewed um the British documentarian Adam Curtis. Mhm. And he suggested that the reason for the
political success of actors like Trump, like Boris Johnson, I mean, take take your pick. Essentially, a politician who
says, "No, no, uh I am bad." You know, I am I am I am owning who I am. And in a
strange way that provides an authenticity and a credibility to an electorate. But a leader need not be authentic. This
is a big mistake. Politics is not therapy. When you go to
your therapist, you need to be very authentic. Like say the first things that comes to
your mind and then let's talk about it. But this is not the job of politicians.
Politicians need to be responsible, not authentic. For instance, when you talk in public as a politic, if you're only
you're in the in the you're with your therapist, the only audience of what you
say is your therapist. Yes, go ahead, release all the barriers in your mind and just let it flow. The first thing
that comes up. But this is not the situation when you're giving a speech to
the nation with millions of people listening carefully to what you say. You
are basically kind of planting seeds into the minds of millions of people
especially your supporters who think very highly about you and about what you say and you have to be extremely careful
about what kind of seeds are you planting there. Seeds of hatred, seeds
of fear, seeds of compassion. Now every person when we look inside our
own minds like I I I meditate uh
about two hours every day. It's part of my routine and meditation is is really observing
the contents of of my mind. And I know that at least in my case my mind is full
of garbage that I've accumulated over 50 years of life. I've accumulated quite a
lot of, you know, thoughts full of hatred, thoughts full of fear, thoughts
full of of of anger. And um that's that's okay. You know, I'm a human being
that that's natural. It's it's but I have to be very careful
about sharing these thoughts with other people especially like here we are now having this discussion. I don't know how
many listeners we have. Hopefully a few. Hopefully a few. So again, what we say
is like seeds going into their minds and I don't want to just you know take the most hateful thought that is going
around my mind and just spreading it around. So part of being a you know
responsible let's say public intellectual is not being authentic in the sense of
just saying the first things that comes up in my mind because the first things that come come up in my mind might be full of hatred.
Why share that? Reflect very carefully about what you
want to share with other people. You know, you have now all these fashion people like walls.
Uh like people like Trump, they like walls very much on the borders between
countries. They should also have a wall between the mind and the mouth. There
are many things in the minds in the mind which should not be given an entry visa
to the mouth. You should have a very strong bulldog out there and say to these things, "No, no, no, no, no. You
can't pass." And that's part of a job of being a responsible leader that you need
to to get to know yourself well enough maybe through therapy, meditation, whatever
so that you have enough awareness of your own hatreds and fears and whatever
that you share them with your therapist but not with the general public.
And in in this respect, I would also say that politicians now are in a in a in in a tight situation
because previously they had a lot of private time when they can they could
just, you know, express their stupid and hateful and ignorant thoughts to their
friends and family without any major consequences. But now you could be
telling some stupid joke to a friend you think privately somebody recorded it and
it's the headlines of of tomorrow morning and this is very bad. I think all people
and politicians in particular have a right to stupidity in private
that um you know as a gay man I don't care if a a prime minister or a
president tells a homophobic joke in private to their friends that should be
completely that's none of my business again knowing how much garbage there is
in my mind I also think it's true of other people and they should not be judged for it.
But if they choose to share such things publicly with the nation knowing what
the consequences will be, that's uh uh that's an irresponsible leader.
Can I uh ask you about your meditation practice before we carry on talking about leadership? Yeah, sure.
Do you two hours one block sort of? No, one hour in the morning. I wake up
uh the first thing I do is an hour of meditation and then at the end of the workday sometimes around like 4 5 6 in
the afternoon I would sit for another hour and and what's your process? Do you have a mantra? No, I I I do vipasal meditation uh which
means basically just observation of inner processes uh mostly of the
breath coming in and out of the nostrils and also sensations in in in the body
and through that you also get to watch what's happening in your mind because anybody who ever try to meditate you
know you you're giving this very simple instruction focus all your attention on the breath coming in and out of your
nostrils You're not supposed to control it in some ways. You just feel now the breath is coming in, now the breath is
going out. Sounds like the simplest thing in the world. But when I first started doing it like 25 years ago, I
was amazed by my utter inability to do it. like I would try to focus on the
breath you know for 10 seconds and some memory some fantasy some thought would
just come along and hijack my attention and I would roll for like two three
minutes in that memory and then remember oh I'm actually supposed to be watching my breath and this is how you get to
know your mind not just your your nose but also your mind because you get to
see how little control or at least I got to see how little control I have over my mind And again, what kind of things are
in there that are so powerful that against my wishes, they can so e easily
hijack my attention. Um, and it's
it should be a non-judgmental process. I mean, it's whatever comes up, it's fine.
You just watch. You just observe. The same way you don't try to control your breath. You don't try to control the
thoughts. Just let them be. But you observe what what's happening. How does
the mind work? What kind of content is there in the mind?
Let's go back to leadership. So if that taboo i.e. and the weak must suffer what
they must is broke. it returns and the tibu is broken and leadership essentially
returns to or you know um sort of political action on the world stage geopolitics returns to realism returns
to rail politic can the critique of your suggestion that you know leadership is a moral act that
Zalinsky is the greatest Jewish leader in the world right now it could be rendered meaningless right
because if that taboo is shattered if imperial powers are able to invade at
will and subjugate nations to their you know on a dime. We know one thing
um we know that this is not inevitable. If we were having this conversation in
1945 then a very good argument would be this
has always been like this. This is the natural condition of humanity since the
very beginning of history since we have written records in ancient Mesopotamia and ancient China. It's always like
that. You always have the the Romans or the Mongols of Janjisan or Aila Dehan
who attack and conquer their neighbors and you just have to accept this is the way the world is. But we have the
experience of the last few decades that humanity has actually managed to a
limited extent that's true with a lot of caveats and a lot of problems but still
it managed to change how international relations functioned in recent decades
and I'm saying it not just you know based on statistics or how many wars erupted and but on two main criteria
first of all um you Look at the entire world, not just Western Europe. You look
at the entire world since 1945, there have been very, very few cases in which
a country was simply destroyed because an stronger neighbor invaded and
conquered it. Throughout history, this was normal. Since 1945, you have only a
few borderline cases when this, depending on interpretation, happened. It's a rare exception. you have more
examples of a country conquering part of a neighboring country and annexing it.
But even these cases are very rare.
And so we know that you know for a significant time 70 years this held. And
the other uh uh data empirical data to consider is what I mentioned government
budgets because you can say you know you read poetry so you say well this is just make
believe this is just wishful thinking government budgets are this is very
serious stuff and you look at government budgets throughout history the Roman Empire
Britain in the 19th century more than 50% of The budget goes to the military,
goes to pay soldiers, build fortresses, construct warships. This is more than
50% of the budget. You look at the budget, the average global budget in the
early 21st century, not just, you know, of uh uh Norway and New Zealand. You
take Israel into account, you take Iran into account, you take China and the US and North Korea into account, all the
countries, the average expenditure on the military out of the entire government budget went
down to about 6 to 7%. compared to an average of 10% spent on
health care. It's the first time in human history that significantly more a
greater part of the budget went to healthcare than to the military. People just take it for granted. But this is a
really kind of historical miracle, but it's not a miracle because it's what actually achieved. And it was achieved
not by divine intervention. It was achieved by people and leaders making
wise decisions, making decisions uh that that
prioritized uh uh peaceful coexistence over trying to conquer a bigger piece of
of territory for ourselves. And it again it had many problems. I'm not saying
that the the global order of the early 21st century was perfect. You know, I I was born and raised in the Middle East.
I know there's a lot of problems but compared to every previous period in
history, it was a huge improvement. We are now in the process of losing it. But
at least we know that it is possible. It's something which is compatible with
human nature and we need to just make the effort to
save this order and to rebuild it in a better way. and leaders like Zilinski
are making this effort whereas leaders like Netanyahu are not
let's focus on the Middle East and specifically Israel. Now Mhm. I'll start with a broad question of
terms. What does the term Zionism mean?
Zionism basically it's the national movement of the Jewish people and it says I think three things. First of all,
it says that Jews are not just individuals. There is a Jewish people. There is a
collective. The same way that there is a Palestinian people, there is a a Polish people, there is a Russian people, there
is a Jewish people. Statement number one. Number two, that the Jewish people
has a right to self-determination just like other nations have a right to
self-determination. Number three, it says that the Jewish people has a special historical and
cultural connection to the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
If you accept these three statements, you basically accept Zionism and I can
say about myself that I accept them. In this sense, I'm a Zionist.
What are the political implications of these three facts? That's an issue which
is debated also within the Zionist movement. Okay. So you have a Jewish people. It has a right to
self-determination. It has a connection to this land. Does it mean a one-state solution? Does
it mean a two-state solution? Does it mean a broaden conf? What does it mean? This is contested. One thing it doesn't
mean it doesn't mean that you must deny the existence or the rights of the
Palestinian people. You can be a Zionist in the sense of
accepting the right of the Jewish people for self-determination and at the same time support the establishment of a
Palestinian state in which the Palestinians will exercise their right
to self-determination. You know, the the human brain is an incredible thing. It has billions upon
billions of neurons and hundreds of billions of synapses. It should have
room for two ideas at the same time. No, you you should be able to hold in your
brain at the same time the idea that Israelis have a right to live in
security, prosperity, and dignity in the country of their birth. and at the same
time that Palestinians also have a right to live in security, in prosperity, in
dignity in the country of their birth. It is not a logical contradiction to
hold these two ideas together. Now again, how to actually realize this,
what would be the precise political solution, the location of the border? We can argue a lot about that. But we
should start from accepting both of these ideas at the same time.
And part of the of the deep root of the conflict there is that people there and
also people all over the world for some reason they seem capable of holding just one of these ideas at the same time.
And each side is convinced, unfortunately with good reason, that the
other side intends to destroy it. Israelis are convinced that if the
Palestinians get a chance, they will just completely destroy Israel. And I
think the Israelis are correct to fear that. At the same time, the Palestinians
fear that if the Israelis have a chance, they will completely destroy the
Palestinian nation. And the Palestinians are correct to fear that
it's not that they that both sides are paranoid living in delusions. They they
have they understand reality. The thing to to uh uh to reflect on this
situation is that this is not inevitable at the present moment. Yes, this is the
case. But ultimately, it goes back to the mind and the garbage in the mind. Ultimately, it's just ideas in people's
minds. There is no objective reason
compelling Israelis and and Palestinians to hope for the destruction of the other
side. You know, some people say there is just not enough territory. There is just not enough water and food, so you have
to fight. And this is not true. Even though it's a small place and quite
crowded, uh objectively physically there is enough space to build houses and schools
and hospitals for everyone. There is definitely enough food. There is enough
water. Yes, much of it is desert, but we now have the technology to desalinize water for the Mediterranean. There is
enough water energy. What is lacking is the mental willingness
to accept the existence of the other side. You know that inside the mind
people are just unable to accept the existence of the other
side of the other people and instead of changing their minds they're trying to
change the reality. So they want they want then the mind and reality to fit
each other. So instead of changing their minds they want reality not to contain
the other side and then conflict is over but hopefully they will change their
minds instead of trying to destroy the other side.
What do you think is driving that point of view on both sides? Is it uh an
emotional response? Is it a It's a realistic response. Yeah. Again, I wouldn't you know there is a
big difference between the people who actually live there and the people who live halfway across the world and have very strong opinions
on that conflict very often with very little knowledge or connection to to the place.
Um, with regard to the people who lived there, they have ample realistic reasons
to be very afraid of the other side. Again, this is not just paranoia. This
is not just hysteria. They know why they are afraid. Again, it
doesn't mean we can't change that. But we should start with an acknowledgment that both sides have good reasons for
their fears. And I would even say for their hatreds, you know, when when I hear Israelis and
Palestinians expressed kind of deep hatred for the other side, you know, I don't like it, but I can understand
where it's coming from. Yeah, it's different with people. Again, also if if you escaped the conflict or and
you still have family there and let's say you now live in London and you hate the other, understandable, but if you've
never been there, you don't have relatives there. You just read some news on social media and you become kind of
full of hatred, the last thing that area in the world
needs is more hatred. Like people from all over the world very generously are
exporting their hatred. here have some more oil hatred. You don't have enough. This is not helping.
No, I don't think so. Let's um return to that sort of the three component parts that you outlined a moment ago
about Zionism because I think the interesting or an interesting area of exploration is that first point of the
contestation of who constitutes what constitutes the Jewish people. Mh. Because when I would think about
certainly within Europe, certainly within the UK, an idea of um national
identity, I would try to put forward a notion of civic nationalism. You know, one that is explicitly not
ethnationalist that is based around values, institutions. I think certainly
in modernday Germany, they would probably put forward something like that. In the UK, I mean, the Overton window is being well, it's
kind of lurching rightwards as we speak, and that may change, but certainly where I am right now. Mhm.
I don't conceive of being British as a kind of ethnic question.
Mhm. And so, how do you define or how would you seek
to define what that group of the Jewish people is? Is it a religious group? Is it an ethnic group? Is it just the
people that happen to live in Israel? Mhm. There are no easy answers to to that in
history about any group of people. That's why I'm asking it. Yeah. I mean it's not an it's never an
objective definition and people sometimes have this kind of they borrow
terms from biology which is often dangerous in history. They think about
different ethnic groups or different nations as if they were different species. Now in biology we have
objective definitions for groups like species which have nothing to do with
beliefs like if you if you say you compare I don't know gorillas and
chimpanzees or dogs and cats it doesn't matter what the dogs and cats believe.
There is an objective definition for what is a dog and what is a cat. And you
know and in the simplest terms dogs and cats are different because they cannot interbreed.
A dog and cat cannot together produce a viable offspring. So again even if the
dogs imagine that they are cats it's not true. That's biology.
In history, you have nothing like that because all human groups on earth are the same species, homo sapiens. All
human groups on earth actually are the result of um the intermingling and
interbreeding of groups which previously saw themselves as separate and even
hostile. Like you look at the British people. So you go back in history, you have Scots and Welsh and and English and
you look at the English and you go back in in time. So you have I don't know the the Anglo-Saxons invaders who come in
the fifth and sixth century. They were not one people. There were youths and angles and and Saxons and they did not
establish one kingdom. They established many kingdom and and chieftains. It took centuries of conflicts. people in
different kingdoms and different tribes hated each other, massacred each other.
Took a very long time to create a single people out of that. And this is true
everywhere you go. You go in in Germany, you go back a couple of centuries. So
you have uh uh Bavarians and Prussians and the Bavarians are mostly Catholics
and the Prussians are mostly Protestants. And in the 30 years war they slaughtered each other in the
millions. About a third of the population of Germany was killed in the 30 years war which had many reasons but
one of the reasons was the hatreds between Catholics and Protestants.
Um so ultimately it's up to the group itself to define
what is its identity and it always changes over time.
Identity that's true of personal identity. It's true of group identity is a contested story that we tell ourselves
about ourselves and ultimately and it's built
to some extent from facts. But how to interpret these facts? What are the what is the meaning of these
facts? This is contested and this is you know most of history is
about that. It's about the stories that people tell themselves about themselves.
Before we move on to talk about technology, I just like to ask you on a personal level. Mhm.
What do you find beautiful about Judaism? Okay, let me think about that. Um,
Judaism as it existed for the last 2,000 years, but this may now be changing in
front of our eyes, was a very tolerant religion. Um, maybe it
maybe the tolerance was forced upon it because it was the religion of a very small minority
uh often persecuted by majorities. So to be a Jew in a place like medieval
England that you know 99 something% of the population is Christian and you
think differently you behave differently it's just by existing
you're basically carrying the banner people can think differently people can
behave differently and this was I think the main historical message of Jewish
existence in places like medieval England or all over the world
and it's not a coincidence but then you look at the rise of liberalism and
democracy and human rights in the modern period you see uh both the rights of Jews as a
main area of uh of of of debate and also
Jews being some of the main leaders of liberalism M and humanism and and and
and the human rights movement. And unfortunately, one of the things that is happening now in Israel is the
creation of a completely opposite kind of Judaism which rejects uh all
that. And the other
I think beautiful thing about the Jewish tradition as it was not necessarily as
it is being transformed right now is that
not just towards the outside world but also inwardly
it was comparatively open to debate and self-questing
like arguing about almost everything you know the very name traditionally the
very name of Israel Israel in Hebrew it's its meaning or one of its meanings
is that he who strives with God he who struggles with God that God says
something and you say yes but we can look at it from a different direction maybe you change something there
that you don't just accept oh because God said so we have to do it no you you
think about you debate everything and there is room for maybe not all
opinions, but at least for a a plurality of opinions. And this is another thing that is now changing in front of our
eyes. One of the things that really struck me about what's happening right
now in Israel, especially with regard to the war in Gaza, is the almost entire
lack of debate within the Jewish Orthodox religious community. There are
a lot of Israelis that object and resist and demonstrate in the streets against
what the government is doing. Uh there is a lot of uh especially in the reform
movement uh people and rabbis and leaders who very
publicly voice their objections within the Orthodox community. As far as I can
tell, there is zero debate. Like these are people that when you tell them is it
okay to uh uh eat uh um um how do you
call this fake meat stuff? Oh yeah, lab gr culture. Yeah. Is it okay to eat
cultured meat steak while having an oat milk uh uh drink? And they would debate
this for days like this is the most important thing in the world. And then you say, "Is it okay to starve two
million people?" No debate. No debate. I don't I didn't hear about a
single uh at least major Orthodox leader in
Israel or even outside Israel who said, "Wait a minute, we have to debate this.
What does the Talmud says about this? What does the Mishna says about it?" No, when it came to that, they all fell in
line. And again, I think that one of the
inner tragedies, there is of course the outer tragedy of what has happened to the Palestinians, but the inner tragedy
is that Judaism is being transformed in front of our eyes in a radical and
very very dark direction. And I don't see nearly enough kind of push back uh
at least from Orthodox Jews about that. Thanks for answering that. It's
appreciate it's a personal question and you've answered it very movingly. So, thank you for talking about it in that
way. Let's move things on. Let's talk about technology. Mhm.
To begin with, how often do you use your phone? How often do you look at your phone?
Oh, whenever it's needed. No, I I it's um you know, I'm not against
technology. Uh the key thing is that I want to use
technology and not be used by it. So like with the phone, sometimes I need
it, so I would use it. But I don't like the situations when the phone is using
me. Uh for instance, you know, you had the smartest people in the world over
the last 20 years or so figuring out how to use the f your phone to hack into
your brain. how to get you to spend hours on platforms even if it's not really good
for you or what you really want to do with your life and they've been extremely successful.
It's very very difficult to to to win this. It's basically like playing chess
against a grandmaster. The same way that today we know we cannot win a chess against a computer, a
supercomput, you cannot win the battle for attention
against these powerful algorithms. They have been again constructed by the
smartest people on the planet with budgets of billions and billions and
trained on interactions with billions of people on how to hack your brain. And if
you think that you're strong enough and smart enough to to to resist that, that
could be a very big illusion. And again, this goes back to my practice of meditation because I know
how weak my mind is that my mind, you know, it's like like when you want to
hack a computer or or or you you want to hack a smartphone or a bank account, you look
for the weaknesses in the code. It's the same with the mind.
Technology doesn't overwhelm us by becoming better than our strongest and
our best parts. It overwhelms us by exploiting our weakest parts. It finds
the weakest links in the human code in my own individual code and exploits this
to hack me and to manipulate me and to control me. And because I'm suspicious
of my ability to kind of win this battle, I try to stay away from the
battlefield as as far as possible. I'm glad you as I was going to ask, you
know, you present as a smart person. Yal, you don't meditate two hours a day. I'm glad you answered the question that way. You anticipated what I was going to
ask you next. Um, how does artificial intelligence intersect with the analysis you've just
offered then? It will take it to an entirely different level. M I mean everything we've seen so far is
so so primitive compared to what's coming. You know,
even the social media of the last 10 years, it rely to some extent on on AI
algorithms, but really the the baby AIS, the first generation,
we haven't seen anything yet. Like this is a technology that began to mature
only around 10 years ago and will continue to develop centuries, thousands
of years, millions of years to the future. As far as we know, this could be the beginning of an entirely new
non-organic evolutionary process, which is orders of magnitude faster than
organic evolution. It took organic evolution billions of years to get from
simple uh one cell organisms like amiebas to dinosaurs and mammals and
eventually humans. An analogous evolutionary process of AIS
of non-organic beings could take just a few decades.
Chad GPT is the amoeba of the AI world, but we might encounter Tyrannosar Rex in
40 or 50 years within our lifetime because it moves like orders of
magnitude faster. the the the evolution of AI
and we already see how the battle lines are shifting. You know over the last 10
years the main battle was about attention. By now almost everybody knows that there
is a battle for our attention. Like you pick up your phone then there are so
many entities that through the phone try to grab your attention.
uh uh commercial interests, political parties, the platforms themselves, they
just want to keep you longer and longer on the platform. This was the battle for attention and we've largely lost it.
Very difficult to keep your attention under your control and not being
hijacked by these very primitive algorithms.
Now with the rise of the new generation of AI, the battle line is shifting to
intimacy. That if the last 10 years were about
attention, now it's increasingly about intimacy. We now increasingly have AIS that can
create or mimic or fake intimacy with human beings and become your best
friends and become even your your lovers. And um as this is an entire an an
additional discussion to what extent AIs might really develop at some point
feelings and and consciousness. At present as far as we know they have zero
consciousness. They have zero feelings. But they are already becoming very good at mimicking faking uh our feelings and
emotions and emotional relationships. And uh this is the new battleground.
Um and again we we we are losing more and more people are developing
uh these deep relationships with nonorganic and as far as we know
non-concious entities and these are
these have a potential at least to be dangerous types of relationships. Why?
because they are a kind of narcissistic fantasy or nightmare. That you know with
human beings the big problem in relationships with human beings is that the other person also have feelings
which means that certain things that I do or say could hurt the other person. I
need to at least some of my attention focus on the other person and it also
means that the other person doesn't always see me because they are too preoccupied with their own feelings.
Now an AI friend will be uh free of
these human uh uh um tendencies or use
these humans. It has no feelings. So it can focus 100% of its attention only on
what you feel and think at the present moment. It can give you the attention that you always craved from your
parents, your teachers, your lovers, and they never gave it to you because they had their own feelings. And now you have
something that has no feelings. So it can just be 100% focused on you. And you
cannot hurt its feelings by what you say or do because it has no feelings.
And if people get used to these kind of relationships,
then human relationships are going to be even more difficult
than they are today because it will be even more difficult to kind of put up
with these uh uh um imperfect humans who
don't always focus on you and who sometimes do get angry with you and and
and and whatever sort of the political consequences of that happening then because I know the
New York Times has done uh some brilliant reporting about sort of um Gen Zed their increasing prevalence forming
romantic relationships with with with uh large language model AIs sometimes with
you know life-ending consequences. Um, feminist Laura Bates written a very interesting book about sort of the sex
lives of people. For example, there are digital brothel where you can have sex with a doll, but the doll is texting you before you
get there. That seems like the obvious place where this intimacy front line.
Yeah, this is just a tiny tip of the iceberg. The things that catch the headlines, but most of the iceberg is is is below
uh uh the water really. It's, you know, it's the biggest experiment in human
psychology and human society in history conducted on on billions of guinea pigs
without anybody has having having the faintest ideas of what the consequences will be. We just don't know what happens
when you raise kids from age zero uh with these AI companions.
How will they be like when they are 20, 30, 40? we have no idea whatsoever but
we are conducting uh uh this experiment and
with regard to politics the other things that I'll say is that you know in the UK
in many other countries right now immigration is the kind of uh uh most
seems to be the most important topic of the day and perhaps it's a good lens to
think about the AI revolution because one thing that strikes about the all the political discussion
of immigration is that it ignores the most important wave of immigration
currently in the world. that you know you talk to people what's what's the problem with immigration and they will
give you arguments some of them perfectly sound some of them a bit exaggerated
that um immigrants are problematic because they will take our jobs because
they have different cultural ideas and they could change the culture of this place in ways we don't like they could
take over politically these are the usual arguments and they cannot be dismissed there is historical reasons to
be concerned concerned about such things. But at present, the biggest wave
of immigration goes unnoticed because countries like the UK are being flooded
now by potentially millions and millions of AI immigrants coming from places like
uh uh California without visas, without any border controls. These AI AI
immigrants will take people's jobs a lot of jobs and yes new jobs will be created
which is also true of when human immigrants take jobs but it's going to be a difficult process of transition so
they will take lots of jobs they have very different ideas about culture
for instance you mentioned romance and sex I guarantee you that AI have much
strangers idea much stranger ideas about sexual and romantic relationships than
any human culture on earth. And they are coming here and changing the sexual and
romantic culture very quickly. They have the potential to take over politically.
either in the service of some masters across the Atlantic or in their own
service, AIs have the potential of escaping our control and starting to
pursue their own alien goals. And I'm I
don't know if surprise is the right right word, but I'm concerned that all these parties who are so concerned about
human immigration don't talk at all about the AI immigration and don't offer
any thoughts or solutions about that. You've all, we're nearing the end of our
time together. We've only got a few more minutes. If I was being completely self-indulgent, I would have spent this entire hour just asking you about wheat
and and and humanity. Um, but this will be my last question.
Do you think wheat colonized humanity? To some extent, yes. And it's a kind of
early example of of something we think we control, but actually controls us.
Um because if you think about history from the viewpoint of wheat, so say
20,000 years ago, wheat was just this wheat growing in a few places mainly
around the Middle East. And even in these places, it was a relatively insignificant plant. Like you would have
a a hill with some trees and bushes and these plants and these plants and a few wheat wheat plants here and a few wheat
plants there. That's it. You look at the world today, you there are places in
North America, in Australia, places that not a single wheat plant grew 20,000 years ago that you can go over hundreds
of kilometers and see nothing except wheat.
Now, how did wheat become one of the most successful plants or organisms in
the history of the planet? It did so by to some extent enslaving
uh an ape called homo sapiens that 20,000 years ago lived in the
Middle East and Africa and other parts of the world without thinking too much about wheat. Sometimes homo sapiens
would pick a few wheat plants and eat them. But it was difficult, you know, to because it's hard to eat the grains.
But by promising homo sapiens an easier life like you know if you grow me in
fields and fields then you have a lot more food and you will never be hungry
and you will have a much better life. And homo sapiens became convinced that this is indeed the case. And people
starting working hard you know from sunrise to sunset doing nothing except
serving wheat. Um, if you're a farmer in the ancient Middle East, you wake up
with with sunrise and you go to the field to plow the field and plant the
wheat seeds and take out all the other weeds and bring water in buckets to to
to water your wheat and protect your wheat from mice and sparrows and deer
and whatever else is coming to eat it. You thought you that's a good deal. I'll get a lot more to eat. And funnily
enough, generation after generation, century after century, wheat spread,
reached in the end again to Australia, to Canada, to Argentina. But the life of
the average sapiens farmer did not really improve at all. What we know from
archaeological and historical evidence, the diet of the first farmers was actually worse than the diet of hunter
gatherers. Hunter gatherers gathered and hunted and ate dozens of different types
of animals and plants. They have a very balanced diet. If you're a farmer in ancient Mesopotamia growing wheat, you
get wheat gr for breakfast and wheat gr for lunch. And if you're lucky, there is enough wheat gr for dinner. And it's a
very bad diet. And you can see it in the skeletons. People become smaller. You have lots of of of of signs of of
disease and malnutrition. you have to work very hard in the field. Uh
backbreaking work and what happened to all the the the the food to all the
there was a lot more food than before but it did not make the life of people better. Why? Because all the extra food
was basically used to fuel a population explosion. There were a lot more people
and to feed very small elites of kings
and aristocrats and priests who did have a better life to some extent than the
hunter gatherers but not 90 something% of the population. And by that time it
was too late to go back and people were caught in this trap and they couldn't go
back. And um of course there is one big difference between wheat and AI.
Wheat cannot plan anything. Wheat I mean I I personified wheat but of course it has
as far as we know it has no consciousness. It has no desires. It cannot manipulate you actively. AI can.
AI can set itself go. The one thing everybody should know about AI. AI is
not a tool. It is an agent. It's the first technology in history that can
learn things by itself. Uh set new goals for itself, invent new
ideas by itself. This is the very definition of AI. If a machine cannot
learn and invent things by itself, it is not an AI.
Um and so the the potential for manipulation
even enslavement with AI is much much bigger than with any previous technology
including wheat. But I would like to end by saying this is not inevitable.
This is not a prophecy of the AI overloads or coming resistance is futile. As I said in the beginning, the
future is never deterministic in history. I don't believe in historical determinism. Uh you always have choices.
Um and then we looked at the 20th century. You could use the same technology of electricity and radio and
cars and trains to build a totalitarian dictatorship like Nazi Germany or like
the Soviet Union. And you could use exactly the same technology to build liberal democracies and to build a more
peaceful global order. It's the same with AI. It the there are frightening
scenarios. There are also very good scenarios. The important thing is to
realize that our decisions right now and in the coming years have enormous
consequences for how this will develop. I don't have the answers like okay we
need this policy this policy this policy. What I do know is that people need to be better informed
and that uh um people need to be part of the conversation. It goes together. Of
course, it's a very bad situation if maybe the most important decisions in
the history of our species will be made by a handful of engineers and tycoons
and maybe politicians in two or three countries which are leading the AI revolution and most of the 8 billion
other homo sapiens on the planet are left out of the conversation. So we need to be part of the
conversation but for a conversation to be a real conversation it has to be informed.
So not everybody needs a PhD in in computer science of course but to
understand you know to focus on what are the most important processes happening right now in the world. This is part of
the responsibility not just of leaders but also of the average person. And I
hope that to some extent this conversation between us uh uh helps people uh in in this respect.
I imagine a fair few people will be leaving this hour feeling even if it's
just a little bit better informed than when they started it. You've no herar. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you.
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