We are now in a new era of wars. And

unless you reestablish order fast, then

we are doomed.

You've all Noah Harrari,

one of the brightest minds on planet

earth, historian, a bestselling author

of some of the most influential

non-fiction books in the world today.

I think we are very near the end of our

species because people often spend so

much effort trying to gain something

without understanding the consequences.

For example, we will get to a life where

you can live indefinitely. But realizing

that you have a chance to live forever,

but if there is an accident, you die.

The people who will be in that situation

will be at a level of anxiety and terror

unlike anything that we know. Then you

have artificial intelligence and the

world is is not ready for it. It's the

first technology in history that can

make decisions by itself and take power

away from us to hack human beings,

manipulate our behavior and making all

these decisions for us or about us.

Whether to give you a loan, whether to

give you a mortgage, dating us, shaping

your romantic life. But the real problem

is that increasingly the humans at the

top could be puppets. When the most

consequential decisions are made by

algorithms, global financial decisions,

wars. This is extremely dangerous, but

it's not inevitable. Humans can change

it.

But with what's to come, are you

optimistic about the future?

I'm very worried about two things. First

of all,

quick one. This is really, really

fascinating to me. On the back end of

our YouTube channel, it says that 69.9%

of you that watch this channel

frequently over the lifetime of this

channel haven't yet hit the subscribe

button. I just wanted to ask you a

favor. It helps this channel so much if

you choose to subscribe. Helps us scale

the guests, helps us scale the

production, and it makes this show

bigger. So, if I could ask you for one

favor, if you've watched the show before

and you've enjoyed it and you like this

episode that you're currently watching,

could you please hit the subscribe

button? Thank you so much. and I will

repay that gesture by making sure that

everything we do here gets better and

better and better and better. That is a

promise I'm willing to make you. Do we

have a deal?

[Music]

I have three of your books here and

these are three books that sent a huge

tidal wave, a ripple through society.

with these books and with all of the

work that you're doing now, with the

lectures you give, the the interviews

you give, what is your mission? What

what is the sort of if I was to be able

to summarize what your collective

mission is with your work? What is that?

It's to clarify and to focus the public

conversation, the global conversation,

uh to help people focus on the most

important challenges that are facing

humankind and also to bring at least a

little bit of clarity to the collective

and and to the individual mind. I mean,

one of my main messages in all the books

is that our minds are like factories

that constantly produce

stories and fictions that then come

between us and the world. And we often

spend our lives interacting with

fictions that we or that other people

created uh with and completely losing

touch w with with reality. And my job

and I think the job of historians more

generally is to show us a way out.

Inherent in much of your work is what

feels like a warning.

And I've I've watched hundreds of videos

that you've produced or interviews

you've done um all around the world and

it feels like you're trying to warn us

about something, multiple things.

Mhm. If my estimation there is correct,

what is the warning?

Much of what we take to be real is is is

fictions. And and the reason that

fictions are so central in in human

history is because we control the planet

and rather than the chimpanzees or the

elephants or any of the other animals

because not because of some kind of in

individual genius that each of us has

but because we can cooperate much better

than any other animal. We can cooperate

in much larger numbers and also much

more flexibly.

And the reason we can do that is because

we can create and believe in fictional

stories because every largecale human

cooperation whether uh religion or

nations or corporations

are based on mythologies on on fictions.

Again I'm not just talking about gods.

This is the easy example. Money is also

a fiction that we created. Corporations

are a fiction. they exist only in our

minds. Uh even lawyers would tell you

that corporations are legal fictions.

And this is on on the one hand such a

source of of immense power.

But on the other hand, again the danger

is that we completely lose touch with

reality and we are manipulated by all

these fictions, by all these stories.

Again, stories are not not bad. They are

tools. As long as we use them to

cooperate and to help each other, that's

wonderful. Um, money is not bad. If we

didn't have money, we would not have a

trade network. We everybody would have

maybe with their friends and family to

to produce everything by themselves like

the chimpanzees do. uh the fact that we

can enjoy uh food and clothing and

medicines and enter entertainment

created by people on the other side of

the world is largely because of money.

But if we forget that this is a tool

that we created in order to help

ourselves and instead uh this tool kind

of enslaves us and runs our life and um

you know I'm now just back home in

Israel there is a terrible war being

waged and most wars in history and also

now they are about stories they're about

fictions. People think that humans fight

over the same things that wolves or

chimpanzees fight about, that we fight

about territory, that we fight about

food. It sometimes happens, but most

wars in history were not really about

territory or food. There is enough land,

for instance, between the Jordan River

and the Mediterranean to build houses

and schools and hospitals for everybody.

And there is certainly enough food.

There's no shortage of food. But people

have different mythologies, different

stories in their minds and they can't

find a common story they can they can

agree about. And this is at the root of

most UN conflicts. And being able to

tell the difference between what is a

fiction in our own mind and what is the

reality. This is a a crucial skill and

we are not getting better at finding

this difference as time go time time

goes on

and also with new technologies which I

write about a lot like artificial

intelligence. The fantasy that AI will

answer our questions, will find the

truth for us, will tell us the

difference between fiction and reality.

This is this is just another fiction. I

mean AI can do many things better than

humans but for reasons that we can

discuss I don't think that it will

necessarily be better than humans at

finding the truth or uh um uncovering

reality. It it strikes me that the the

thing that made us successful,

you know, this ability to believe in

fictions and I use the word successful,

you know, powerful powerful. Yes.

Took over the world.

The thing that made us powerful could

well be the thing that makes us

powerless

in the sense that our ability to believe

in fictions and stories create a society

that would potentially lead to our

powerlessness.

That's kind of one of the the the

messages that when I connect the dots

throughout your work and you look off

into the future, um I'm left feeling.

And even you think about the modern

problems we have, those are typically

consequences of our ability to believe

in stories

and to believe in fictions.

And if you play that forward 100 years,

maybe 200 years,

you don't believe that um you believe

we'll be the last of our species, right?

I think we are very near the kind of end

of our species. It doesn't necessarily

mean that we'll be destroyed in some

huge nuclear war or something like that.

Uh it could very well mean that we'll

just change ourselves using

uh bioengineering and using AI and brain

computer interfaces. We will change

ourselves to such an extent that we'll

become something completely different,

something far more different from

present day homo sapiens than we today

are different from chimpanzees or from

Neanderthalss. I mean basically you know

um

you have a very deep connection still

with all the other animals because we

are completely organic.

We are organic entities. our psychology,

our social habits, they are the product

of organic evolution and male and more

specifically mamalian evolution over

tens of millions of years. So we share

so much of our psychology and of our

kind of social habits with chimpanzees

and with with other other mammals.

Looking a 100 years or 200 years to the

future, maybe we are no longer organic

or not fully organic. Um you could uh

have a world dominated by cyborgs which

are entities combining organic with

inorganic parts for instance with brain

computer interfaces. Um you could have

completely nonorganic entities.

So all the legacy and also all the

limitations of 4 billion years of

organic evolution might be irrelevant or

inapplicable

do you think

to the beings of the future?

What bet would you make?

Because you're saying maybe here

I don't know. I mean we could destroy

ourselves. I think there is a greater I

mean to completely destroy every last

single human in the world. it is

possible given the technology that we

now command but it's it's very

difficult.

Um I think it's there is a greater

chance and again this is just

speculation nobody really knows but I

think I mean lots of people could suffer

terribly

but I think it's more likely that uh uh

some people will survive and then will

undergo radical changes.

So it's not that humanity is completely

destroyed. It's just transformed

into into something else. And just to

give an example of what we are talking

about, organic beings like us need to be

in one place at any one time. We are now

here in this room. That's it. Um, if you

kind of disconnect our hands or our feet

from our body, we die or at least we

lose control of of these. I mean, and

this is true of all organic entities, of

plants, of of animals. Now, with cyborgs

or with inorganic entities, this is no

longer true. They could be spread over

time, time, and space. I mean if you

find a way and people are working on

finding ways to directly connect brains

with computers or brains with bionic

parts there is there there is no

essential reason that all the parts of

the be of of the entity need to be in

the same room at the same time. As you

said that, you know, I started thinking

a little bit about Neuralink and what

Elon Musk is doing interfacing us with

computers. But then I had a secondary

thought which is if there could be two

Stevens, one here and then one in the

United States right now because we're

connected to the same computer

interface. Theoretically, I could hack

Jack over there.

I could hack his interface. So there

could be three Stevens because I hack

Jack. And then I hack you and then

there's four. And then I could

eventually try and hack the entirety of

the world or a country.

Yeah.

And there could basically be one

one

once you can connect directly brains to

computers. First of all, I'm not sure if

it's possible.

I mean, people like Elon Musk in

Norolink, they tell us it's possible.

I'm I'm I'm I'm still waiting for the

evidence. I don't think it's impossible,

but I think it's much more difficult

than than than people assume. partly

because we are very far from

understanding the brain and we are even

further away from understanding the

mind. We assume that the brain somehow

produces the mind but this is just an

assumption. We still don't have a

working model a working theory for how

it happens. Uh but if it happens, if it

is possible to directly connect brains

and computers and integrate them into

these kinds of cyborgs, nobody has any

idea what happens next, how the world

would look like. And it is certainly

makes it a plausible if again if this is

this if you reach that point that you

could have an interbrain net

the same way that lots of computers are

connected together to form the internet.

If you can connect also brains and

computers directly why can't we then

connect an interbrain net which connects

lots of brains as as you as you as you

uh uh uh described. Again, I I have no

idea what it means. I think this is the

point when the way that our

organic brains understand reality

u

even our imagination in the end is the

product as far as we can tell of organic

biochemistry. Do you think

wait so so we we are not equipped I

think to have a kind of serious

discussion of what a nonorganic

brain or a non-organic mind might be

capable of of doing how it would how it

would look like and all the basic

assumptions that we have about brains

and minds they are limited to the

organic types. How do you feel about

artificial intelligence and what's

happening? This year has been a real

sort of landmark year in the

a big leap forward for artificial

intelligence, the conversation, public

awareness,

um the technology itself, the investment

in the technology, which is always, you

know, a a very important indicator of

what's to come.

Yeah.

How do you how do you as someone that

spent a lot of time thinking about this

emotionally, how do you feel about it?

uh very concerned. I mean it's moving

even faster than I expected. Uh when I

wrote say Homodos in 2016, I didn't

think we would reach this this point so

quickly where we are at 2023. And the

world is is not ready for it.

And again, it's not AI has enormous

positive potential.

We and and this this should be clear.

And there is no chance of just banning

AI or stopping all development in AI. I

tend to speak a lot about the dangers

simply because you have enough people

out there, all the entrepreneurs and uh

uh all the investors talking about the

positive potential. So it's kind of my

job to talk about the negative

potential, the dangers. But it there is

a lot of positive potential and uh

humans are incredibly capable in terms

of adapting to new situations. I don't

think it's impossible for human society

to adapt to the new AI reality. The only

thing is it takes time and apparently we

don't have that time and people compare

it to previous big historical

revolutions like the invention of print

or the invention of or or the the

industrial revolution. And you hear

people say yes when the industrial

revolution happened in the 19th century.

So you had all these pro prophecies of

doom about how industry and the new

factories and the steam engines and

electricity how how they will destroy

humanity or destroy our psychology or

whatever. And in the end it was okay.

And when I hear these kinds of

comparisons as as a historian I'm very

worried about two things. First of all,

they underestimate the magnitude of the

AI revolution. AI is nothing like print.

It's nothing like uh the industrial

revolution of the 19th century. It's far

far bigger. There is a fundamental

difference between AI and the printing

press of the steam engine or the radio

or any previous technology we invented.

The difference is it's the first

technology in history that can make

decisions by itself and that can create

new ideas by itself. A printing press or

a radio set could not write new music or

uh new speeches and could not decide

what to print and what to broadcast.

This was always the job of humans. This

is why the printing press and the radio

set in the end empowered humanity.

that you now have more power to

disseminate your ideas. AI is different.

It can potentially take power away from

us. It can decide, it's already deciding

by itself what to broadcast on social

media. Its algorithms deciding what to

promote.

And increasingly, it also creates much

of the content by itself. It can compose

entirely new music. it can compose

entirely new political manifestos, holy

books, whatever. Um, so it's a much

bigger challenge to handle that kind.

It's it's an independent agent in a way

that radio and the printing press were

not. The other thing I find worrying

about the comparison with say the

industrial revolution is that yes in the

end in a way it was okay but to get

there we had to pass through some

terrible experiments.

When the industrial revolution came

along nobody knew how to build a a

benign industrial society. So people

experimented.

One big experiment was European

imperialism. Many people thought that to

build an industrial society means

building an empire. Unless you have an

empire that controls the sources of the

raw materials you need, iron, coal,

rubber, cotton, whatever. And unless you

control the markets, you will not be

able to survive as an industrial

society. And there was a very close link

also conceptually

between building an industrial society

and building an empire. And all the

leaders the the the initial leaders of

the industrial revolution built empires.

Not just Britain and and France also

small countries like Belgium also Japan

when it joined the industrial revolution

it immediately set about conquering an

empire. Another tribal experiment was

Soviet communism. They also thought how

do you build an industrial society? You

build a communist dictatorship. And it

was the same with Nazism. You cannot

separate communism and Nazism from the

industrial revolution. You could not

have created a communist or a Nazi

totalitarian regime in the 18th century.

If you don't have trains, if you don't

have electricity, if you don't have

radio, you cannot create a totalitarian

regime. So these are just a few examples

of the failed experiments. You know, you

try to adapt to something completely

new, you very often uh um experiment and

some of your experiments fail. And if we

now have to go in the 21st century

through the same process, okay, we now

have not radio and and trains, we now

have AI and bioengineering. And we again

need to experiment perhaps with new

empires, perhaps with new totalitarian

regimes in order to discover how to

build a benign AI society, then we are

doomed as a specy. we will not be able

to survive another round of imperialist

wars and totalitarian regimes. So

anybody who thinks hey we've passed

through the industrial revolution with

all the prophecies of doom in the end we

got it right. No if as a historian I I

would say that I would give humanity a C

minus on how we adapted to the

industrial revolution. If we get a C

minus again in the 21st century that's

the end of us. It seems quite trivial to

many that

the AI revolution has seemed to begun

with large language models. And when I

read sapiens, this book I have here,

language was so central to what made us

powerful as homo sapiens.

In the beginning was the word. I didn't

say it. You know, it's a it's a very

very widespread idea

that um ultimately our power is based on

words. Uh the reason that we controlled

the world and not the chimpanzeee or the

elephants is because we had a much more

sophisticated language

which enabled us again to tell these

stories.

stories about ancestral spirits and

about guardian gods and about our tribe,

our nation, which formed the basis for

cooperation. And because we could

cooperate, you could have a thousand

people, a thousand humans cooperating in

a tribe, whereas the Neandertos could

cooperate only on the level of say 50 or

100 individuals. This is why we rule the

world and not the Neandertos. And you

look at every subsequent

kind of growth in human power and uh you

see the same thing that uh ultimately

you tell a story with words and language

is like the master key that unlocks all

the doors of our civilization.

Whether it's cathedrals or whether it's

banks, they're based on language, on

stories we tell.

that again it's very obvious in the case

of religion

but also if you think about the world's

financial system so money has no value

except in the stories that we tell and

believe each other if you think about

gold coins or paper bank notes or

cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin um they

have no value in themselves you cannot

eat them or drink them or do anything

useful with them but you have people

telling you very compelling stories

about the value of these things and if

enough people believe the story then it

works.

They're also protected by language like

my cryptocurrency is protected by a

bunch of words.

Yeah. Uh they're created by words

and they they function with with words

and and and and symbols.

Uh when you communicate with your banker

it's it's with words. I mean what

happens when AI can uh uh create deep

fakes of your everything, your voice,

your image, uh the the way you talk, the

type of words you use. So there is

already an arms race between banks and

fraudsters. I mean we want the easiest

communication with our banker. I just

pick up the phone, I tell a few words,

and they transfer a million dollars. But

at the same time, I also want want to be

protected from an AI that impersonates

my my voice and tone of tone of voice

and and whatever. And this is becoming

difficult. But on a deeper level, again,

AI could create because money is

ultimately made of words, of stories.

AI could create new kinds of money.

uh the same way that you know

cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have been

created simply by somebody telling

people a story and enough people finding

this story convincing. And I I guess as

a CEO and as an as an entrepreneur, you

know that if you want to get

investments,

what really gets investments is a good

story.

And what happens to the financial system

if increasingly our financial stories

are told by AI?

And what happens to the financial system

and even to the political system

if AI eventually creates new financial

devices that humans cannot understand?

Already today much of the activity

on the world markets is being done by

algorithms

at such a speed and with such complexity

that most people don't understand what's

happening there.

I I if you had to guess what is the

percentage of people in the world today

that really understand the financial

system

what would be your kind of

less than 1%.

Less than 1%. Okay. Let's be kind of

conservative about it. 1% let's say.

Okay.

Fast forward 10 or 20 years. AI creates

such complicated financial devices that

there is not a single human being on

earth that understand finance anymore.

What are the implications for politics?

Like you vote for a government but none

of the humans in the government, not the

prime minister, not the finance

minister, nobody understand the

financial system. They just rely on AI

to tell them what is happening.

Is this still a democracy? Is this still

a a human form of government in any way?

What do you say to someone that hears

that and goes, "Ah, that's just that's

nonsense. That's never going to happen."

Why not? I mean, let's look back 15

years to the last big financial crisis

in 2007208.

This financial crisis to a large extent

began with these extremely complicated

financial devices CDOS's

what's the acronym collateral depth

something I don't even know what the

word letter stands for you had these

kind of whiz kids in Wall Street

inventing a new financial device that

nobody except them really understood

which is why also it wasn't regulated

effectively by the banks and the

governments and it worked well for a

couple of years and then it brought down

the world's financial system

and um what happens if now AI's comes

with even more sophisticated financial

devices

and for a couple of years everything

works well they make trillions of

dollars for us and then one day it

doesn't one day the system collapses and

nobody understands what is happening and

uh again it's not that you didn't go to

college or whatever. No, it's just

objectively the complexity of the system

has reached a point when only an AI

is able to crunch the numbers, is able

to process enough data to really get to

really grasp the shape the dynamics of

of the financial system.

We're already there though. You know, I

think if anyone does understand how the

financial system works and the markets

work, it is a bunch of

homo sapiens relying on a computer to

tell it something and it it trusting

that computer's calculations.

Yeah. And and this will get more and

more complicated and and and

sophisticated. And for people who say

no, it's not going to happen, the

question is what is stopping it? I mean,

you know, in all the discussions about

AI,

the kind of dangers that draw people's

attention, like the poster child of AI

dangers is things like AI creating a new

virus that kills billions of people, a

new pandemic. So you a lot of people

concerned about how do we prevent an AI

by itself or maybe some small terrorist

organization or even a 16-year-old

teenager giving an AI a task to create a

dangerous virus and release it to the

world. How do we prevent this? And this

is a serious concern and we should be

concerned about it. But this gets a lot

more attention than the question, how do

we prevent the financial system from

becoming so complicated that humans can

no longer understand it?

And I see a lot of regulations

being uh at least considered how to

prevent AI from creating dangerous new

viruses. Um I don't see any kind of

effort to keep the financial system at a

level that humans understand it.

Why do you think that is?

U

I mean I had a guess. My guess was why

would the UK

Mhm.

cut off then, you know, why would they

give themselves a disadvantage?

Exactly.

When you know there it just means that

the UK will suffer and if America is

using a really advanced AI algorithm to

get ahead, we have to keep up.

Yeah. It's it's the logic of of the arms

race. And again, it's not all bad. I

mean, you have a better financial

system. Uh you have a more prosperous

economy. I mean, money isn't bad. I

mean, it's the basis for almost all

human cooperation.

And a lot of financial devices in the

end, if you think what are they, they

are devices to establish trust between

people, especially trust between

strangers. And money in essence is a

device for establishing trust. I don't

know you, you don't know me, but we both

trust this gold coin or piece of paper

so we can cooperate on uh uh uh sharing

food or creating a a medicine.

And the most sophisticated financial

devices, they basically do the same

thing. Stocks and bonds and these

CDOS's, they are a method to establish

trust. And when you open a new bank

account, the most important thing is how

do I trust the bank to really uh h take

care of my money and to follow my

instructions but not to be open to fraud

and things like that. And again, you as

as as an investor

um when you try to get money from from

from or you as an entrepreneur when when

you try to get money from investors, the

biggest issue is always trust.

And if somebody can comes up can can

come up with a new uh uh way to

establish trust between people, that's a

good thing. But if this new way

increasingly depends on non-human

intelligence on again on systems that

humans cannot understand. That's the big

question. What happens to human society

when the trust that is at the basis of

all social interactions

is actually no longer trust in humans.

It's trust in a non-human intelligence

that we don't fully understand and that

we cannot anticipate. And part of the

problem with regulating AI or AI safety,

it goes back to what we discussed

earlier that AI is different from

printing presses or radio sets or even

atom bonds.

If you want to make nuclear energy safe,

then you need to think about all the

different ways that uh I don't know a

nuclear power station can uh uh uh can

have an accident.

And I guess there is a limited number of

things that can go wrong. And ideally if

if you think hard, if you have if you

have enough people thinking hard enough,

you can make safe nuclear reactors, safe

nuclear power stations.

Now, but AI is fundamentally different

because AI keeps changing. It keeps

reacting to the world. It keeps reacting

to you coming up with new inventions,

new ideas, new decisions. So making AI

safe is a bit like making a nuclear

reactor safe taking into account the

fact that the nuclear reactor can decide

to change

in ways that you can't anticipate and

even worse it can react to you. So if

you build a particular safety mechanism

for the nuclear reactor, what happens if

the nuclear reactor say oh they build

this mechanism let's do that to h

somehow get around the safety mechanism.

We don't have this problem with nuclear

reactors. But this is the problem with

AI. We are trying to contain something

which is an independent agent and which

might actually come to understand us

better than we understand it. I'm really

curious about how this will impact you

know you talked about elected officials

there and how their systems will be sort

of um dri their financial decision-m

might be driven by algorithms

but government's an authority itself

I've pondered recently whether there'll

come a day in the notsodistant future

where we might vote for an algorithm

where we might vote for an AI to be our

government. Is that crazy thinking?

I think we we we're quite a long way off

from there. We would still want humans

at least in the symbolic role of being

the prime minister, the the member of

parliament, whatever, the president.

The real problem is that increasingly

these humans could be kind of

figureheads or or puppets when the real

decisions, the most consequential

decisions are uh are made by algorithms.

be partly because the the the um it will

just be too complicated for the humans

at the top to understand the situation

or to understand the different options.

So going back to the financial example.

So imagine that you know it's it's 4:00

in the morning. There is a phone call uh

to the prime minister from the finance

algorithm

telling the P the prime minister that we

are facing a financial meltdown

uh and that we have to do something

within the next I don't know 30 minutes

to prevent a national or global

financial meltdown. And there are like

three options and the algorithm

recommends option A and there is just

not enough time to explain to the prime

minister how did the algorithm reach the

conclusion and even what is the meaning

of these different options

and again people think about this

scenario mostly in relation to war.

Mhm. that what happens if you have an

algorithm in charge of the your security

system and it it alerts you to a massive

incoming cyber attack and you have to

react immediately and this could if you

react in in a specific way this could

mean war with another nation but you

just don't have enough time to

understand how the algorithm reached the

decision and how the algorithm was also

able to determine that of the all the

different options, this is the best

option.

Do you think that humans believe we're

more complicated and special than we

actually are?

Because I think part of much many many

of the rebuttals when we talk about

artificial intelligence stem back to

this idea that we're in, you know, we're

like innately genius, creative,

spiritual, special,

you know, um artificial intelligence

like our our intelligence is somewhat

divine or

we've got free will and you know we

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's

if the argument is we have free will, we

have a divine soul and therefore no

algorithm will will ever be able to

understand us and to predict our

decisions or to manipulate us then this

is a very common argument but it's

obviously nonsensical. I mean even

before AI uh it was uh even with

previous technology it was possible to a

large extent to predict people's

behavior and to manipulate them and AI

just takes it to the next level. Now

with regard to the discussion of of free

will

my my position is you cannot start with

the assumption that humans have free

will. If you start with this assumption

then it's uh actually is very

it it makes you very incurious lacking

curiosity

about about yourself about human beings.

It kind of closes off the investigation

before it began.

Um you assume that any decision you make

is just a result of my free will. Why

did I choose this politician, this

product, uh uh this spouse? Because it's

my free will. And if this is your

position, there is nothing to

investigate. You just assume you have

this kind of divine spark within you

that makes all the decisions and there

is nothing to investigate there.

Um I would say no start investigating

and you'll probably discover that there

are a lot of factors whether it's

external factors like cultural

traditions and also internal factors

like biological mechanisms that shape

your decisions. you chose this

politician or this spouse because of

certain cultural traditions and because

of certain biological mechanisms, your

DNA, your uh uh brain structure,

whatever. And this actually makes it

possible for you to get to know yourself

better. Now if after a long

investigation

you've reached the conclusion that yes

there are cultural influences, there are

political influences, there are genetic

and neurological influences, but still

there is a certain percentage of my

decision that cannot be explained by any

of these things. Then okay, call it free

will and we can discuss it. But don't

start with this assumption because then

you lose the incentive to explore

yourself.

And anybody who embarks on such a

process of self exploration, whether

it's in therapy, whether it's in

meditation, whether it's in the

laboratory of a brain scientist or uh as

a historian in the archive, you will be

amazed to discover how much of your

decisions are not the result of some

mystical free will. They are the result

of cultural and biological factors. And

this also means that you are vulnerable

to being deciphered and manipulated

by political parties, by corporations,

by AI. People who have this kind of

mystical belief in free will are the

easiest people to manipulate

because they don't think they can be

manipulated.

Uh and obviously they can. We humans

should get used to the idea that we are

no longer mysterious souls. We are now

hackable animals. That's what we are.

You said that at the World Economic

Forum.

Yeah. Again, this is the same point

basically that it's now possible to hack

human beings. Not just to hack our

smartphones, our bank accounts, our

computers, but to really hack our

brains, our minds, and to uh uh predict

our behavior and manipulate our behavior

more than in any previous time in

history.

The other line that you said uh which

really made me think and ponder was

um

as previously human life was about the

drama of decision-m and without this we

won't have a meaning in life.

Yeah.

that if you look, you know, at politics,

at religion and at at culture,

people told the stories about their

lives or the lives of people in general

as a kind of of drama of decision

making.

Mhm.

That you reach a particular junction in

life and you need to choose you need to

choose between good and evil. You need

to choose between political parties. You

need to choose your what to study at

university or where to work, what kind

of job to to to apply to.

And our stories revolved around these

decisions.

And what happens to human life if

increasingly the power to make decisions

is taken from us?

And increasingly it's algorithms

making all these decisions for us or

about us.

Is that possible?

It's already happening. Increasingly,

you know, you apply to a bank to get a

loan. In many places, it's no longer a

human banker who is making this decision

about you whether to give you a loan,

whether to give you a mortgage. It's an

algorithm analyzing

billions of bits of data about you and

about of millions of other customers or

previous loans determining whether you

are creditw worthy or not. And if you

ask the bank if they refuse to give you

a loan and you ask the bank why didn't

you give me a loan and the bank says we

don't know. the the computer said no and

we just believe our our our computer our

algorithm and it's happening also in the

judicial system increasingly that uh um

various judicial decisions verdicts like

for how many like the judge decided that

you committed some crime the sentence

whether to send you to two months or

eight months or two years in prison is

increasingly determined by an algorithm

uh you apply to a place at university,

you apply to a job. This too is

increasingly decided by algorithms.

Dating

uh dating. Yes. I mean even um even un

unknown unbeknownst to you, the

algorithms of the dating apps that

you're using are shaping your romantic

life. But what in a world of you know

robotics and artificial intelligence why

do I need to find a person at all?

Why not just have a relationship with

with a robot or with an AI?

Yeah. Uh we do see the beginning of of

of this that people are building more

and more intimate relationships with

non-human intelligences with AIs and

bots and and so forth. And this raises a

lot of of difficult and and profound

questions. Now, part of the problem is

that the AIS are built to mimic intimacy

that the the ability intimacy is an

extremely powerful thing. Not just in

romance, also in the market, also in

politics. If you want to change

somebody's mind about anything,

political issue, a commercial uh

preference, intimacy is kind of the most

powerful weapon.

And

somebody you really trust, somebody you

have intimate relationships with will be

able to change your views on a lot of

things more than uh someone you see on

TV or just an an article you read in

newspaper. There is a huge incentive for

the creators of AIS to create AIS that

are able to forge intimate relationships

with humans.

And um this makes us extremely

vulnerable to this new type of

manipulation

that was previously just unimaginable

cuz loneliness is at you know all-time

highs especially in the sort of western

world and

sexlessness and I I was reading some

stats about how the like body bottom 50%

of men in particular are having almost

no sex relative to the top sort of 10%

and you think you know this disparacy

the rise of digitalization, loneliness,

we're in our homes on screens more than

ever before.

And then you hear about this industry of

AI and sex dolls and all this and you

just wonder, you play it forward and go,

yeah, it's it's going there. And and the

thing is that it it's not that that the

humans are so stupid or something that

they they they kind of project something

onto the AI and fall in love with an AI

chatbot. The AI is deliberately

built, created, trained to fool us. To

the same way, you know, you look at the

previous 10 years, there was a big

battle for human attention. There was a

battle between different social media

giants and what whatever how to grab

human attention and they created

algorithms that were really amazing at

grabbing people's attention

and now they are doing the same thing

but with intimacy and we are extremely

exposed. We are extremely vulnerable to

it. Now the big problem is and and again

this is where it it gets kind of really

philosophical

that

what humans really want or need from a

relationship is to be in touch with

another conscious entity.

H an intimate relationship is not just

about providing my needs.

Then it's exploitative. Then it's

abusive. If you're in a relationship and

the only thing you think about is how

how would I feel better? How would my

needs be provided for? Then this is a

very abusive situation.

Uh a a really healthy relationship is

when it goes both ways. You also care

about the feelings and the needs of the

other person of the other entity.

Now

what happens if the other entity has no

feelings, has no emotional needs because

it it has no consciousness. That's the

big question.

And there is a huge confusion between

consciousness and intelligence. AI is

artificial intelligence.

But what exactly is the relation between

intelligence and consciousness?

Now intelligence is the ability to solve

problems,

to win a chess, to invest money, to

drive a car. This is intelligence.

Consciousness is the ability to feel

things like pain and pleasure and love

and hate and sadness and anger and and

so many other things. Now in humans and

also in other mammals, intelligence and

consciousness actually go together. We

solve problems by having feelings.

But computers are fundamentally

different. They are already more

intelligent than us in at least several

narrow fields,

but they have zero consciousness.

They don't feel anything. When they beat

us at chess or go or some other game,

they don't feel joyful and happy. If

they make a wrong move, they don't feel

sad or or angry. They have zero

consciousness. As far as we can tell,

they might soon be far more intelligent

than us and still have zero

consciousness. Now what happens when you

are in a relationship with an entity

which is far more intelligent than you

and can also imitate mimic

consciousness. It it knows how to solve

the problem of making you feel as if it

is conscious

but it still has no feelings of its own.

And this is a very disturbing vision of

the future.

It opens us up to manipulation. Is that

what you're saying?

It first of all it opens us to

manipulation but also it uh uh the the

big question what does it mean for the

health of our own mind of our own

psyche?

If we are in a relationship or or many

of our important relationship in life

are with non-concious entities

that uh that they don't really have any

feelings of their own. Again, they are

very good

at faking

at faking it. They're very good at

catering to our feelings,

but um again it's just it's just

manipulation in the end. Are you

optimistic about the happiness of humans

going forward? Or do you think happiness

will take its own? You know, I've heard

you talk about how happiness might just

become a bio biochemical,

I don't know, prescription or something.

Yeah. I mean, we don't have a good track

record with regard to happiness. If you

look at the last 100,000 years from say

the stone age until the 21st century,

you see a dramatic rise in human power.

We are thousands of times more powerful

as a species and as individuals than we

were in the stone age. We are not

thousands of times happier. We just

don't really know how to translate power

into happiness. And this is very clear

when you look at the lives of the most

powerful people in the world

that there is no correlation between how

rich and powerful you are and how happy

you are as as as as a person. I mean I I

don't have the I don't get the

impression that people like I don't know

Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk are the

happiest people in the world

even though they are they are some of

the most powerful people in the world.

So there is no reason to think that as

humanity gets even more powerful in

coming decades we will get any happier.

And understanding happiness is about

understanding the deep dynamics of of

not not even the brain but of the mind

of consciousness

and we are just not there yet.

Um we are very very good and and the

related problem is that humans usually

understand how to manipulate something

long before they understand the

consequences of the manipulations.

If you look at the outside world, at the

ecological system, we have learned how

to cut forests, how to build huge dams

over rivers long before we understood

what will be the consequences for the

ecological system. Which is why we now

have this ecological crisis. We

manipulated the world without

understanding the consequences.

As something similar might happen with

the world inside us,

with more powerful medicines, with brain

computer interfaces, with genetic

engineering and and so forth, we are

gaining the power to manipulate our

internal world, the world within us.

But again, the power to manipulate is

not the same thing as understanding the

complexity of the system and the

consequences of the manipulation.

A related manipulation there is

immortality and our pursuit of it. I've

sat with people on this podcast who are

committing their lives to staying alive

forever. And there's a through line

there between our desire to be immortal,

you know, the rise in the scientific

discoveries that are enabling that and

our happiness. I I've often thought, you

know, much of the reason why things are

special in my life is because they're

scarce,

including my time.

Yeah.

And I I always I almost wonder about the

psychological um

issues I would face if I knew I was

immortal. Like if I knew that

the partner I'm with doesn't come at the

expense of another one I can be with,

you know, at 30 years old.

And the car, you know, the choices you

make, I think what makes them scaled

are their scarcity.

Mhm.

Against the backdrop of an of a finite

life.

Uh yeah, it will definitely change

everything if you think about relations

between parents and children. So if you

live forever, so the 20 years you raised

uh uh you spent raising somebody 2,000

years ago, what do they mean now? But I

think long before we get to that point,

I mean, most of these people are going

to be incredibly disappointed because it

will not happen within their lifetime.

Another related problem is that we will

not get to immortality. We will get to

something that maybe should be called a

mortality.

that immortality is that like you're

you're God, you can never die no matter

what happens. It's even if we solve

cancer and Alzheimer and demensia and

whatever, we will not get there. We will

get to kind of a life without a

definitive expiry date that you can live

indefinitely. You can go every 10 years

to a clinic and get yourself rejuven

rejuvenated, but if a bus runs you over

or your airplanes explodes or a

terrorist kills you, you're dead and

you're not coming back to life. Now,

realizing that you have a chance to live

forever, but if there is an accident,

you die. This creates a level of anxiety

and terror unlike anything that we know

in our own lives. I think the people who

will will be in that situation will be

extremely anxious and miserable.

And another issue is you know people

often spend so much effort trying to get

gain something get something without

really understanding what are they going

why what will you do with it what is so

good about it you know like people spend

so much effort to to get have more and

more money instead of thinking what will

I actually do with that money so it's

the same with you know the people who

want to extend life forever. What is so

good about life that what will you do

with it?

And if you know it, why don't you do it

already? That uh you know I hear people

saying about how how precious human

consciousness is

why why do you think it's so precious

and whatever it is, why don't you do it

right now? I mean why spend your life

developing some kind of treatment that

will uh extend your consciousness for a

thousand years.

Just spend your time doing now whatever

you think you would be doing with your

consciousness a thousand years from now.

So if they were to say but it'll give me

more time with my family. You're saying

just instead of wasting your time just

like

Exactly. So, you know, somebody who has

no time for their family at all right

now because they are busy developing the

kind of uh uh uh miracle cure that will

enable them to spend time with with

their family in 200 years. This makes no

sense.

I think about the disparity that

artificial intelligence and these forms

of sort of bioengineering might create

because it's conceivable that the rich

will gain access to these technologies

first.

Yeah. And then, you know, when we think

about bioengineering,

being able to sort of play with our

genetic code, that means if I, for

example, managed to get my hands on some

kind of bio engineering treatment to

make sure that my kids were maybe a

little bit smarter, maybe a little bit

stronger, whatever, then you're going to

start a sort of genetic chain of

modified children that are superior in

intelligence and strength and whatever

else might be desirable. M

and then you have this disparity in

society where you have like the you know

one humans one set of humans are on a

completely different exponential

trajectory and the other humans are you

know

yeah behind

this is extremely dangerous uh I think

we just shouldn't go there that we

shouldn't invest a lot of resources

efforts in developing these kinds of uh

upgrades and enhancements

that are very likely, at least at first,

to be the preserve of a small elite and

to translate economic inequality into

biological inequality and to basically

split the human species to to split homo

sapiens into, you know, a ruling class

of superhumans and and the rest of us.

This is a very very dangerous

development.

related to that is the problem that I

don't think it will be these will be

upgrades at all

what worries me is that a lot of these

things will turn out actually to be

downgrades

that

we again we don't understand

our bodies our brains our minds well

enough to know what will be the

consequences of tweaking our genetic

code or of um I don't know implanting

all kinds of devices into our brains.

People who think that this will enable

them let's say to upgrade their

intelligence

they don't know what the side effects

will be. It could be that the same

treatment that increases your

intelligence also decreases your

compassion or your spiritual depth or

whatever. And the danger is that

especially if this technology is in the

hands of powerful corporations, armies,

governments,

they will enhance

those qualities that they want like

intelligence and like discipline

while disregarding

uh other qualities which could be even

more important for for human flourishing

like compassion.

or like autistic sensitivity or like

spirituality. If I think about somebody

again like Putin, what would he do with

this type of technology then yes, he

would like an army of super intelligent

and super loyal soldiers. And if these

soldiers do don't have any compassion or

any spiritual depth, all the better for

him.

But that speaks to the arms race. And

you know, you said you we think we

shouldn't, but China will see that as an

opportunity or Putin will see that as an

opportunity if the if the Western world,

if the United States or the UK don't.

And so again, it comes back to this

point of, you know, we're screwed if

we're damned if we do, we're damned if

we don't.

I'm not sure that in this case it it

works. uh because again a lot of these

upgrades are likely to have um

detrimental side effects both for the

person in question and for the society

as a whole. And I think that in this

case societies that will choose to be uh

uh

progress more slowly and safely they

will actually have an advantage. It's

like if you say, you know, there is some

other country where they don't have any

brakes on their on their cars and they

don't have any seat belts and they

release new medicines without checking

their side effects. They're moving so

fast. We are left behind. No, it makes

no sense to to to imitate them. This

will actually ruin their societies. You

don't want to imitate these kinds of of

harmful effects. Uh with development of

AI, it's different. I think there the

advantages in things like finance, like

the military will be so big that an AI

AI arms race is almost inevitable.

But with trying to kind of bioengineer

humans, if you go too fast, it will be

this self-destructive.

So we can take it most slowly and safely

and without being kind of left behind in

an arms race.

You said on the Tim Ferris podcast, the

best scenario is that homo sapiens will

disappear but in a peaceful and gradual

way and be replaced by something better.

It's quite a um uncomfortable statement

to to listen to.

I think that again the the the type of

technologies that we are now developing

when you combine them with the human

ambition

to uh um you know to to improve

ourselves

it's almost inevitable that we will use

these technologies to change ourselves.

The question is whether we will do it

slowly and responsibly enough for the

consequences to be beneficial. But the

idea that we can now develop these

extremely powerful tools of

bioengineering and AI and remain

the way we are. We'll still be the same

homo sapiens in 200 years, in 500 years,

in 1,000 years. we'll have all these

tools to connect brain to computers to

to kind of re-engineer our genetic code

and we won't do it. I think this is

unlikely.

One of the outstanding questions that I

have and one of the sort of observations

I've had is people like Sam Alman um the

founder of OpenAI that made Chat GPT

started working on universal basic

income products like Worldcoin. And I

thought, you know what, that's curious

that the people that are at the very

forefront of this AI revolution are now

trying to solve the second problem they

see coming, which is people not having

jobs. Yeah. Essentially,

is is that do you think that's a because

you know every I've spoken a lot this

year on stages and this is one of the

questions I always get asked is the

implications of AI on the and jobs as we

know it in the workforce. Mhm.

Is it realistic to believe that most

jobs will disappear as we know them

today?

I think

many jobs, maybe most jobs will

disappear, but new jobs will emerge. You

know, most jobs that people do today

didn't exist 200 years ago.

Mhm. Like this.

Uh yeah, like this. Like doing a

podcast.

And there will be new jobs.

The really big problem will be how to

retrain people.

Uh it demands a lot of financial support

also psychological support for people to

kind of relearn, retrain, reinvent

themselves and doing it not just once

but repeatedly throughout their career

throughout their lives. The AI

revolution will not be a single

watershed event like you have the big AI

revolution in 2030. You lose 60% of

jobs. You create lots of new jobs. You

have 10 difficult years. Everybody

adjusting, adapting, reskilling,

whatever, and then everything settles

down to a new equilibrium. It won't be

like that. AI is nowhere near its full

potential. So you will have a lot of

changes by 2030, even more changes by

2040, even more changes by 2050. You

will have new jobs, but the new jobs too

will change and disappear.

What new jobs?

In a world where intelligence is

disrupted, what what jobs are left?

Because you say you're going to retrain

me. I'm like, you know, I'm not going to

be able to keep up with an AI that's

retraining every second.

And I I'm not sure. I mean some of the

answers might be counterintuitive

that um

at least at present we see that AI is

extremely good at automating jobs that

only require cognitive skills but they

are not good at jobs that require motor

skills and social skills. So if you

think about say doctors and nurses, so

at least those types of doctors who are

only doing cognitive work, they

read articles, they get your medical

results, all kinds of tests and and and

and and whatever. They diagnose your

disease and they decide on a course of

treatment. This is purely cognitive

work. This is the easiest thing to

automate.

But if you think about a nurse that has

to replace a bandage to a crying child,

this is much more difficult to automate.

You don't think that's possible to

automate?

I I think it is possible, but not now.

You need very delicate motor skills and

also social skills to do that.

Did you see Elon's video the other day

with um the Tesla robot?

I see a lot of these videos. It's it's

getting the egg and it's cracking the

egg and it's going like this.

No, again I'm not saying it's

impossible. I'm just saying it will take

longer. It's more difficult. Again,

there is also the social aspect. If you

think about self-driving vehicles, the

biggest problem for self-driving

vehicles is humans. I mean, not the not

just the the human drivers, it's the

pedestrians, it's the it's the

passengers. How do you deal with a

drunken passenger? whatever.

So, uh, again, it's not impossible, but

it's much more difficult. So, again, I

think that there will be new jobs, at

least in the foreseeable future. The

problem will will be to retrain people.

And the biggest problem of all will be

on the global level, not on the national

level. I when I hear people talk about

universal basic income, the first

question to ask is, is it universal or

national?

Is it a system that let's say raises

taxes on big tech corporations in

Silicon Valley in California and uses

the money to provide basic services and

also retraining courses for people in

Ohio and Pennsylvania?

Uh or does it also apply to people in

Guatemala and Pakistan?

I mean, what happens when it becomes

cheaper to produce shirts with robots in

California than in Guatemala and in

Mexico? Uh, does Sam Alman has a vision

of the US government raising taxes in

California and sending the money to

Guatemala to support the people there?

If the answer is no, we are not talking

about universal basic income. We are

only talking about national basic income

in the US. Then what happens to the

people in Guatemala? That's the that's

the biggest question.

And a sub question to that is about how

one should be educating our our children

and our education institutions as they

are today. Because with what's to come,

um makes me wonder what what skill would

be worth investing you know 10 12 years

into a child that I had.

Um

nobody has any idea. I mean if you think

about specific skills

then this is the first time in history

when we have no idea how the job market

or how society would look like in 20

years. So we don't know what specific

skills people will need if you think

back in history. So it was never

possible to predict the future but at

least people knew what kind of skills

will be needed in a couple of decades.

If you live, I don't know, in England

in uh uh 1023,

a thousand years ago, you don't know

what will happen in in 30 years. Maybe

the Normans will invade or the Vikings

or the Scots or whoever. Maybe there'll

be an earthquake. Maybe there'll be a

new pandemic. Anything can happen. You

can't predict. But you still have a very

good idea of how the economy would look

like and how human society would look

like in the 1050s or the 1060s. You know

that most people will still be farmers.

You know it's a good idea to teach your

kids how to uh harvest wheat, how to

bake bread, how to ride a hose, how to

shoot and bow an arrow. These things

will still be necessary in 30 years. If

you now look 30 years to the future,

nobody has any idea what kind of skills

will be needed. If you think for

instance, okay, this is the age of AI,

computers, I will teach my kids how to

code computers. Maybe in 30 years,

humans no longer code anything because

AI is so much better than us at writing

code.

Um, so what should we focus on? I would

say the only thing we can be certain

about is that 30 years from now the

world will be extremely volatile,

extremely it will keep changing at an

ever rapid pace.

Do you think this is going to incre

increase the amount of conflict

because I watched a video on your

YouTube channel where you said the

return of wars?

Yeah. Uh that's one of the dangers that

there is and we see it all all over the

world now. uh like 10 years ago we were

in the most peaceful era in human

history and unfortunately this era is

over. We are now in a new era of wars

and potentially of imperialism

and we are seeing it all over the world

uh with the Russian invasion of Ukraine

now with the war in the Middle East uh

Venezuela and Guyana some East Asia war

is is is back on the table. It's not

just because of the rapid changes and

the upheavalss they cause. It's also

because um you know 10 years ago we had

a global order, the liberal order which

was far from perfect but it's still kind

of regulated relations between nations

between countries

based on an idea on on the liberal

worldview that despite our national

differences all humans share certain

basic experiences and needs and

interests. Which is why it makes sense

for us to work together to diffuse

conflicts and to uh uh um solve our

common problems. It was far from

perfect, but it did create the most

peaceful era in human history.

Then this order was repeatedly attacked

not only from outside

from forces like Russia or North Korea

or Iran that never accepted this order

but also from the inside even from the

United States uh which was the architect

to a large extent of of this order with

the election of Donald Trump which says

I don't care about any kind of global

order. I'd only care about my own

nation. And you see this way of thinking

that I only care about my the interests

of my nation more and more around the

world. Now the big question to ask is if

all the nations think like that what

regulates the relations between them

and there was no alternative nobody came

up with with the and said okay I don't

like the liberal liberal global order I

have a better suggestion

for how to manage relations between

different nations.

They just destroyed the existing order

without offering an alternative. And the

alternative to order is simply disorder.

And this is now where we find ourselves.

Do you think there's more wars on the

way?

Yes. Unless unless we reestablish order,

there will be more and worse wars uh

coming in the next few years in more and

more areas around the world.

You see defense budgets all over the

world uh uh skyrocketing

and this is a vicious circle. When your

neighbors increase their military

budget, you feel compelled to do the

same and then they increase their budget

even more. You know, when I say that the

early 21st century was the most peaceful

era in human history,

it's

one of the indications is how uh how low

the military budgets all over the world

were. For most of history, kings and

emperors and cons and sultans, they the

military was the number one item on

their budget. They spent more on their

soldiers and navies and fortresses than

on anything else. In the early 21st

century, most countries

spend something like a few percentage

points of their of their budget on on

the military. Education, health care,

welfare were a much more a much bigger

item on the budget than defense.

And this is now changing. The money is

increasingly going to tanks and missiles

and cyber weapons instead of to nurses

and and schools and and social workers.

And again, it's not inevitable. It's the

result of human decisions. The

relatively peaceful era of the early

21st century, it did not result from

some miracle. It resulted from humans

making wise decisions in previous

decades.

What are the wise decisions we need to

make now in your view?

Reinvest in in rebuilding a global order

which is based on

universal values and norms

and not just on the narrow interests of

of specific nation states.

Are you concerned that Trump might be

elected again shortly? I I think it's

very likely

and if it happens it is likely to be the

kind of like the the death blow to what

remains of the global order and he says

it and he says it openly. Now again it

should be clear that many of these

politicians

they present

a false dichotomy a false binary vision

of the world as if you have to choose

between patriotism and globalism between

being loyal to your own nation and being

loyal to some kind of I don't know

global government or whatever and this

is completely false there is no

contradiction between patriotism and

global cooperation. When we talk about

global cooperation, we definitely don't

have in mind, at least not anybody that

I know, a global government. This is an

impossible and very dangerous idea. It

simply means that um you have certain

rules and norms for how different nation

states

treat each other and and and and and and

behave towards each other. If you don't

have a system of of global norms and

values, then very quickly what you have

is just global conflict, is just wars. I

mean some people have this idea they

imagine the world as a network of

friendly fortresses

like each nation will be a fortress with

very high walls taking care of its own

interest interests but uh living on

relatively friendly terms with the

neighboring fortresses trading with them

and and and whatever. Now the main

problem with this vision is that

fortresses are almost never friendly.

Each fortress always wants a bit more

land, a bit more prosperity, a bit more

security for itself at the expense of

the neighbors.

And uh this is the high road to conflict

and to and to and to war and to war.

There's that phrase, isn't there?

Ignorance is bliss. Now, something that

your work has forced you and continues

to encourage you to not live in is

ignorance.

So, with that, one might logically

deduce that

out the window goes your bliss.

Um, are you are you happy?

I think I'm relatively happy, at least

happier than I was uh for most of my

life.

I

part of it is is that I invest a lot of

my time not just in

you know researching what is happening

in the world but also in the health of

my own mind

and

you know keeping a kind of balanced

information diet

that it's it's it's basically like with

food. You need food in order to survive

and to be healthy. But if you eat too

much or if you eat too much of the wrong

stuff, it's it's bad for you. And it's

exactly the same with information.

Information is the the food of the mind.

And if you eat too much of it of the

wrong kind, you'll get a very sick mind.

So I uh I try to to keep a very balanced

uh information diet which also includes

information fasts.

So I try to disconnect.

I um every day I dedicate two hours a

day for meditation.

Wow. And every year I go for a long

meditation retreat of between 30 and 60

days like in completely disconnecting.

No phones, no emails, not even books. Um

just observing myself, observing what is

happening inside my body and inside my

mind, getting to know myself better and

kind of digesting

all the information that I absorbed

during the rest of the year or the rest

of the day.

Have you seen a clear benefit in doing

that?

Uh yes, very very clear. I don't think I

would be able to write these books or to

do what I'm doing um without these kind

with this kind of information diet and

and without kind of devoting a lot of

time and attention to the balancing my

mind and keeping it healthy. You know so

many people spend so much time keeping

their body healthy which is very

important of course but we need to spend

equal amount of attention with with our

mind. It is as important as as our body.

When you said you don't think you'd be

able to do what you do if you didn't

take these information diets, why?

I'll just, you know, um first of all be

just overwhelmed

and uh um not have any kind of peace of

mind, not have any kind of perspective.

If you're constantly in the news cycle,

in the information cycle, you lose all

perspective. You know organic entities

unlike AIs, unlike computers, we are

cyclical entities. We need to sleep

every day. AIS don't sleep. You know,

even the stock exchange closes every

afternoon. It closes also for the

weekend or for so for Christmas. If you

think about it, this is amazing that you

know if if a war erupts in Christmas

uh uh the Wall Street will be able to

react only after a couple of days

because the people are on holiday. They

they took time off. Even the money

market takes time off. But if you give

AI full control, there will never be any

time off. it will be 24 hours a day, 365

days a a year and people just collapse.

I mean, I think part of the problem that

politicians today face is that um they

need to be on 24 hours a day because the

news cycle is on 24 hours a day. Like in

previous eras, if you're I don't know a

king in the middle ages and you you you

you ride some you go somewhere, you're

on the road in your carriage and nobody

can reach you. Even if the French are

invading, nobody can reach you. You have

some time off. If you're a prime

minister now, there is no time off. And

computers are built for it, but human

brains aren't. If you try to keep an

organic entity

awake and kind of constantly processing

information and reacting 24 hours a day,

it will very soon collapse.

It's funny, it made me think of what the

for I think it was the former Netflix

CEO or one of the Netflix CEOs or

someone said um they said, "Our biggest

competitor is sleep."

Sleep. Yeah. That's a very scary and and

very I think important line

and it's a very honest line.

It's a very honest line and it's scary

because um if people don't sleep they

collapse and eventually they die. And

this is again part of the problem that

we talked earlier about about the battle

for human attention in social media in

streaming services. Now

for many of these corporations they

measure their success by user

engagement.

The more people are engaged the more

successful we are. Now user engagement

is a very

broad definition. According to this

measurement one hour of outrage is

better than 10 minutes of joy.

And uh uh certainly better than 1 hour

of sleep

because one hour of outrage I will

consume three adverts.

Yes.

And then that means that the corporation

make $30

for example. And and from two hours of

sleep they make nothing. From 10 minutes

of joy maybe they sell only one ad.

Mhm. And but from the viewpoint of of

how humans function and how this

organism function, 10 minutes of joy are

probably better than for us than one

hour of outrage. And certainly we need

not just two hours, we need six, seven,

eight hours of sleep.

Well, this is why, you know, the

algorithms on on certain platforms,

specifically Tik Tok,

Mhm.

are just absolutely

addictive to say the least. Like I I

because they hacked us.

Yeah. They It's literally they you know