The Sapiens author looks into the past to warn about what our future might look like. The publishing world is now releasing a steady flow of books about Artificial Intelligence (AI), some prognosticating doom, others predicting a supercharged future. Into this vexed subject steps Yuval Noah Harari, mega successful historian and philosopher, who has sold some 45 million books. Harari has long had an interest in information technology, and how it interacts and shapes society. His 2016 followup to Sapiens, Homo Deus, mused on what technology might have in store for the human race, and how our outsized desires could be our downfall. That book had a bemused tone at the folly of humans. Nexus takes on a more alarmed tone. The main contention of the book, which many may find hard to accept, is that more information does not lead us to the truth. Harari writes that information more often than not is about maintaining order. An alarming example is Stalinist Russia. The Soviet state was able to amass enormous amounts of information about its citizens and thus keep them in line. Or there is the invention of the Gutenberg press, which democratised information and made possible the European witch hunts. In 1486 the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer published his bestseller The Hammer of Witches, which kicked off a bloodcurdling period in European history. On a more positive note the Bible, Harari contends, was a genius piece of information technology, as it kept an agreed upon set of “facts” that could hold society together. If Biblical facts were contested over time, there was a self-correcting function, in that scholars and clerics could write new interpretations, publish them, and generate a new point of consensus. The second part of the book, after the historical overview of information systems, concentrates on the future of artificial intelligence, its possible advantages and many dangers. In Australia, we have perhaps had a taste of the brutal effects of unregulated algorithms in the robodebt scandal, where many vulnerable people were sent incorrect computer generated tax bills. Harari argues that AI will become so complex, with its large-scale machine learning capabilities, that no human will be able to understand it. If society’s basic functions are run by incomprehensible AI, how will citizens have redress when things go wrong? In essence, Nexus argues for regulation and human intervention. Yuval Noah Harari’s great skill is as a communicator of complex ideas, drawing together different strands of history and weaving them together into a compelling pattern. The first half of Nexus, which deals with the history of information, ideas, society and politics, is brilliant. The second half, while raising many interesting points that the reader may not have thought of, flags slightly. As Harari is writing about the present and possible future, it feels like we cannot see the forest for the trees, stuck as we are in the midst of so much technological progress. Harari makes predictions about the future, but it is impossible to know what will pan out. A brilliant book, also a highly enjoyable read and one that will open your mind to a new way of thinking about information, technology and society. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI, by Yuval Noah Harari. Published by Fern Press. $39.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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