Transcription
But the world is turning into a card game in which the only thing that matters is what cards you hold and everything else, values, lows matters not at all.
[Music]
Hello again, uh everyone. Um, I have been I've been looking forward to um to having this discussion and really sort of try trying to train my mind um because I think this will be uh deep. It may be depressing. It may be so brace yourself. Uh but before we talk about the state uh of the world and where where we are in this moment in history, um I wanted to ask you um how did you get to be so famous?
>> Um, the short answer is that I I wrote a few books and the long answer is that I got a lot of help from a lot of people. um from my husband and from our entire team we kind of built together a social impact company over the years. Samp people just see my name on the cover of the book or here on the on the screen but behind behind it there are so many people who worked for it to happen. Like I don't know, this interview, this event, I would imagine that hundreds of emails exchanged about this event over the last >> I can attest to that. >> I did not receive or write a single email. There are lots of other people that exchanged all these emails and made this happen.
>> But it is also about the way that you think and your ideas. And I know that you um meditate a lot and I'm very curious about that because um I have tried to meditate and really going past 5 minutes is impossible for me.
>> Uh, so just tell me, what is this process and this is this how you think? This is this what allows you to think big ideas?
I I think so that without my practice of meditation, I would not have been able to write books like Sapiens or or to do the rest of of the things. Um, there are basically two types of meditation in in the world generally. If you, there are many many techniques but there are two main types. You have meditations of generating something, of creating something that starts with the simplest thing of like repeating a mantra that you create. And this is something that makes it relatively easy to focus on because the mind likes creating something. Um, but it doesn't necessarily get you in touch with the reality. This is what humans have been doing most of the time. We like to control things, to create something and impose it on reality.
The other type of meditations, they are meditations of more pure observation and these are the more difficult ones. So again, the the the most common type is just focusing, maybe this is the one that you tried, focusing on the breath coming in and out of the nostrils and you don't try to control the breath. That's relatively easy. You just try to feel your breath coming in, going out, coming in, going out, without controlling it, without judging it, just observing the reality as it is. And this sounds incredibly simple and anybody who ever tried it knows how difficult it is because it's the hardest thing for the mind is just to observe without doing anything, without adding or imposing anything.
When I first started meditate like 25 years ago, I was amazed, struck by my utter inability to do it. And in the end, I I see this is also my role as a historian or as a public intellectual that the hardest thing is to tell the difference between reality and fiction. What is actually happening and what is a story generated by my mind or somebody else's mind and imposed on reality. Um, and the training in meditation to just leave aside everything that your mind generates and just focus on what is actually happening. So if I can't observe my own breath coming in and out of my own nostril for like one minute without being hijacked by some fantasy or some memory or whatever, what choice? What chance do I have of understanding the global economic situation, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war in Ukraine without being hijacked by some fantasy?
>> That's u that's fascinating. So you spend 10 days at a time in silence.
>> Is that true?
I I go every year for a long retreat, usually between 30 and 60 days of silent meditation. Yeah.
>> 30 days.
>> Yeah. I talk enough the rest of the year. So kind of my budget of words is still is still quite >> still high.
>> Yeah. Still high even after keeping complete silent.
>> So it's really interesting because sometimes I'll say to Alice Fishburn, our op-ed editor, yeah, this is a moment when we really want to hear from you. She'll say, "Forget it. He's he's meditating. He'll be we'll have him next month or in in a few months."
Okay, let us let us get to um the the sort of possibly the object of the of your meditation, you know, humankind and where we are. I I want to focus on the present and >> and ask you to sort of put it in perspective for us. I think many of of many of us feel that we are we are living through some kind of historic transition but we're not quite sure how to define it and we're certainly not sure where we are where we are going.
>> So I think we are on really the edge of the precipice in in two distinct but related ways. On the one hand, after the most peaceful era in human history of the last few decades, which was a very problematic era, violent era in many ways, again, I I come from the Middle East. I know this perfectly well, but in comparative terms, it was still the most peaceful era in human history, characterized by unprecedented levels of cooperation and also of human prosperity. Um, the the order that enabled this is now collapsing. There is no viable alternative. At least we don't hear of one at the present. When you destroy an order and you don't have any alternative order, what you get is chaos. What you get is disorder. And uh, we are now falling into chaos, into disorder. Um, the danger is that levels of violence which have been historically low over the last 20, 30, 40 years uh could become worse than ever because of the technologies of destruction that we are uh creating and and and amassing.
Anyway, it's just a tiny symbol of the times that has been commented in in recent days by by many people. The change in in terminology in the United States from Department of Defense to Department of War.
>> What what did you make of that?
Yeah, >> it's it's it's plain. I mean, you don't there is no need of very complicated explanations. It's just shifting from defense to war. What what could be more easy to understand?
>> Well, because I suppose that with with Trump, you never know. I mean, some people think he watched the parade in in uh uh people don't want to understand. He is not trying to he's not kind of double speaking. He is very very plain throughout his career. He's been very very plain. And it's just that people It's so terrifying that people just refuse to acknowledge what they see. and they look for complicated explanations. No, it's not as it seems. It's actually completely different. All the indications are that this what we see is what we get.
You know, for me, one of the key moments in his presidency so far uh uh was the meeting with President Zalinski in the White House. And you know when Zalinski was trying to talk about uh uh sovereignty, international law, peace, and Trump was basically shouting at him, you don't have the cards. You don't have the cards. And this is a guy for whom the world is a card game with winners and losers. And that's the only thing. And uh, it's terrifying to hear it from one of the most powerful people in the world, but the world is turning into a card game in which the only thing that matters is what cards you hold and everything else, values, lows matters not at all.
Are you assuming that the liberal order cannot survive and that this is almost an is this an inevitable noc is ever inevitable. History is never deterministic. People make choices and this is what again it's not that everything is possible. You have constraints but there is always quite a lot of room for maneuver. And one thing uh that we can learn from the history of the last few decades is that it is feasible. It is possible to build a more cooperative and peaceful world because it has been done.
If we were having this discussion in 1945, then you could have told me or people could have told me, look, for thousands of years, the world was just a card game. Everything that mattered was just a a military force, was just power. Everything else is just fantasies.
>> But we have the example of the last few decades which were not a fantasy. They were a reality. a reality that resulted not from some divine miracle or a change in the laws of nature but from lots of humans making better decisions than in the past. And it was not a fantasy because you know there are many ways to measure it. But one place that I like to look at is government budgets because you know if you read poetry people will tell you know this is just poets fantasizing but budgets are serious stuff and it shows you the kind of realistic uh uh u hopes and fears of human collectives. For most of human history, if you look at the budget of the Roman Empire, of uh uh the the Athenian democracy, of uh Britain in the 19th century, more than 50% of the government budget went to the military, to pay soldiers, to build fortresses, to construct warships. Democracies or dictatorships, big or small, everybody spent more than 50% of the budget on the military.
In the early 21st century, the average expenditure worldwide on the military, including countries like North Korea, Israel, Iran, was something like 6 to 7%. Whereas the average expenditure on healthcare was 10%. It's the first time in human history that governments worldwide spent much more on health care than on defense, not war, defense. And and this was not a fantasy. Read them the budgets. Now the military budgets are skyrocketing in Russia, for instance, according to the most modest estimates, depends how you count and things are secret, but at least 30% if not 40 to 50% of the government budget goes to the military and this will spread unless we take better actions.
>> already in Europe at least amongst NATO NATO countries budgets are going up and there's a whole debate about welfare versus uh versus warfare and it is something that's been driven by um by uh the Trump administration. You said unless we do something.
>> Mhm.
>> What is something?
>> Um, on the individual level, you know, each one of us, we have our own sphere of activity and uh where we can actually do something that matters. Just, you know, reading lots of stuff online and doing likes is not action.
>> Tell that to young people.
So, you know, each person knows what is their field of activity when way when they can way they can make a small difference. If you're a nurse, you can make a small difference in your clinic in the way that you treat people. If you're on the board of a school, you can make a difference to the curriculum or to what is being taught or how pupils are are being are treated like that. Every person has a sphere of activity when they can really actually do something that matters and I think that in if enough people do the right thing, we will be okay.
Now, if you look at the highest levels of of governments, then I would say that the what we see now in the world is a crisis of trust, a crisis of trust between humans. And we'll shortly talk about AI, but we see this parallel development that trust in human institutions is collapsing and at the same time, trust in algorithms is rising. So trust, which is the the basis for all human societies, is shifting from humans to algorithms, from organic beings to AIs, and this is extremely dangerous for humanity. Um, there is this growing deficit of trust. And this is the I would say that if you ask me, what is the role of leaders? Leaders, their role is to build trust on two levels. First of all, within their own group, whether you are leading a platoon of soldiers or a company or an entire country, your first priority is to build trust between the members of your group. And we are now seeing all over the world a brand of leaders whose politics is the exact opposite. Like leaders that when they look at the metaphorical body of the nation and they see a scar, instead of putting some balm on it to heal it, they poke their fingers into it and try to widen it as far as possible because their career is built on sowing distrust within the nation, dividing the nation into warring tribes and presenting themselves as the leaders of one of these warring tribes. And I see it from my home country of Israel that this is how Netanyahu built his his career. And you know, if you ask Israelis, what is the number one problem of Israel today? It's the only thing almost that people in the country still agree, the number one problem is the awful hatred between different parts of of Israeli society itself. And if you think who is the person, if you make a list of all the people in the world capable of of dealing with this, the last person on the list would be Benjamin Netanyahu. If you take a random person here in the crowd, they have a better chance of healing the. And this is not an Israeli phenomenon. You see it in the US. You see it in Europe. A brand of leaders whose career is built on uh uh dividing the nation against itself.
The other main role of a leader is to create trust outside uh between different groups because otherwise you you cannot survive. You know from the even if you look at the at the at the market, people have this idea that the market is pure competition. It isn't. The market which is pure competition collapses. If you can't trust anybody in the market, you cannot make any deals. you cannot make any contracts. Similarly, if you look at the international arena, so of course there is competition between countries, but especially in this era, and we'll I I guess we'll immediately go to to talk about AI. If humanity is divided against itself, we have no chance of uh uh dealing with the immense forces that we are uh unleashing at the moment.
And I definitely want to get to the uh those immense forces that we are um unleashing, but I I wanted to also hear you on um Israel.
>> Mhm.
>> You're not living there right now, but you lived there most of your life.
>> Um, for a long time, you didn't really speak that much about about Israel and and and now uh you are very outspoken. People watch what's what's going on in in Gaza, this sort of unspeakable uh devastation and don't really understand why no one can do anything >> about it. Is there anything that is is there any influence at all that can be brought on the Israeli government?
Mhm. Uh, there are certainly forces like the US government that have immense influence on Israel. Uh, and they are not using that influence or or at least not enough. And nothing here is deterministic. This is part of this new world order or more this new world disorder that things that were thought just unthinkable, impossible a few years ago are becoming reality. And again, you have people all over the world watching what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in Ukraine, what is happening in several other places and realizing this can happen here too. Uh, so it's not just the problem of the Middle East or the problem of Ukraine. If the order collapses, everybody will suffer.
>> And and you see you see uh the war in Gaza as a kind of manifestation of this. Al although it did happen long before Trump uh it did start long before Trump came.
>> The collapse of of of you know, if I had to date the collapse of the order, it started in around 2016.
>> Not in 2024.
>> In the first Trump presidency.
>> In the first Trump presidency, Brexit, when the countries that built the global order basically said, we are not interested in maintaining this order anymore. It's one thing when you have, you know, the kind of usual pariahs that stand outside and says we don't like this order. It's another thing that when the countries that actually built the order are turning their backs on it. And um, you know, I remember that before the Brexit vote, I saw a video, I think it was by Gordon Brown, in I think it was in Coventry Cathedral, but maybe it's my memory playing tricks with me. A cathedral, what what was destroyed in the Blitz and that uh um that was kept as a memorial to the horrors of the Second World War. And it was a very short video of like two two minutes. And basically he was saying that this can come back. And in 2016, this sounded, you know, just fear-mongering. Uh, it's impossible that this will come back. And almost 10 years, less than 10 years later now, I think everybody realizes this is coming back, this can come back.
>> You've uh you've written about your fears for the what what you said was the soul of of Israel.
>> What is it that you fear?
And I saw my my country do things that even though I had a lot of criticism of Netanyahu's government, I I couldn't believe I couldn't imagine that it could get so bad so quickly. Um, again, this is part of what motivates me when I look at other parts of the world right now. People don't realize how quickly things can get terribly, terribly bad, unimaginably bad. Like you've climbed to the top of of this cliff and you look down and yes, it took a very long time to climb, but the way down is can be much, much, much faster. And just the process of brutalization that that people underwent is is really horrific. And again, of of course, the most h terrible thing is what is happening in Gaza, but you look at what is happening inside Israeli society and you see the effect of brutalization uh there as well. For instance, in the treatment of the families of the hostages that, you know, in previous hostage crises in Israel, they were sacred >> like in the days of the Gilad Shalit >> for instance. And now some people, at least, they cursed them and they spit at them and they called them traitors. And again, just the process, the inner process of of brutalization is is is unimaginable. And also the process of destruction, I would say, of 2,000 years of of Jewish tradition and of Jewish wisdom. You know, after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem, uh, after the great Jewish revolt in the first century CE, for 2,000 years, and a a Judaism developed as the religion of a persecuted minority, um, committed to ideals of tolerance, of pluralism. And you know, to be say a Jew in medieval England was, you know, you have 99% of the population thinking and behaving one way, and just by existing, you're telling the world it should be possible to think and behave in a different way. I don't celebrate Christmas, I celebrate a different festival. And all of that was erased in Israel within such a short time. You know, the the uh um sages of Judaism, they had to deal with a very problematic legacy because if you look at biblical Judaism, it was a very violent, intolerant religion. And they had this really violent, intolerant text in their hands and they kind of reinterpreted it in very, very creative ways over 2,000 years to create a very different vision of the world. And now the people who lead Israel, they just take these 2,000 years of Jewish history, tear it to pieces. Let's go back to the biblical origin, the the violent and and bloody origin of of where we came from. And you know, I I sometimes ask people in Israel, forget about everything else. Tell me, what are the positive values that this country still embodies? That this country you're fighting for so hard for it. Is it an empty vessel? What's inside the vessel? What are the positive values that it still embodies? The only values they they can come up with are the values of the Roman legions that destroyed Jerusalem, which are positive values to some extent. Courage, loyalty, patriotism. What does Israel stand for today? Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which is a noble value in many ways. It's it's good. It's good and sweet to die for one's country. Uh, which when I grew up, I thought it was for Israelis or Jews in the audience, I thought Trump came up with this in 1919. No, it's Horace. It's the ancient Roman poet. Trump was just quoting the the Roman poet. And these are noble values. I I wouldn't dismiss them. Um, but is that enough? I mean, if this is everything that the vessel contained, then we could just have become Romans in the first century and be done with it. It was kind of a waste of 2,000 years.
Um, at this what you're describing, you know, whether it's in Israel or across the world, is a very, very perilous moment. And it is at this moment that we are actually witnessing the greatest advances in technology. Some people will say, well, this is the hope, this is the positive side of the moment that we are living.
>> But you see it as equally perilous. You have called AI alien intelligence. Do do you want to explain to the audience what you mean?
Um, the one thing everybody should understand about AI is that AI is not a tool. It is an agent. All previous human inventions from, you know, the printing press, the atom bomb, whatever, they were tools in our hands because it was humans who decided what to do with them. It was humans who developed them. AI is the first technology that can make decisions by itself, that can invent new ideas by itself, that can learn and change by itself. Yes, humans design it originally, but if it has no ability to learn and change by itself, it is not an AI.
But you're describing a general AI or u artificial general intelligence. We are we are not there yet.
>> We are in again, in limited fields, we are already there.
>> Again, already in 2016, you had, for instance, in in the game of Go. So AlphaGo invented new ways how to play the game of Go. It's an ancient Chinese game invented more than 2,000 years ago. Tens of millions of people played it over more than 2,000 years. We thought we discovered all the ways to play Go. But then AlphaGo came and within basically a few days, uncovered entirely new ways to play Go that didn't occur to any human being in more than 2,000 years. Now you say, okay, this is just a game, of course, but this is just the beginning. This is increasingly likely to happen in military strategy, in financial strategy, in religion, in politics. We talked about Judaism. Judaism is a religion of texts. Ultimately, any religion of texts is likely to be taken over by AI in the next few years because AI is a greater expert on texts than any human being.
>> What do you mean taken over? You mean that this is how people will understand?
>> You have a question about a certain moral issue. So you cannot ask the question to the Bible or the Talmud traditionally because they can't talk and they can be interpreted in different ways. So you go to the rabbi, you go to the priest who get their authority because they are experts on texts. They read lots of texts. They remember lots of texts and they say, "Yes, it's written in the Bible like this, but in the Talmud, it says this, and the Rambam says that." Okay, that that's the ruling. Now, no rabbi is able to read all the texts of Judaism because there are too many of them, and certainly not remember all of them. AI can do that. AI can read very quickly all the texts ever written by every obscure rabbi in a corner of Poland or Morocco, remember every single word in them and find patterns and connections that no human being is capable of. So increasingly people, and this is already happening, people ask questions, moral questions, spiritual questions to an AI rabbi or an AI priest. And it's difficult for the religion to say, no, no, no, just ignore them because they bring the scriptural evidence. You cannot ignore the texts. It's the same in the judicial system that no lawyer can remember all the laws and all the cases. AI, and also in finance.
>> Some people will hear that and think, well, I mean, that's that's actually progress. That that makes it it makes access and explanation easier. And some people will argue that actually in the medical field, we're we're about to enter into a golden age of of discovery. I mean, I I think that the positive potential is immense, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it. Uh, whether in healthcare, in dealing with climate change, the again, the possibilities, the positive possibilities are immense, but at the same time, the dangers are is equally big. Again, we are hearing with the Financial Times. So let's talk about finance.
>> You talk about the financial system. You're very worried about the financial system. I mean, the last big financial crisis, 2007-2008, started when some human wizards invented this new financial device, CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, something like that, which worked wonderfully for a few years, generating billions of of dollars in profits for central individuals, and then everything collapsed because it wasn't regulated properly. Now, what happens if AIs invent new financial devices which are orders of magnitude more complex than CDOs? No humans can regulate them because no humans understand even what is happening. For a couple of years, somebody is making trillions, I don't know, and then everything collapses. And you come to the US president or the the British PM, whoever it is, and you say, the financial system is in meltdown. Nobody has any idea why because nobody understands it anymore. Only the AIs understand it. The AIs tell us that within the next 30 minutes, we must do this. Nobody understands why and what it means. But we have to trust them. No, because they are the only ones that still understand the finance. What happens to politics? Forget democracy and dictatorship. Whether it's a dictator or it's an elected president or prime minister. If politicians no longer understand finance, that puts a huge question mark over their ability to to to manage the system. And and I I would say that when talking about AI, we should focus on concrete, immediate questions. One of the questions that should be debated right now, should we allow AIs to open bank accounts? It is now, we are very close to the point when it's technically possible for an AI to manage a bank account, earn money doing stuff online for people, investing that money in the stock exchange, making more money. As far as I know, I'm not an expert, but as far as I know, according to US law, you don't have to be a human being to be considered a legal person. Corporations, according to US law, not sure about the situation here, are legal persons. And according to the US Supreme Court from the Citizens United ruling in 2010, uh uh corporations, because they are legal persons, even have freedom of speech, which in the context in which this was ruled, they can make political donations. Imagine a situation, maybe before the next elections, when maybe the richest person in the country is an incorporated AI, and it wants to make political donations to certain candidates in exchange for supporting AI rights. This is a Okay, I'm I'm I'm listening to you and thinking, I need to It's just water. I'm listening to you and thinking, okay, I need a drink. But is it possible that this AI would actually produce a better outcome in elections?
>> Yes. Again, one thing that I wouldn't rush to judge again, is it good? Is it bad? Going back to meditation, the first thing is just to take a deep breath and understand what is the reality of the present moment. The reality of the present moment is that for the first time in history, we have produced a technology which has real agency, real ability to make decisions, and it has certain it raises certain very practical questions. Now, the whole issue with corporations is very crucial. Corporations, the the idea that you can have non-human persons, corporations, has been around basically for centuries, but it was always just a a convenient legal fiction because all the decisions of all corporations were actually made by human beings. So, okay, you had the I don't know, a Microsoft corporation, all the decisions of Microsoft were actually made by some human engineer, human executive, human shareholder. There was no other option. Now, you can technically create a corporation that whose decisions are made by a non-human intelligence. Good, bad, leave it aside. What do we as a society do in this situation?
>> But that's that's the question. So, you know, all of u the CEOs who are working on this technology. In fact, I mean, the first time we met, we were at a at one of these conferences where they had asked you >> uh to speak. They they respect what you have to say. Are you still in touch with people and do you think >> some of them?
Yeah. And do you think that there's a uh a need and what you advocate is a moratorium because at this stage, you have to sort of stop and think about where you're where you're going with the technology.
>> Most of them are extremely worried, at least privately, because they know better than anybody else the kind of powers they are unleashing. If you go on on on their personal record, you would find that many of them, when they were less famous and powerful, they spoke on the record saying some very, very disturbing things about this technology. Now they are in a much more fragile situation. So they keep their mouth more shut. But uh, they are aware, better almost than anybody else, of what is happening. Some of them at least are extremely worried, if not terrified. But they are caught in a dilemma which they don't know how to get themselves out of, of an classical arms race or prisoner's dilemma situation. You know, when I meet them, I basically ask them routinely, kind of two questions. Um, the first question I ask is, why are you moving so fast? Just I don't say stop, just slow down to give society a chance to digest what is happening and have a debate and decide what to do. And they all say, basically, we are aware of the risks, we would like to slow down, but if we slow down, how can we be sure that our competitors in the other company or in the other country slows down? If we slow down and they don't, they will win the AI race and the world will be ruled by the most ruthless people. We are nice people. This is why we want to slow down. They are not nice. So, do you want the not nice people to win? Okay, first question. First answer. Then the second question. Okay, so I understand why you're rushing to develop this super-intelligent AI. You can't trust the other humans. Makes sense. Do you think you'll be able to trust the super-intelligent AIs you're developing? And the same people who just gave me this speech about why it's not possible to trust their competitors, the human competitors, suddenly become very, very kind of all kind of hippie fluffy and says, yes, we can trust the super-intelligent AIs, which is almost insane because, you know, with humans, at least we have thousands of years of experience with humans. We have a somewhat good understanding of human psychology. We understand the human drive for power. But we also understand the how to check the human drive for power. With AIs, we have no experience. We just created the very first primitive prototypes. We already know that they can lie, manipulate, uh uh change their goals, do unexpected things. We don't know exactly how to understand what's happening there, how to check it. So there is far less reason to have trust in super-intelligent AIs than in than in humans. And yet, it seems like we we are getting our priorities wrong here.
>> Um, I uh I apologize. I did mean to give uh the audience at least 10 minutes, but I've got four minutes left. I will take a couple of uh questions. Who can raise their hand faster? Okay. The lady here and the gentleman there. Thank you. What's the number one value you would cherish in the you would like us to cherish or um teach the new generation, our children?
>> What the number one positive value? Positive value. I would say trust is the most important one because it's the basis for everything else. Um, human society is based on trust. If we lose that, everything collapses. Um, even, you know, going back to the breath, every breath we take is trusting something outside us that it will not poison us. You can't live if you don't trust what is outside you. And um, on on a kind of practical level, it means for instance, that when you're interacting with somebody, start with a charitable position. When they do something, when they say something that doesn't sound right, don't immediately jump to the worst possible interpretation of why they said or did what they do. Start with a charitable interpretation. If you then have evidence that they are bad actors, sometimes people are untrustworthy. You shouldn't be naive, but start with the charitable position.
>> Go ahead, sir.
>> First of all, thank you Rola for picking me up. Um, thank you very much. We all really enjoyed that. My question was uh, you know, a balanced, clever person like you, would you consider standing for elections and leading Israel?
>> I wasn't expecting that one for you, but yeah.
>> I mean, I I just I don't think I have the right qualities. I think that we need good people to go into politics. I think it's an admirable position. The pe one of the worst things you can say is all politicians are liars. All politicians are crooks because then you're basically giving a free free ride to the really bad ones. It's not the case. There have been there still are good politicians and we need good people to go into politics, but it requires certain qualities that I just don't have, that are sometimes the opposite of the qualities of of a good scholar. Like politics ultimately is about compromise, knowing how you you need good, very good social skills, you need how to negotiate, how to compromise. I'm not being like modest, like how do you say that, false modesty. I just know myself. I I'm not good at these things. This is for instance, one of the things that my husband is doing. Like if you need to negotiate something, it's with my husband, not with me, because I don't know how to do it. So maybe he should stand for for elections.
>> But >> wait, where where is he? He can come forward.
Uh, I I'm going to ask actually the last question. Sorry guys.
>> So you and I are sitting here in five years. What do we look like? Are we actually sitting here?
>> No. I mean, again, it's the first time in history that nobody has any clue about the most basic features of human society in 5 to 10 years. It was always impossible to predict politics, whether a war will erupt, a revolution, whatever. But about the basics of human life, things changed over centuries. Now we have no idea, let's say, how the job market would look like. What jobs will still people have in five or 10 years?
>> Well, I have a job.
>> And I >> would you have a job?
>> I don't know. Like I'm now writing, working on on a new book. Part of me seriously thinks this is my last book because by the time it is out, AI will be writing books so much better than human authors that there will no longer be a niche for me.
I I think the audience doesn't agree, right? You don't you don't agree, right? Uh, we still think you're going to be a better author than than AI.
>> Again, I would like maybe to end because we don't have much time on the note that we still are in control. I don't know about the situation in 10 or 20 years with AI, but at present, humans are still in control and we have choices to make. And if we make good and wise choices, uh, the future can be better than any previous time in history because we can harness the enormous power of AI and of other new technologies for good. And it's our choice. Again, you look at the 20th century, you could see how technologies like trains and electricity and radio, they were harnessed by some people to build totalitarian dictatorships. And uh, but other people harnessed the same technologies to build liberal democracies. So it's the same in the 21st century. But the key is to understand the the technology. And we need it's not a good situation when a few tycoons in two, three countries are the only ones who understand what is happening and are making some of the most important decisions in history. This will affect every human being on earth. So we need everybody to have at least a rudimentary understanding of what is happening so that we can all take part in the conversation and reach a decision together as a humanity, instead of taking the dictates of a few tech tycoons and presidents.
Well, that is uh an excellent and frankly hopeful note to to end on. Uh, you thank you so much for for being with us.
>> Thank you.
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