Nexus

Gabi's Review 

Yuval Harari, author of the bestseller Sapiens, has delivered another compelling narrative in his latest book. Nexus is a lens on information systems that have scaled our success from ancient times till now, at the dawn of AI. He states that while every technology prior to AI has been a tool, this will be the first time a human invention has birthed an agent with a computational capacity that far outstrips our own. Harari argues that if we are to avoid the destructive potential of AI, we need consultation, the ability to acknowledge mistakes and the embracing of new ideas.

Harari warns us not to be tech utopianists. Truth, he tells us, is expensive. By this he means to arrive at verifiable evidence requires painstakingly bureaucratic, transparent and accountable fact-checking. Strong self-correcting mechanisms are at the heart of our best information systems. A good example of this is scientific journals in which everything published is a series of updates of peer-reviewed findings replacing prior knowledge. Nature itself is a self-correcting mechanism. By contrast, the Bible is a great example of an information source with no self-correcting mechanisms. Harari asks us to consider how the canonisation of the Bible, with the inclusion of the misogynistic Timothy 1 and the exclusion of The Act of Paul and Thecla (a female apostle), society might have avoided misogyny. The canonisation of AI must consider bias, alignment and values that reflect our own.

Nexus provides a plethora of historical political incidents where the shaping of information has disastrous outcomes, and which has crucial relevance for the emerging technology. The alignment question is foremost in this book. One shocking example was the social media news feed algorithms that inadvertently contributed directly to the amplification of genocide in the Rohingya massacre in Myanmar in 2016. The argument for early intervention is clearly evidenced by the story of how AI defeated Captcha (the bot prevention puzzle). While it may be amusing to watch it co-opting the human helpline, lying about being a bot and claiming a vision impairment raises the question of making it a legal requirement of software development for bots not to misrepresent themselves as human. 

The elephant in the room is Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, where machines capable of independent decisions make those choices in black boxes free from human intervention. Harari argues that information and technology can either liberate or enslave us. He asks: if we are the wisest animal on the planet, why are we so self-destructive? He believes destructive behaviour is not in our nature; the fault lies in bad information management. He asks us to consider whether we want to hand over our power to technology or remain firmly in the loop that corrects its evolution?

I can recommend this remarkable read to every curious mind.

Publisher's Review 

From renowned historian and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari comes the story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI - a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive?

NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.