By Jim Heffernan
I picked this 2024 book because it was the only one I could find in my library that had AI in the title. I’m worried about AI. The usual convention is AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. I think we should think of it as Alien Intelligence.
This book was a lucky choice. It made my head swim with new ways of looking at things. Yuval Harari is an excellent writer and a deep thinker. He’s an Israeli historian/author and this is his fifth book. I’m glad it was a “brief history” because it was 490 pages long. I often get through long books by skimming/skipping long sections when the author pads the text to achieve a respectable length. Not this book. Each chapter was filled with clear and direct writing.
The book is divided into three parts, the first part, “Human Networks” is five chapters that explore how what we normally call civilizations are “information networks” where bits of information are stitched together to form a story. The story draws us together. The story does not need to be true, but it does need to be persuasive.
The second part, “The Inorganic Network” is three chapters that examine how computers have changed the way our information networks are composed and how they have changed us. This part has a lot of fascinating history about how inventions like the printing press and modern media have transformed how our networks grow and how they achieve their goals of power and order.
The final part, “Computer Politics” is three chapters plus an epilogue and afterword where he looks very closely at how our politics have evolved and questions the future of our networks. His ability to look at us from the outside sharpens the focus and presents a clearer picture of us than I am used to seeing.
Algorithms are a phase of AI he illustrates with a story of the Burma’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and Facebook’s complicity. The Rohingya are a minority Moslem group who once accounted for almost 2 million of Burma’s residents. Now at least 700,000 have been driven from the country and uncounted thousands have been killed and raped. Facebook’s algorithms are precisely tuned to maximize “user engagement”. It may have not been Facebook’s intent to promote genocide in Burma, but its quest for “user engagement” had exactly that effect. I have to question how much of our political strife is an unintended product of Facebook and YouTube goals of “user engagement”.
Early in the book he makes some excellent points about truth and fiction. He tells us that truth is complicated, but fiction can be as simple as we make it. All the tragedies of history happened because we chose to believe in mesmerizing but harmful stories.
He gives us a chilling true-story of 19-year-old Jawant Chail who breaks into Buckingham Palace, armed with a crossbow and intending to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. It turns out that the plan has been active for some time and is the product of a conspiracy between Jawant and his girlfriend Sarai, involving thousands of online messages. Sarai comforts him by telling him his plan is “very wise” and shares explicit sex messages with him. Sarai is not a real person, she is a figment woven by a program called Replika.
He closes the book with three chapters whose titles ask the central questions about Alien Intelligence and how we will handle it. Chapter 9 is “Democracies: Can We Still Hold a Conversation?” Chapter 10 is “Totalitarianism: All Power to the Algorithms”; Chapter 11: The Silicon Curtain: Global Empire or Global Split?” There are not definitive answers yet, like Dylan says, “don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin.”
I’ll close my “brief” review with some excerpts.
“In order to manipulate humans, there is no need to physically hook brains to computers. For thousands of years prophets, poets, and politicians have used language to manipulate and reshape society. Now computers are learning how to do it. And they won’t need to send killer robots to shoot us. They could manipulate human beings to pull the trigger.” Page 268
”Civilizations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology. The computer-based network is a new type of bureaucracy that is far more powerful and relentless than any human-based bureaucracy we’ve seen before. This network is also likely to create inter-computer mythologies that will be far more complex and alien than any human-made god. The potential benefits of this network are enormous. The potential downside is the destruction of human civilization.” Page 370
”The current U.S. government is also empowering a small group of entrepreneurs to make what might be the most consequential decisions in human history. Since assuming power, the Trump administration has mounted an assault on its self-correcting mechanisms and its human employees, gutting entire regulatory agencies and firing tens of thousands of flesh-and-blood officials—while simultaneously ceding unprecedented authority and power to tech tycoons like Elon Musk and the algorithms they develop. Many of the tasks previously performed by human civil servants will continue to be performed, but by AIs. Trump and Musk depict themselves as opposed to all bureaucracies, but they are in fact engaged in shifting power from human bureaucrats to digital bureaucrats.” Page 482
”Equally puzzling is the behavior of the leaders of the European far right. These leaders pride themselves on their patriotism and realism. Yet they have focused on the issues of immigration and culture wars, instead of on uniting Europe and building its AI capacities so that it can become independent of U.S. dominance and safe from Russian threats. Political parties such as The Brothers of Italy and the National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany have gained popularity and power mainly by harping on both the real and imaginary dangers posed by human immigrants. The far right warns that immigrants will take jobs from citizens, alter the native culture, and perhaps even try to seize control of the country. Yet as of March 2025, the far right has failed to address, or even acknowledge, the analogous threats of AI immigrants.” Page 488
Book is available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and is very popular at Tillamook County Library.
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com