22
" In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all the information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is part of the reason why the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy.
“However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse. If you concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, disregarding all privacy concerns, you can train much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. For example, if an authoritarian government orders all its citizens to have their DNA scanned and to share all their medical data with some central authority, it would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data is strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century – the attempt to concentrate all information in one place – might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first century. "
― Yuval Noah Harari , 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
23
" In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all the information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is part of the reason why the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy.
However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse. If you concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, disregarding all privacy concerns, you can train much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. For example, if an authoritarian government orders all its citizens to have their DNA scanned and to share all their medical data with some central authority, it would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data is strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century – the attempt to concentrate all information in one place – might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first century. "
― Yuval Noah Harari , 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
29
" All stories are incomplete. Yet in order to construct a viable identity for myself and give meaning to my life, I don’t really need a complete story devoid of blind spots and internal contradictions. To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions: first, it must give me some role to play. A New Guinean tribesman is unlikely to believe in Zionism or in Serbian nationalism, because these stories don’t care at all about New Guinea and its people. Like movie stars, humans like only those scripts that reserve an important role for them.
Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons. The story provides me with an identity and gives meaning to my life by embedding me within something bigger than myself. But there is always a danger that I might start wondering what gives meaning to that ‘something bigger’. If the meaning of my life is to help the proletariat or the Polish nation, what exactly gives meaning to the proletariat or to the Polish nation? There is a story of a man who claimed that the world is kept in place by resting on the back of a huge elephant. When asked what the elephant stands on, he replied “that it stands on the back of a large turtle. And the turtle? On the back of an even bigger turtle. And that bigger turtle? The man snapped and said: ‘Don’t bother about it. From there onwards it’s turtles all the way down. "
― Yuval Noah Harari , 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
32
" A maioria dos líderes políticos e dos magnatas do mundo dos negócios está permanentemente com pressa. Porém, se queremos estudar um tema a fundo, precisamos de muito tempo e, em especial, do luxo de poder desperdiçar tempo. (…) Se não podemos dar-nos ao luxo de desperdiçar tempo, nunca encontraremos a verdade. Pior ainda, o poder em grande quantidade distorce a verdade inevitavelmente. O poder prende-se com a mudança da realidade, não com vê-la como ela é. (…) Se temos muito poder, todas as pessoas que vemos tentam lisonjear-nos, agradar-nos ou pedir-nos algo. (…) Se queremos realmente a verdade, então temos de nos afastar do buraco negro do poder e permitir a nós próprios gastar muito tempo a vaguear na periferia. O conhecimento revolucionário raramente chega ao centro, pois o centro está alicerçado no conhecimento já existente. "
― Yuval Noah Harari , 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
38
" Não há motivo, no entanto, para pensar que a inteligência artificial vai adquirir consciência, porque a inteligência e a consciência são coisas muito diferentes. A inteligência é a capacidade de resolver problemas. A consciência é a capacidade de sentir coisas como dor, alegria, amor e raiva. Tendemos a confundir as duas porque, no caso dos seres humanos e de outros mamíferos, a inteligência anda de mãos dadas com a consciência. (…) O perigo é que, se investirmos muito no desenvolvimento da inteligência artificial e pouco no desenvolvimento da consciência humana, a sofisticada inteligência artificial dos computadores só servirá para dar mais poder à estupidez natural dos seres humanos. "
― Yuval Noah Harari , 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
