![[由 Yuval Noah Harari 创作] Sapiens：人类简历（回忆）【2018】 Yuval Noah Harari（作者）（回忆）](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71N3-FFSDxL._AC_UL165_SR165,165_.jpg)
Harari is an extremely lucid author who excels at distilling the complex into the simple. As in all his books, he seamlessly takes the reader from the distant past to the present to the future. In this case his subject is information and the networks we use to manage and disseminate it. As such it is, but isn’t, a book about AI. “My goal with this book is to provide a more accurate historical perspective on the AI revolution.”
In many ways, it is a book about politics, although the author never names names or talks in terms of blue and red. And his canvas is global and spans history. He does, however, talk about democracy, populism, totalitarianism, and such, terms that are being bandied about a lot in the US this election year. And that, I suspect, is why the reviews of the book vary so widely. We are a polarized nation and want to inject politics into just about everything.
Harari, however, is not a politician or political commentator. He is an historian who, of course, has not defined that history. His job is to spot the patterns. And in this case the pattern has a political implication. “Democracy and dictatorship are typically discussed as contrasting political and ethical systems. This chapter seeks to shift the terms of the discussion, by surveying the history of democracy and dictatorship as contrasting types of information networks.”
Which ultimately, of course, brings us to AI. The author correctly notes that AI is different from all prior information networks (e.g., printing, the telegraph, the Internet, the pre-modern church, etc.) in that it is the first network capable of acting independently of humans. And, as a result, it deserves special consideration, both for its opportunity and its menace.
Adding a bit of gravity and urgency to the matter, Harari notes: “The main argument of this book is that humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely. Our problem, therefore, is a network problem.”
Harari, among many other prominent voices, as a result, argues that we must manage the future application of AI. I agree. Our tech leaders, unfortunately, have shown themselves to be as independent of oversight as AI itself. And given the enormous amounts of capital that AI will undoubtedly unleash, my personal fear is that Silicon Valley, at Wall Street’s urging, will unleash AI before there is any public consensus on its application. After all, that is what they have done at every step of the digital revolution. They routinely release powerful new products that must almost immediately be updated to fix flaws and security oversights in their design. The earliest pioneers of the internet, as but one example, now readily admit that they did not foresee the degree to which it could be abused by malevolent actors. With AI, however, we may not get the chance to address the problems in retrospect.
As part of its mission, the book also offers a plethora of insights into several important underlying currents of thought and conviction important to current culture. Some of my favorite quotes:
“But power isn’t wisdom…”
“The naïve view [of information] thinks that disagreements about values turn out on closer inspection to be the fault of either the lack of information or deliberate disinformation.”
“History isn’t the study of the past; it is the study of change.”
“However, democracy doesn’t mean majority rule; rather, it means freedom and equality for all.”
“It is particularly crucial to remember that elections are not a method for discovering truth. Rather, they are a method for maintaining order by adjudicating between people’s conflicting desires.”
“…information isn’t truth.”
In the end, I believe it is an author’s job, with few exceptions, not to tell us what to believe, but to make us think. And with this book, in addition to his many others, this author has done just that. I do believe, therefore, that this book is worth every reader’s time. You won’t agree with everything he says. I didn’t, either. And it is true that the higher you take the camera the simpler the landscape looks, to the point of causing you to make erroneous conclusions about what you see. Not all patterns have meaning. Sometimes they are just patterns.
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此书中的热门标注
The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion.776 位 Kindle 读者已标注- History isn’t the study of the past; it is the study of change. History teaches us what remains the same, what changes and how things change.761 位 Kindle 读者已标注
- Why are we so good at accumulating more information and power, but far less successful at acquiring wisdom?573 位 Kindle 读者已标注
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Artificial Intelligence: A Force for Good or Bad?
Artificial Intelligence gets a lot of talk these days. Most feel like it’s a ticket to a better life for most everyone, but there are certainly drawbacks to AI and this book, Nexus, explores some of these potential pitfalls while also explaining how our communication, from the ancient past to the present, led us to where we are today.Nexus starts out by taking us back a couple millennia and further, explaining how bureaucracies and storytelling shaped society in the past and how these things still shape us in the present, but in different ways, especially in the way that communication is delivered. The first part of the book focuses on the distant past, while the second and third parts center on what lies ahead. The best parts of the book are the last two sections, as they talk about the present and future and some of the potential downsides to artificial intelligence in our increasingly digital world.This book is somewhat unsettling and many of its warnings present a stark picture of what could happen if artificial intelligence is abused. Most of us, for example, are already aware of the problems caused by social media algorithms and how they can be used to create fake stories which are then sent to people who are most likely to digest them and believe them. We have already seen this happen on a tragic level in Myanmar where Facebook was relied on as a valued news source, even though it was spreading false information that led to violence. But this is potentially only the beginning. The book mentions many other potential causes of trouble, like the use of social credit scores to try to improve human behavior. China has already latched on to social credit scores and there is no reason to think that other nations will not follow suit.Nexus does get you thinking about artificial intelligence, technology, and how these things could negatively impact our lives. The book raises many moral questions that are not always easy to answer. If artificial intelligence really catches on, what could happen to certain jobs? Will government step in and retrain people who need to find a new job because artificial intelligence has eliminated their position? Or what about responsibility? If something bad happens due to artificial intelligence, who should be held accountable? The computer program or the person who wrote it and distributed it? These are not easy questions to answer, and I like that Nexus produces so many talking points and encourages debate.The one issue I have with Nexus is that it tends to be tentative and hesitant in its predictions. It doesn’t make its projections with strong conviction. Rather, it often uses tentative words like could, might, and may. This makes you wonder if any of these predictions are all that likely to become reality and that maybe we have nothing to worry about after all. I think the book chose this path because, well, the future is always uncertain and there is no way to really know what will happen. There is bound to be some negative consequences of artificial intelligence, but I remain hopeful that the net benefits to society will be positive and that governments will step in to regulate it sufficiently, to eliminate most of the negative results.Artificial intelligence is on the rise. Information networks have always existed, but they are quite different from how they were in the past and they will continue to evolve as technology progresses. Nexus is a very good book about AI and its potential for both good and bad impact on society. The book can be a little frightening, but it’s the type of wake up call we all need, and it encourages everyone to take whatever action they can with AI to minimize the bad and encourage the good.
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giancapace
Interessantissimo, importantissimo, scorrevole, si legge volentieri.
2024年11月17日在意大利发布评论
