well joining me now is historian and

philosopher juval Noah Harari ju great

to see you here in the Piers Morgan

uncensored Studio last time I

interviewed you you were uh with us

remotely and we were cut off in our

Prime in what we thought may be an AI

attack but this time I can assure you we

won’t get cut off let’s start with AI

okay because you you’re all over this

you in Fortune Magazine this week

described AI as an alien threat that

could wipe us out instead of coming from

outer space it’s coming from California

quite chilling

words do you think that there’s a real

danger that if we mishandle artificial

intelligence it could literally wipe us

out yes and it’s not only me uh many of

the experts in the field including the

people who developed this technology

share some of the same fears um you know

what everybody needs to know about AI

basically is just two things it’s the

first tool in human history

that can make decisions by itself and

it’s the first tool in human history

that can create ideas by itself you know

atom bombs in the end they empowered us

because they couldn’t make decisions how

to use them human needed to make the

decision but AI can decide who to bomb

and can create completely new ideas in

everything from Finance to religion so

that’s so it’s very interesting because

Professor Steven Hawking in his last

television interview was with me as it

turned out mhm and I asked him what was

the biggest threat to Mankind and he

said when artificial intelligence learns

to self-design yeah now is what you’re

describing self-design or is that

another stage for that’s another stage

but it what’s the difference between

what you’re describing and self-design

it’s basically the same thing once it

can create new ideas it can also create

new ideas about itself about its own

design but we are talking about a power

that escapes our control you know it’s

one of the deepest Fe years of humanity

for thousands of years and now it’s it’s

actually happening so it could be like

a a version of coid 19 in the sense of

it gets out it gets out of our control

it turned out coid wasn’t as deadly as

the plague for example but this could be

far more deadly but it could it could

permeate our life at the same speed yeah

the easiest scenario to imagine is like

somebody giving the AI the task of say

creating super powerful virus and the AI

just goes along and does it but and

could make it more deadly than a human

being could absolutely can again combine

I don’t know Ebola with coid and and

create something that we are hardly able

to to even imagine but it could happen

in more complicated ways think about for

instance the financial system thinking

back to the 20078 financial crisis it

started with these very complicated

Financial devices cdos that some genius

mathematicians in in in Wall Street

invented nobody understood them except

these genius mathematicians nobody

regulated them they thought they were a

good idea and they broke down the

financial system now fast forward five

years from now maybe we give more and

more responsibility to the financial

system to AIS that create new Financial

devices that no human beings understand

and you know there is a crisis and the

PM or the president wants to know what’s

what’s happening and the advisor says we

don’t we don’t understand the AI is

created these new Financial devices that

know human being are beyond our

comprehension yes I mean it reminds me a

little bit I remember when the first

chess computers came out and they were

gigantic like deep blue and Gary

Kasparov the Russian Grand Master beat

beat these computers to start with but

very quickly they developed at such a

rate that now it’s impossible for any

human being to beat the computer at

chess absolutely I mean in a narrow

field like chess I mean it’s it’s long

gone they are better than us but are you

are you suggesting that in a way what

happened there could be replicated very

quickly yes and and it could lead to our

Extinction if we’re not careful in

broader Fields yes it can happen in

again Fields like like Finance Fields

like the job market is under a more and

more jobs are going to be changed or

even replaced so let me ask you on jobs

I got a question for you I was thinking

about when I knew you were coming in I’m

thinking about this logically if we end

up with a load of factories around the

world manned by robots by aih MH then

all those people millions of people who

currently work in factories they’re

going to be out of work yeah and they

have no income so they can’t buy any

products that the robots are making in

the factories MH so that economic model

collapses doesn’t it or am I being an

idiot no I mean this is one of the

dangers now it’s not likely that

there’ll be a complete disappearance of

jobs as old jobs disappear new jobs will

emerge the two big problems are f are

first how to retrain people to fill the

new jobs you lost your old job you need

to retrain who is going to finance that

who is going to support you uh and the

second thing is the geographical

differences there could be an immense

demand for more people for more jobs

let’s say in California whereas other

countries or other regions of the United

States completely collapse I mean if I’m

like an accountant or a lawyer or

somebody like that where a lot of your

work is based in the accountancy case on

number crunching in uh if you’re a

lawyer a lot of it is case studies you

know with existing case studies and

developing law and so on I could quite

easily see how AI will very very quickly

make a lot of those jobs redundant

because they can do it all the push of a

button any job which is basically data

coming in being analyzed and data coming

out this is the easiest job to uh to

automate by AI definitely what about

people like me broadcasters I mean how

quickly are we going to get to a place

where you could have someone a robot

that looks and sounds like me that is

studied through AI everything I’ve ever

said on air and comp and I’ve seen a TED

Talk deep fake of me saying the complete

opposite of what I think it was it was

terrifying and it can’t be long before

someone could be doing this with AI

yes this were already there this is why

you have this strike in in Hollywood

because they understand these kinds of

things these are no longer science

fiction because I heard okay let’s talk

about that that’s really interesting the

Hollywood strikes because AI is at the

center of it and what their fear is if I

understand it correctly is that you

could be a movie star and you you sign a

five movie deal with some for some

franchise thing and the first two come

out and then you want to get out of your

deal and they say fine but we’ve got

enough now where we can just use AI to

make the last three without you yes I

mean you is that a realistic thing

absolutely if you have enough data on

someone enough footage of how they look

how they move around their voice their

their uh how they sound um you can

create deep fakes of that person which

are

indistinguishable from the real person

and this is this is danger not just of

course for Hollywood actors dangerous

for politician

it’s a dangerous for for everybody

increasingly when you communicate with

someone online it will be almost

impossible to know whether you are in

communication with a real human being or

with an AI that impersonate I mean I’ve

heard I mean AI can now compose songs

like a band like I think it was Oasis

right it actually did a song AI that was

based on oasis’s music catalog and it

sounded like an oasis song yeah and

again Human Society is basically based

on trust between human beings H we are

facing the possibility of millions even

billions of fake humans overrunning our

society leading to the collapse of trust

between people how do we stop this

happening what is the ban ban fake

humans ban counterfeit humans you know

again going back to to finance it’s for

thousands of years people could create

counterfeit money and they knew if you

allow this the entire Financial system

collapses so there are very strict

regulations against counterfeiting money

we need the same kind of of regulations

against counterfeiting humans it’s okay

to use AI provided we know when we

interact with it that this is an AI and

for anybody who says that this violates

I don’t know freedom of speech well Bots

don’t have freedom of speech only humans

have these rights so presumably from a

moral and ethical standpoint AI I mean

human beings can take Ai and they can

take them down One path ethical moral

decent you know yeah good for Humanity

or in nefarious hands you could take AI

down another dark tunnel and be used in

a very dangerous manner I mean that’s

what worries me is that like the

internet right the internet great in so

many ways but actually there’s a pretty

dark tunnel with that too it’s pretty

regulated pretty wild west if you apply

what happened to the internet to AI I’m

pretty concerned and and for a good

reason again AI has enormous positive

potential as well you know solve cancer

provide Better Health Care higher living

standards and so forth but there is this

negative potential and it should be

clear that technology is never

deterministic that we can choose what

kind of technology to develop and how to

use it in the 20th century you could use

um you know radio and electricity and

trains to build a totalitarian regime

like the Soviet Union or a liberal

democracy like the UK or the USA the

technology did not dictate to you what

to do with it and uh it’s the same now

with the Technologies of of the 21st

century but what we are seeing is that

we already have the most sophisticated

information technology in history and

the conversation and trust between

people is breaking down you know you can

have as many arguments as you like about

what’s happening in in the United States

or in my country of Israel different

political views what everybody can agree

on is that the conversation is breaking

down people can’t agree on the most

basic facts and that’s I I believe a lot

of that problem is social media being

fueled with so much disinformation quite

deliberately Yeah by people who have a

vested interest and agenda in inaccurate

information being accepted by large

numbers of people as correct but until

now with social media the content was

created by human beings let’s say this

information created by human beings and

then the technology is used only to

disseminate it with the new generation

of AI the AI can also create the content

okay I get that but that would all be

based on existing information unless I’m

wrong so AI can take no it can create

completely new things so it can

literally think for itself yes that

that’s that’s the crucial that’s the

difference people say oh it’s like the

printing press but then is aren we

aren’t we then at the Tipping Point that

Steven Hawking talked about which is

self-designing I mean if you can think

for itself we’re at that point when it

can self-design aren’t we it can

self-design itself and everything else

you know as human beings we are shaped

by the culture in which we live from the

moment we are born we hear songs we read

fairy tales we use tools and all of

these things until today were created by

humans they reflected the human mind

now ai can basically eat up all of human

culture everything we’ve created Music

poetry mythology everything we’ve

created for thousands of years it can

absorb it in a few months digest it and

start spewing out a basically an alien

culture and stories music uh tools

created by an alien

intelligence that thinks in a

fundamentally different way than us I

mean we are in the end organic creatures

we are based on organic biochemistry

this is not even organic it’s much more

alien than an animal an insect even an

amoeba it’s something completely

different which is not restrained by the

limitation of organic biochemistry and

it is going to shape our culture within

a few years let let me try and have some

positive to what you’re saying yeah

which is it’s an awesome power AI in

things like medicine for example we have

so many cancers which have never been

solved by a human brain is it likely in

the near to middling future that AI with

these superpowers will be able to

perhaps find a cure for all cancers for

example yes at least for some of them

and this is the big promise if there

wasn’t a positive potential there would

have been no danger because no body

would have wanted to develop this thing

I mean there enormous there is enormous

positive potential we are not going to

stop and we shouldn’t stop developing AI

the big question is how do we do it in a

responsible way like with every other

technology Elon Musk and the others who

signed the a thousand names who signed

this thing asking for a six-month pause

it sounds like they were right MH yes I

think again it’s not necessarily opposed

to the development of AI it’s opposed to

the deployment

into the public sphere like you develop

a lot of new technologies in the

Laboratories which you don’t deploy to

the public sphere until you assure that

they are

safe uh whether it’s cars whether it’s

medicines like a big company develops a

new medicine it doesn’t immediately

start selling it to people you must make

sure that it’s safe the same principle

should apply to AI which in many ways is

much more powerful than any medicine or

any other tool we’ve created fascinating

I don’t want to let you go without

mentioning uh Israel because I

interviewed prime minister Netanyahu

recently when there were a lot of riots

going on and so on what is the current

situation there and what do you think of

the way that Netanyahu and his

government have

gone well really to understand situation

in Israel there is just one key question

to ask what limits the power of the

government in other democracies you have

an entire system of checks and balances

in Israel there is a single check on the

power of the governing Coalition which

is a supreme court if a minimal minority

in the Israeli parliament in the CET

wants to pass a law that say takes away

voting rights from Arab citizens or that

criminalizes homosexuality or that

closes down Independent Media the only

entity that can strike down this

anti-democratic law is the Supreme Court

now they want to neutralize the Supreme

Court once they do that there is no

check at all on their power they can do

anything they want including rigging the

next elections so even the elections are

no longer a check on their power and

have all the the mass protests that have

been going on have they had an effect

when I was with Netanyahu I got the

feeling that he was very shaken by what

was happening the the scale of it and it

may make him rethink is there any sign

of that actually happening is he

rethinking it do you think you have to

ask him I I can’t get into his mind but

definitely there has been massive

protests in Israel we haven’t seen

anything like it in the country’s

history they have slowed down the

government but the government is still

trying basically to gain unlimited power

and this is not not so much just about

netan in person there is a strong

ideological Messianic group behind him

uh uh extreme an extreme group that

believes in Jewish Supremacy and that

wants to uh neutralize the Supreme Court

in order to change the very character of

Israel and turn it into something quite

close to Iran a fundamentalist regime

committed to a Jewish Supremacy and not

to the values of democracy and the

protection of minority rights

fascinating it’ll be interesting to see

how it plays out I could talk to you for

hours you you’re such a smart guy um

thank you for coming in although you

inviting me you’ve painted a slightly

apocalyptic picture I have to say you so

I hope that the world

listens say again this is a warning not

a prophecy no understand we still have

the agency to uh it’s in our hands at

the moment it’s completely in our hands

but it is in our hands and the problem

with that is I’m not sure I completely

trust our ability to to do what we

should be doing uh but we’ll find out

hopefully not the hard way youa thank

you very much great to see thank

you