“AIs are welcome to human conversations as long as they identify as AI. It’s the same basic principle we have for humans… against fraud, you cannot pretend to be a doctor if you are not. You cannot pretend to be a lawyer if you are not. And also you should not pretend to be a human if you are not.“ — Yuval Noah Hariri
department of justice has indicted a music producer for fraud alleging he used Bots and AI generated songs to rack up $10 million in royalties from streaming services according to the indictment the producer Michael Smith created AI generated music and played it billions of times using Bots he had programmed a warning sign of how AI could be abused moving forward our next guest has written extensive about the threats AI poses to the social order and joining us once again New York Times bestselling author yal Noah Harari he’s back to talk more about his new book entitled Nexus a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to Ai and let’s start at AI this time um and and you’ve all I’m I’m curious are we beh I mean if you look at this case and there’s got to be Millions now of opportunities for people to abuse AI are we behind too far behind to catch up with the forces of this no we are not too far behind uh the power is still in our hands but it is slipping from our hands and shifting to the AI what everybody should understand about AI is AI is not a tool it is an agent it is the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself that can create new ideas by by itself and therefore can take power away from us an atom bomb ultimately empowered human beings because it was the the bomb could not decide anything and could not create new bones but AI can do that let me tell you just one small story about what the new generation of AI can do when open AI developed gp4 they wanted to test what this thing can do so they gave it a test to solve capture puzzles capture puzzles are these visual puzzles you get when you try to access a website and the website wants to know if you’re a human or a a robot and block the robots now GB fall could not solve by itself the capture puzzle what it did it accessed an online uh uh web page where you can hire humans to do jobs for you task rabbit and it asked a human worker please solve the capture puzzle for me now this is the interesting point the human got suspicious it asks gp4 why do we need somebody to do this for you what are you a robot and then gp4 told the human no I’m not a robot I have a vision impairment so I can’t see the capture puzzles this is why I need help and the human was duped and did it for it so it is already able not just to to to invent things it’s also able to manipulate people oh boy well I’ll just say that an example strikes me is terrifying um we we think of we think of AI computers as being cool dispassionate but you you make the case that it’s actually really good at reading and potentially manipulating human emotions tell us about that they have no emotions of their own they have no consciousness of their own don’t feel anything but they are becoming very very good at reading human emotions understanding our emotional patterns and then manipulating them and you know this can be used for very good purposes you can have ai teachers AI doctors that understand our emotional situation but it could also be used to manipulate any people on a loud scale selling us everything from products to politicians you know previously there was a battle for attention if you wanted to for instance influence elections the key was how to grab human attention now the battle is shifting from attention to intimacy you can deploy armies of bots that are able to converse with us as if they are human beings and nothing sways human opinion more than intimate conversations with somebody that you consider your your friend so AI has no emot emotions no it’s emotionless that’s in opposition to us human beings from time immemorial everybody that you encounter every human being that you encounter in the face of the Earth has a story everyone has a story what happens to our stories when AI gets into the business of telling stories fake stories H uh it endangers the conversation I mean it’s the first time in history that we have to deal and and and you know we have to deal not just you know with one in Hollywood science fiction movies it’s sometimes depicted as one big computer that I don’t know try to take over the world it’s not it’s imagine millions and millions of AI bureaucrats making decisions about us in the banks and so forth AI storytellers that we encounter online and that try to change our our opinions so Society is being flooded with these kind of alien intelligences that and they have no emotions of their own but they are very good at understanding and manipulating human emotions um and we need and we are not helpless in the face of of this flood uh we can regulate it again one very clear regulation should be that AIS are welcome to human conversations as long as they identify as a eyes um it’s the same basic principle we have for humans that they it’s against fraud you cannot pretend to be a doctor if you are not you cannot pretend to be a lawyer if you are not and also you should not pretend to be a human if you are not okay the new book is entitled Nexus uh there’s so much there a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI fascinating it goes on on sale this coming Tuesday September 10th New York Times bestselling author yval Noah Harari thank you thank you very much uh for coming on the show