Published: 2 April 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
In an event organised by The New York Times and How To Academy, Harari gave his predictions to the Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. Humans, he warned, “have created such a complicated world that we’re no longer able to make sense of what is happening.”
Just as the Industrial Revolution created the working class, automation could create a “global useless class,” Harari said, and the political and social history of the coming decades will revolve around the hopes and fears of this new class. Disruptive technologies, which have helped bring enormous progress, could be disastrous if they get out of hand.
New technologies could hijack democracy, and even our sense of self. The combination of biotech and IT might reach a point where it creates systems and algorithms that understand us better than we understand ourselves.
FULL STORY What’s next for humanity: Automation, new morality and a ‘global useless class’ (NYT)
