Note: comments not attributed to the author constitute my personal opinions.

You may be familiar with Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the global bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval has a way of taking very complex subjects, such as the history of humans, and presenting important highlights, digestible summations, and tangible examples to illustrate his personal views. This time he’s examining how human history has been shaped by information networks, including its most recent incarnation as artificial intelligence (AI) in Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.

In Nexus, Yuval leads us on a recap of human history (sounds familiar), but this time as a way to view our common journey on this planet in the context of how human networks and information networks evolved in tandem.

Information is increasingly seen by many philosophers and biologists, and even by some physicists, as the most basic building block of reality, more elementary than matter and energy.

It was interesting to consider the evolution of cultures from the perspective of how human networks evolved in parallel with information networks. With oral cultures, “…realities were created by telling a story that many people repeated with their mouths and remembered in their brains.” Before the advent of any writing system, personal storytelling was our exclusive information network.

Similar to how humans act in the modern world, prehistoric humans told each other stories on a daily basis. Many were soon forgotten, but sometimes they were committed to memory. Stories deemed to be important were retold as a way to spread their message, or shared with future generations as a way to enshrine their culture.

But we must also remember that the retelling of any story will introduce some inaccuracies, so in a sense, stories are living entities that, over time, stray from the truth. And beyond the changes that happen to stories unintentionally with retelling, at some point in time, humans figured out how to tell outright lies.

Misinformation is an honest mistake, occurring when someone tries to represent reality but gets it wrong. Disinformation is a deliberate lie, occurring when someone consciously intends to distort our view of reality.

So our information networks have never been completely accurate, but with the advent of writing systems, it was possible to capture a version of the story, such that many people could read the same words. Once again, there was no way to know if what was written was true, leaving humans left to wonder whether any written document was accurate, or was simply preserving another falsehood. Regardless, it was common for the written word to be widely adopted as true. Government decrees and religious texts being two common examples.

But whether true or false, written documents created new realities.

Writing, once performed by hand, was revolutionized by the printing press, then electrified by technology as information was transmitted on radio and television. The birth of the internet allowed us to transfer files and even send emails, while the inception of the world wide web allowed us to be publishers, and for a brief moment, it felt as though personal storytelling — the first information network — was having a renaissance of sorts. Once again, however, the powers that be — both political and corporate — came to control a large portion of the digital landscape, thus shaping the flow of information, both true and false.

All powerful information networks can do both good and ill, depending on how they are designed and used.

Thus it follows that human networks can become ill when they buy into the disinformation promoted by ill-intended information networks. Communist / fascist / marxist / stalinist governments are prime examples. And though the western world has long felt immune to such a fate, disinformation networks, increasingly powered by AI, are active at this very moment, with the intent of dismantling democracy.

We should not assume that delusional networks are doomed to failure. If we want to prevent their triumph, we will have to do the hard work ourselves.

Artificial intelligence is often seen as just another technological upgrade, but it’s fundamentally different. To date, the stories we share, whether they are true or false, or intended to do good or cause harm, were created and disseminated by humans. With AI, we must now confront the fact that “nonhuman intelligence” has that same capability. Are we ready for nonhuman wisdom?

The invention of AI is potentially more momentous than the invention of the telegraph, the printing press, or even writing, because AI is the first tool that is capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself.

Pause for a moment and consider that concept. Rather than only consuming our information in order to paraphrase its meaning, AI creating content on its own is akin to it being a nonhuman storyteller. I’m not sure where this capability will go, but I fail to see the upside. As AI can’t experience anything in the real world, how will it craft a narrative? For example, a hurricane hitting a major city will result in a great deal of information being created — facts and figures, as well as various predictions, followed by news reports, interviews, and first hand accounts. Only humans will be able to tell those stories, right? Or will AI be able to generate its own version of what is happening? And how will we know the difference?

More than ever, the personal stories we share are of vital importance. The only way that positive change has ever occurred is by sharing our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But with AI, is our birthright of being the sole source of stories at risk? For me, that question was top of mind after reading Nexus.

If a twenty-first-century totalitarian network succeeds in conquering the world, it may be run by nonhuman intelligence, rather than by a human dictator.

We’ve already seen cases where AI was used by humans to influence elections and stoke hatred between different cultures. What will happen if humans are removed from the equation altogether? It may be a long shot, but I’m thinking we need to create as many true, personal stories as we can for AI to consume. My hope is that in doing so, we can inject AI with a sense of human empathy, morality, compassion and respect.

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