Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari

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History & Foreign AffairsTech & Future

Information isn't the same thing as truth. Harari's case is that information networks, from the Stone Age through writing, religion and mass media, have been built to create order more than to find truth, and that AI, which makes its own decisions, could become the center of a new network of delusions you can't see through.

Core ideas
  • Truth against order: Large-scale cooperation has run on shared fictions and mass delusions, from the canonization of the Bible and witch hunts to Stalinism and Nazism.
  • Self-correction decides: Democracies rely on decentralized mechanisms that catch their own mistakes, while totalitarian systems centralize information and control.
  • Not predetermined: AI decides on a logic alien to human thinking, but in Harari's view societies can still choose to avert the worst.
Published2024
Pages528
ISBN9780593734223
ReadOct 2024

Connected to 8 other books

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