Academics From Israel

"Humans are organic beings who live by cyclical biological time. ... Even the money market respects these biological cycles. The New York Stock Exchange is open Monday to Friday, from 9:30 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon, and is closed on holidays like Independence Day and New Year’s Day. If a war erupts at 4:01 p.m. on a Friday, the market won’t react to it until Monday morning. In contrast, a network of computers can always be on. Computers are consequently pushing humans toward a new kind of existence in which we are always connected and always monitored. In some contexts, like health care, this could be a boon. In other contexts, like for citizens of totalitarian states, this could be a disaster. Even if the network is potentially benign, the very fact that it is always on might be damaging to organic entities like humans, because it will take away our opportunities to disconnect and relax. If an organism never has a chance to rest, it eventually collapses and dies. But how will we get a relentless network to slow down and allow us some breaks?"

"Imagine a situation—in twenty years, say—when somebody in Beijing or San Francisco possesses the entire personal history of every politician, journalist, colonel, and CEO in your country: every text they ever sent, every web search they ever made, every illness they suffered, every sexual encounter they enjoyed, every joke they told, every bribe they took. Would you still be living in an independent country, or would you now be living in a data colony? What happens when your country finds itself utterly dependent on digital infrastructures and AI-powered systems over which it has no effective control? Such a situation can lead to a new kind of data colonialism in which control of data is used to dominate faraway colonies. Mastery of AI and data could also give the new empires control of people’s attention. As we have already discussed, in the 2010s American social media giants like Facebook and YouTube upended the politics of distant countries like Myanmar and Brazil in pursuit of profit. Future digital empires may do something similar for political interests."

"During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain was in many places literally made of metal: barbed wire separated one country from another. Now the world is increasingly divided by the Silicon Curtain. The Silicon Curtain is made of code, and it passes through every smartphone, computer, and server in the world. The code on your smartphone determines on which side of the Silicon Curtain you live, which algorithms run your life, who controls your attention, and where your data flows. It is becoming difficult to access information across the Silicon Curtain, say between China and the United States, or between Russia and the EU. Moreover, the two sides are increasingly run on different digital networks, using different computer codes. Each sphere obeys different regulations and serves different purposes."

"[I]f humans are so smart, why are we so stupid?"

"The problem is in our information. ...Why is it that the quality of our information did not improve over thousands of years..? Why is it that... societies ...have been as susceptible as Stone Age tribes to mass delusion.., psychosis, and the rise of destructive ideologies like Stalinism and Nazism?"

"[A] dollar bill... has no objective value. ...[T]hey ...have value because the greatest storytellers.., the finance ministers, ...bankers, ...investors ...tell us a story ...As long as millions ...believe, they are willing to work ..."

"[F]or the first time in history... there is another agent... that can create stories, economic theories, new... currencies, music, poems, images, videos, and this... is AI... an alien intelligence."

"[I]n the United States there is a legal path open for AIs to become s, because.., unlike other countries.., corporations are... legal persons that... have rights like freedom of speech. ...[Y]ou incorporate an AI. ....[I]t can open a bank account.., go online and offer its services.., and earn money, and... invest it, and... earns billions... We could be in a situation when the richest person... is not a human being."

"[T]he richest person in the US is giving billions... to candidates in exchange for... broadening the rights of AIs. ...This is no longer a science fiction scenario."

"[T]he... solution.., good institutions... characterized by... strong self-correcting mechanisms... that allow... an entity, a human.., an animal or an institution, to identify and correct its own mistakes."

"[T]he heart of democratic systems is this self-correcting. ...Elections are a self-correcting mechanism."

"In dictatorships there is no... self-correcting mechanism."

"Traditional religions... were characterized by claiming to be infallible, that their holy book, their sacred tradition never makes any mistake.., therefore there is no mechanism... to identify and correct mistakes...factual, also moral mistakes."

"The tenth commandment says that you should not covet your neighbor's field.., ox, or... slaves. According to the 10th commandment, God has no problem with people owning slaves, just... with coveting the slaves of somebody else."

"[T]here is no mechanism to correct the text of the Bible."

"The U.S. constitution originally... enabled slavery, but... had an amendment.., a self-correcting mechanism... to forbid slavery."

"The whole of science... is a self-correcting mechanism. ...[S]cientific journals publish ...corrections to previous publications.., to past mistakes or past lacuna."

"Every large scale human system is based on... mythology and bureaucracy. ...Every country, to convince its ...citizens why it should exist, tells ...national or religious mythology .., gives the motivation.., inspiration.., reason... You... need to build roads.., hospitals.., armies and sewage systems... to avoid s ...so you need to collect taxes. ...[M]ythology encourages ...or explains ...why ...So ...citizens will enjoy good healthcare ...and ...sewage system that protects ...from .., ... [etc.]"

"[T]here is nothing wrong about it. Nationalism and patriotism have been one of the... best inventions ...All other social animals ...care only about a small [intimate] circle ...This was ...true of our ancestors ...The miracle of nationalism and patriotism ...makes us care about millions of strangers ..."

"Nationalism is not about hating foreigners and wanting to kill the others. It's about loving our compatriots... and... paying taxes honestly..."

"[I]nformation isn't truth. Most information is not truth."

"[I]f we... flood the world with information and expect the truth to float up, it will not. It will sink."

"Unless we... construct institutions that invest in truth, we'll be flooded by fiction.., illusion.., delusion and junk information."

"If you want millions... cooperating.., create some... mythology or ideology and convince... people... [B]ombard then with... stories and images.., and this is how you gain power. ...[I]n this balance, how much truth ...and how much fiction and delusions do you need ...to construct the Soviet Union? ...a little truth and a lot of fiction. ...[T]his is true of most of the large scale s... throughout... history."

"[[Totalitarianism|[T]otalitarianism]] and democracy... are different information networks."

"Democracy is a conversation. ...Imagine a large group of people... and... a group of robots... start talking... loudly.., emotionally and persuasively, and you can't tell who is a human... That is... what we are now living through."

"[T]he democratic conversation is breaking down all over the world because the algorithms are hijacking it. ...We are losing the ability to hold a reasoned conversation... [W]e need to ban bots [fake humans] from the conversation. AIs should be welcome... only if they identify as AIs."

"[M]y... recommendation is to go on an information diet... Information is the food of the mind. ...[I]t is not good for the body to eat too much food or... . ...More information isn't always good for you. ...[T]ake time for information fasts. ...[W]atch the quality of the information we feed our mind."

"[I]t's completely different from the human mind. The whole question of "when will AI reach the same level... as human intelligence?" This is ridiculous. It's like asking, "When will airplanes finally be like birds?" They will never, ever be like birds.., and they can do many... things that birds can't. ...AIs and humans ...are not on the same trajectory behind us. They are on a completely different trajectory, for better or for worse."

"[T]he fact that AIs... cannot cooperate so far... is wonderful news. I hope it's true. I hope it will remain like that, otherwise we are in very... deep trouble."

"[T]he lesson from the history about intelligence: You don't need a lot of intelligence to change the world and potentially to cause havoc. You can change the world with relatively little intelligence. ...I'm not referring to anybody in particular."

"The other thing we've learned about intelligence is that the most intelligent entities on the planet can also be the most deluded. Human beings are by far, so far, the most intelligent beings on the planet and the most deluded. We believe ridiculous things that no chimpanzee or dog or pig would ever dream of believing.., that if you... kill other people.., after you die, you go to heaven... because of the wonderful thing you did: you killed... these other members of your species."

"When I say that you can change the world with relatively little intelligence: Humans have already done much of the hard work for the AIs. ...[I]f you drop an AI in the middle of the African and tell it, "Take over the world!" It can't. ...But, if first you have these apes who build all these bureaucratic systems, like the , and then... drop the AI into the existing financial system.., that's... much easier. ...You don't need motor skills. You don't need even to understand the world. ...The financial system is the ideal playground for AI. It's... purely informational."

"[T]o train AIs to make a million dollars, create a million AIs. Give them some seed money. ...[I]f ...a few AIs succeeded.., replicate them."

"What happens to the world if more and more of the financial system is shaped by AIs..? Even though they can't walk down the street, they know how to invest money better than humans. It's a... very limited intelligence..."

"Social media is run to some extent by very primitive AIs, these algorithms that control our news feed... [etc.] Look what they did in 10 years. We created a human system, media, and then we introduced the AIs into our system... [I]t's an informational system, and they took it over, and... to a large extent, wrecked the world."

"They are not the only reason... for the mess now in the world, but if you think about what extremely primitive AIs did within the human created system... of media, then..."

"We are at a point when we are conducting this huge historical experiment, and we just don't know... how do we build a self-correcting mechanism into it? How do we make sure that if we get the answer wrong, we'll have a second chance?"

"The model... is the last big , which is the Industrial Revolution. When the Industrial Revolution begins in the early 19th century, nobody has an idea how to build a benign, good . This immense new power: steam engines, railroads, steam ships. How do you use them for good? ...[D]ifferent people have different ideas, and they experiment..."

"European imperialism was one experiment. Some people say, "The only way to build an industrial society is to build an empire. You cannot build an industrial society on the level of one country because you must control the and the markets. You must have an empire!""

"Then you have people who say, "It must be a totalitarian society. Only a totalitarian system like Bolshevism or... Nazism. The immense powers of industry can only be controlled by a totalitarian society.""

"[L]ooking back from the early 21st century... we can say, "Oh, we know what the answer was. We think we know." It took 200 years of terrible wars, and hundreds of millions... of casualties, and injuries that are not even healed today, to find out how to build a benign . And this was just steam engines!"

"Now we are dealing with potentially superintelligent agents. Nobody has any experience with building a hybrid human AI society. We should be a lot more humble... We think we know how to build it! No we don't!"

"[H]ow do we build a self-correcting mechanism so if we make the wrong bet, this is not the end?"

"[W]e are thinking on different time scales. ...A lot of the conversations here in Davos.., when they say "long term" they mean like 2 years. When I say long term I mean like 200 years. It's like, it's the Industrial Revolution. The first commercial railway has been opened between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830. This is now... 1835, and we are having this discussion. People are saying, "The Industrial Revolution is moving so slowly. They told us that railways and steam engines will change the world. So what? So a few people are going between Manchester and Liverpool. It didn't change anything. This is all science fiction. Because of the time scale, we have no idea. Even if... all progress in AI stops today, the stone has been thrown into the pool, but it just hit the water. We have no idea what are the waves, even by the AIs that already have been deployed, say a year or two ago."

"Social consequences are a completely different thing. You cannot run history in a laboratory and see... the social consequences of invent[ion]. ...You create the first steam engine, you can test for accidents. You cannot test what will be the geopolitical... or cultural implications of a steam engine in a laboratory. It's the same with AI. So it's... far too soon to know."

"I'm mainly concerned about the lack of concern that... we are creating, we are deploying.., maybe the most powerful technology in human history, and a lot of very smart and powerful people are worried about.., "What will the investors say in the next quarterly report?" They think in terms of a few months, or a year or two."

"Can you name a great work of art inspired by the Old Testament? Oh, that's easy: Michelangelo's David, Verdi's Nabucco, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. Do you know of any famous work inspired by the New Testament? Piece of cake: Leonardo's Last Supper, Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Monty Python's Life of Brian. Now for the real test: can you list a few masterpieces inspired by the Talmud?Though Jewish communities that studied the Talmud spread over large parts of the world, they did not play an important role in the building of the Chinese empires, in the European voyages of discovery, in the establishment of the democratic system, or in the Industrial Revolution. The coin, the university, parliament, the bank, the compass, the printing press, and the steam engine were all invented by Gentiles."

"The agricultural revolution is one of the most controversial events in history. Some... proclaim... it set humankind on the road to prosperity and progress. Others... that it has led to perdition."

"From the dawn of agriculture.., billions... armed with branches, swatters, shoes and poison sprays have waged... wars against diligent ants, furtive roaches, adventurous spiders and misguided beetles that constantly infiltrate the human domicile."