Could AI lead to the collective dementia of humankind? – Yuval Noah Harari

I’ve been a fan of Yuval Noah Harari since picking up a copy of Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind some ten years ago. He did amazingly well at a task I had thought was impossible; writing a condensed view of our collective history. Two years ago I read his latest book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.

At the time I had been playing with ChatGPT. Having ‘grown up’ in the computer industry (building custom servers for demanding applications) I had a front row seat to the evolution that transpired from the first personal computer onwards. Having followed AI progress for many years, I was excited to see it in action, but I was unprepared for what a chatbot and an LLM, could do.

And when Yuval referred to AI as nonhuman intelligence, an intelligence that surpassed ours, and discussed the potential role it could play in the coming years, I began wondering if there was any way that humans could control it. Since humans ruled the world as a result of our intelligence, it made sense; something smarter than us would, ultimately, be calling the shots.

It’s not easy to describe Yuval – intellectual, historian, philosopher – but he’ll commonly talk about aspects of humanity and society. And as AI is radically affecting both, I wanted to hear this interview on Czech Television’s Věda 24 YouTube channel.

If AI could only do what we already know how to do, why spend so much money? They assume that AI will be able to do things that we cannot and that we cannot even predict. This is why it’s so valuable. But if it can do that, how do we keep it under our control?

So what might happen to our brains as AI becomes more prevalent? Yuval is worried that we may experience collective dementia, that we could lose the ability to understand the world. That’s a topic that I would like for him to go deeper on, as anything that shifts our consciousness is most troublesome.

We can imagine terrorists asking an AI to create a new, dangerous virus that is as infectious as COVID and as lethal as AIDS, killing millions. We can imagine that, and we should worry about it and take precautions. But I think the much bigger danger is something like collective dementia—that we just lose the ability to understand the world.

But the section that gave me the greatest cause for concern was his take on children and AI companions. (see highlighted text below) What had, to date, worried me most with AI companions was the influence AI may have in the moment – what it might encourage a minor to do that may be harmful.

It’s basically, maybe the biggest psychological and social experiment in history, certainly the biggest experiment since communism. And nobody has any idea what happens when you raise children in this way.

What I had not thought about before was the topic of how humans learn to develop relationships. We already know about the potential side effects of children growing up in dysfunctional households, where parents aren’t in healthy relationships.

But if a child’s or adolescent’s ‘best friend’ is an AI companion, will there be similarly dire consequences when they reach young adulthood? It may take many years before we know the answer to that question.

Which brings me to the issues of governance, alignment, policy, and safety. Training AI models not to encourage harm of any sort is still a challenge, but relatively straightforward to identify and address. It’s when a model is nice, friendly, and supportive.

When the answers and advice given are uniformly positive and inspirational. That’s a different sort of interaction. One which a young individual might gravitate towards, while distancing themselves from their peers, as they may be less supportive and understanding.

How do you align for that situation? What sort of policies – parents, schools, governments – can be crafted to avoid negative outcomes? With policies in place, how does governance work? And what is a ‘safe’ AI in this regard? We want interactions with AI to be positive, but is there a cost when the user is developing intellectually and emotionally?

When AI becomes more intelligent than us it could also become more delusional than us.

Give this interview a listen. It’s thought provoking on many fronts.