The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Interpretation
The quote questions the future role of humans in a world dominated by advanced artificial intelligence.
Yuval Noah Harari raises a crucial philosophical and ethical question regarding the impact of artificial intelligence on society. As technology advances, especially with the rise of intelligent algorithms capable of outperforming humans in many tasks, we must contemplate the future of those who may become redundant. This provokes thoughts about employment, purpose, and the value of human life in a high-tech era.
In practice
In a discussion about the future of work, this quote can highlight concerns about job displacement due to AI.
We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
You go to a Japanese restaurant and have a wonderful dish, and the thing to do is take a picture with your phone, put it on Facebook, and see how many likes you get. If you don't share your experiences, they don't become part of the data processing system, and they have no meaning.
I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life.
Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.
According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.
But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.
Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.
Cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous and independent citizens.
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