Alien Intelligence

Hollywood may have terrorised us about alien invasions, but the aliens are already here and living amongst us! AI is actually 'Alien Intelligence' according to Jewish historian, Yuval Noah Harari in his 2024 book, Nexus.

"We have created a non-conscious but very powerful alien intelligence" writes Yuval. "AI is the first technology capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself".

He goes on to say, "in the absence of strong self-correcting mechanisms AIs are more than capable of promoting distorted worldviews, enabling egregious abuses of power and instigating terrible new witch hunts".

We are hard-wired for over 130 cognitive biases and we are easily manipulated by our own creations. Yuval warns, "by the time we wake up to the danger, it might be too late".

How do we harness the potential of AI while retaining self-correcting mechanisms in our institutions?