The Information Tragedy

The book, Nexus, written by Yuval Noah Harari explores a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI. While Harari was interviewed on his book the host reading out this sub titles of the book, asked, I hope it is a story of progress, it is a story of things getting better, meaning, the human race moves from the discovery of writing, to printing, to the newspaper, and at each stage our abilities getting better and advanced. Does that work that way? Harari smiled and replied, the basic question of the book is, if humans are so smart why are we acting so stupid? We are on the verge of destroying ourselves.

The problem is not in our nature; the problem is in our information. Most people are good, but if you give good people bad information they make bad decisions, they make even self-destructive decisions. Look at mass delusion and psychosis in the 20^th century; things like Nazi Germany, most people who voted for Hitler and voted for him were not evil people. Even inquisitors or witch hunters who burned people at the stake were, ironically, on a journey of saving souls. Lots of mythologies and theologies feed us with wrong information. The question of progress in information technology is not about its abundance or its speed, but its credibility. And that is massively at risk with AI. Information is an essential building block of reality. If that is manipulated with misinformation, fake news etc., reality is at risk. The essential problem is ignorance or manufactured ignorance and not evil of another realm.

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