This week I talked with Yuval Noah Harari as part of my series of discussions on the future of technology and society. He's a historian and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons For the 21st Century.
Many historians focus on the past but Yuval has a unique perspective on how technology will shape the future, and that's what we spent most of our time on. We discussed things like whether the internet is connecting or fragmenting society, the different ways artificial intelligence could be developed, how algorithms will continue to impact people's lives, and why it is so important that we don't store sensitive data in countries with weak rule of law or where governments can forcibly get access to that data. Thanks Yuval for such a memorable conversation.
I've included a transcript of a few of my thoughts below, lightly edited for clarity:
Minute 39:27:
When I look towards the future, one of the things that I just get very worried about is the values that I just laid out [for the internet and data] are not values that all countries share. And when you get into some of the more authoritarian countries and their data policies, they're very different from the kind of regulatory frameworks that across Europe and across a lot of other places, people are talking about or put into place.
Recently I've come out and I've been very vocal that I think that more countries should adopt a privacy framework like GDPR in Europe. And a lot of people I think have been confused about this. They're like, “Why are you arguing for more privacy regulation? Why now given that in the past you weren't as positive on it?” And I think part of the reason why I am so focused on this now is at this point people around the world recognize these questions around data and AI and technology are important, so there's going to be a [regulatory] framework in every country.
I actually think the bigger question is what is it going to be? And the most likely alternative to each country adopting something that encodes the freedoms and rights of something like GDPR, in my mind, is the authoritarian model, which is currently being spread, which says every company needs to store everyone's data locally in data centers and then, if I'm a government, I can send my military there and get access to whatever data I want and take that for surveillance or military. I just think that that's a really bad future. And that's not the direction, as someone who's building one of these internet services, or just as a citizen of the world, I want to see the world going.
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In response to Yuval playing devil's advocate and asking about non-authoritarian governments adopting data localization policies...
Minute 45:53:
I think someone with good intent might argue, "Hey, maybe a different set of data policies is something that we should consider." The thing that I worry about, and what we've seen, is that once a country puts that in place, it’s a precedent that a lot of other countries that might be more authoritarian use to basically argue that they should do the same things and then that spreads. And I think that's bad.
And that's one of the things that as the person running this company, I'm quite committed to making sure that we play our part in pushing back on that and keeping the internet as one platform. One of the most important decisions that I think I get to make as the person running this company, is where we’re going to build our data centers and store data. And we've made the decision that we're not going to put data centers in countries that we think have weak rule of law, where people's data may be improperly accessed which could put people in harm's way.
There have been a lot of questions around the world around censorship and I think that those are really serious and important. A lot of the reason why we build what we build is because I care about giving everyone a voice, givi...
I love how Mark posts a video of an hour and a half "discussion" while highlighting two brief points of his own, out of context, supporting Facebook's narrative. Bonus for trying to twist protection of our rights through regulation into authoritarian government suppression we need to be protected from by our billionaire Silicon Valley saviors.
Harari is great and I really hope Zuckerberg has read and absorbed some of his stuff.
Harari's most recent book got some negativity for promoting meditation, which I think some took as a self indulgent detour but it actually makes sense...
His point is that the forces trying to manipulate people (eg. on Facebook) have become so skilled that they verge on knowing you better then you know yourself. One way to innoculate yourself against this manipulation is to really get to know yourself and what you believe - in a strong and stable way - much better and he feels that meditation is a good way to acheive that.
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[ 8.1 ms ] story [ 875 ms ] threadThis week I talked with Yuval Noah Harari as part of my series of discussions on the future of technology and society. He's a historian and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons For the 21st Century.
Many historians focus on the past but Yuval has a unique perspective on how technology will shape the future, and that's what we spent most of our time on. We discussed things like whether the internet is connecting or fragmenting society, the different ways artificial intelligence could be developed, how algorithms will continue to impact people's lives, and why it is so important that we don't store sensitive data in countries with weak rule of law or where governments can forcibly get access to that data. Thanks Yuval for such a memorable conversation.
I've included a transcript of a few of my thoughts below, lightly edited for clarity:
Minute 39:27:
When I look towards the future, one of the things that I just get very worried about is the values that I just laid out [for the internet and data] are not values that all countries share. And when you get into some of the more authoritarian countries and their data policies, they're very different from the kind of regulatory frameworks that across Europe and across a lot of other places, people are talking about or put into place.
Recently I've come out and I've been very vocal that I think that more countries should adopt a privacy framework like GDPR in Europe. And a lot of people I think have been confused about this. They're like, “Why are you arguing for more privacy regulation? Why now given that in the past you weren't as positive on it?” And I think part of the reason why I am so focused on this now is at this point people around the world recognize these questions around data and AI and technology are important, so there's going to be a [regulatory] framework in every country.
I actually think the bigger question is what is it going to be? And the most likely alternative to each country adopting something that encodes the freedoms and rights of something like GDPR, in my mind, is the authoritarian model, which is currently being spread, which says every company needs to store everyone's data locally in data centers and then, if I'm a government, I can send my military there and get access to whatever data I want and take that for surveillance or military. I just think that that's a really bad future. And that's not the direction, as someone who's building one of these internet services, or just as a citizen of the world, I want to see the world going.
---
In response to Yuval playing devil's advocate and asking about non-authoritarian governments adopting data localization policies...
Minute 45:53:
I think someone with good intent might argue, "Hey, maybe a different set of data policies is something that we should consider." The thing that I worry about, and what we've seen, is that once a country puts that in place, it’s a precedent that a lot of other countries that might be more authoritarian use to basically argue that they should do the same things and then that spreads. And I think that's bad.
And that's one of the things that as the person running this company, I'm quite committed to making sure that we play our part in pushing back on that and keeping the internet as one platform. One of the most important decisions that I think I get to make as the person running this company, is where we’re going to build our data centers and store data. And we've made the decision that we're not going to put data centers in countries that we think have weak rule of law, where people's data may be improperly accessed which could put people in harm's way.
There have been a lot of questions around the world around censorship and I think that those are really serious and important. A lot of the reason why we build what we build is because I care about giving everyone a voice, givi...
Harari's most recent book got some negativity for promoting meditation, which I think some took as a self indulgent detour but it actually makes sense...
His point is that the forces trying to manipulate people (eg. on Facebook) have become so skilled that they verge on knowing you better then you know yourself. One way to innoculate yourself against this manipulation is to really get to know yourself and what you believe - in a strong and stable way - much better and he feels that meditation is a good way to acheive that.