Cuando ya no esté: Yuval Noah Harari (Parte 2/2) | #0 — Transcript

Usted se pregunta al final del libro lo que todos nos vamos preguntando cuando vamos leyendo el libro al llegar a este tipo de momento.

Si esto se va a poder controlar y usted nos dice, me parece que no, porque los que están trabajando en el almacenamiento de datos, Big Data.

Los que están avanzando por la ingeniería genética, los que están avanzando por ingeniería robótica, cada uno está avanzando por su camino, no hay una un poder central que los esté dirigiendo en su avance.

Se va a poder controlar este avance, porque también nos dice usted que casi todos estos grandes avances en un primer momento tienen una utilidad muy social, la cirugía plástica para curar a los heridos de la Primera Guerra Mundial.

Usted cree que estas fuerzas que pueden ser maravillosas y pueden ser amenazadoras, se pueden controlar o van a circular al galope sin que nadie pueda controlarlas?

In theory, they can be controlled, and it should be emphasized that technology is never the determining factor.

The same technology can be used in different ways to build different types of societies.

In the 20th century, for example, we had new technologies like trains, electricity, cars, radios, television, and you could use this same technology to build a communist dictatorship, a fascist regime, or a liberal democracy.

The trains, airplanes, and the radio didn't tell you what to do with them, you had different options.

Similarly, in the 21st century, all these new technologies, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering, all of them can be used to build very different societies.

We can choose, the danger is that the political system doesn't understand what is happening, doesn't try to understand what is happening, doesn't try to take command and direct this in the right way.

The most powerful forces that are shaping our future and the future of our children are outside the political process.

Even in the last 20 years, probably the most important change in the world that affected the lives of everybody was the rise of the internet.

And the rise of the internet involved many important decisions about issues like privacy, security, the job market, issues that were not part of the political decisions.

I never voted for the internet, it was never an important issue in any political elections that I know of.

And the same is happening with these new technologies, within 20 or 30 years, artificial intelligence could push billions of humans out of the job market.

Nobody knows what the job market will be like in 30 years, and we don't even know what to teach children in schools, because we don't know what kind of jobs there will be in 2040 or 2050.

Yet, you don't hear any politician talking about this, I watched the debates of the presidential elections in the United States, and the furthest they got to discuss new technologies was the whole issue of Hillary Clinton's emails.

And they talk about job stability in the market, but nobody talks about the rise of artificial intelligence.

And the dangers that will create a new class of useless people.

In the same way that the industrial revolution in the 19th century created the urban working class, the proletariat, and much of the social and political history of the 20th century revolved around this new working class.

In the 21st century, new technologies could create a useless class, and much of the political and social history of the 21st century could be about this non-working class, the useless class.

Yet, it's not part of the political debates, so in answer to your question, I would say that we can control technologies, but if we want to control them, we have to start talking about it seriously, already today, and we have to make it a political issue.

Después, si efectivamente las cosas se pueden mover, como usted dice, a través de esta ingeniería biológica, ingeniería cyborg y esta inteligencia de los seres nuevos, nos encontraríamos con preguntas de gran profundidad.

Política, física, metafísica, ética, de todo tipo, porque usted dice, hasta el momento en la historia de la humanidad, los seres humanos han construido una batalla de religiones de la que ha salido victoriosa la religión del humanismo, la fe en el hombre.

Y de entre las religiones humanistas, la religión liberal, el hombre libre, el hombre dirigido por el libre albedrío, y usted nos dice, en este mundo que podría hacerse artificial, ya no construido a la antigua usanza.

De pronto no va a tener sentido el libre albedrío, ni va a tener sentido la libertad, porque vamos a estar manejados por algoritmos.

Vamos a ser una especie de consecuencia de unos códigos de algoritmos.

Eso es muy impresionante.

Como posibilidad, aunque solo sea como posibilidad, es impresionante.

Pero sí es una posibilidad.

Yes, in the 20th century, the victorious ideology was liberalism.

Which said that the greatest authority in the world is the free choice and the feelings of the individual.

If you have a problem in your personal life and you have to decide what to study, or who to marry, or if you have a problem in collective life, for example, or if you need to choose the leader of a country or choose a policy, then liberalism said that we need to ask people what they feel and what they want.

The individual and the will of the individual were the supreme authorities.

In the 21st century, it is probable that authority will shift from individuals to algorithm networks.

When we have a big question or a small question, we will ask these algorithms.

This is very abstract and complicated, so I will give one or two examples if I have time.

Let's start with something very simple and mundane, like you want to choose a book to read.

In the 20th century, people would tell you, follow your feelings, follow your heart.

Go to a bookstore, pick up several books, look at them, and if you feel identified with one, just buy it and read it.

We were the authority.

Now we go online, we go to Amazon's bookstore, and within a minute of entering Amazon's page, an algorithm appears that tells you, I know you.

I've been following the previous books you've been reading, and based on that, I recommend this book to you.

Disculpe, ya estamos entonces en este momento con nuestro libre albedrío ya amenazado, ya hoy los algoritmos y su código se impone sobre nuestro libre albedrío, usted dice, a veces creemos desear, pero no estamos deseando, nos están haciendo desear.

Ya están ahora mismo mandando los algoritmos.

It's a process that is starting to happen, we are giving up our authority and trusting less in our own decisions and more in what algorithms know about us.

Therefore, again, it's the same as the example of choosing a book, because it's very simple and mundane.

However, we will increasingly trust not our feelings, but algorithms to choose a book, based on what they know about us.

This is just the beginning, the next phase will be, let's say you read a book on Amazon Kindle.

Even now, as you read a book, the book is reading you.

Kindle knows which pages we read quickly, which ones we read slowly, and when we stop reading a book.

And this gives Kindle and Amazon an idea of who you are and what you like.

The next step will be to connect Amazon Kindle to facial recognition software, something that already exists.

These softwares observe faces and recognize emotions by analyzing the movements of the muscles in your face.

So when Kindle connects with this, the book knows when we are laughing, when we are crying, or when we are angry.

And the next step will be to connect Kindle not only to this software, but also to biometric sensors in our body or inside the body.

And based on this, the book or Amazon will know the exact emotional impact of each of the phrases you are reading in the book.

So, if you read a sentence and your blood pressure rises even slightly, the book will know it, Amazon will know it.

Based on all this data, it can not only recommend books, it will know exactly who you are, what your personality is, and it can recommend and make decisions for you in many other things, such as, for example, who you should marry.

Perhaps the most important question in a person's life, on a personal level, is choosing whether to marry and who to marry.

So, in the 20th century, people were told, just follow your heart, follow your feelings.

Let's say your boyfriend or girlfriend proposes to you, either you marry me or I leave you, and you have to make a decision.

They would tell people, okay, just follow your feelings, however, now you won't follow your feelings.

You will ask Google or Amazon, Google, what should I do?

My boyfriend has asked me to marry him or he's going to leave me, should I marry him or not?

And Google will say, ah, I know you, I've been reading your emails, I've been listening to all your phone conversations, I've been watching you when you read books, when you watched movies, I follow your biometric data, what's happening with your blood pressure, your heart, your adrenaline, 24 hours a day using all these biometric sensors.

And based on all this data, and of course, since I know the other person as well as I know you, and I also have statistics from millions of relationships that have been successful and relationships that have failed.

Based on all this data, I tell you, if I were you, I would marry him or her.

And if, in the end, it's an empirical answer, if the advice that Amazon, Google, or Facebook gives us becomes better than what our own feelings tell us to do.

Then we will trust these algorithms more than our own feelings.

And this has already started to happen in some fields, for example, when people navigate cities, they follow Google Maps and not their feelings.

Or in the medical field, it has already happened.

Most of the medical decisions that people make today about their own lives are not based on what one feels, they are based on algorithms that talk about your body, about your health.

Surgen inevitablemente dos o tres preguntas rápidas que le pido responda, por un lado, sobrevivirá esa idea que hemos manejado históricamente como la libertad, sobrevivirá.

Y segundo, Dios o lo que hemos llamado Dios, será el vencedor de la batalla por el control de los Big Data, en este momento en el mundo se libra una gran batalla de grandes poderes para controlar los Big Data, el que controla los Big Data será Dios, lo que hemos llamado Dios, será el que controla los Big Data y sobrevivirá la libertad.

Well, the great historical process that we see is that 100 years ago, authority was above the clouds, it was God.

And then in the modern era, authority came down from the clouds to human beings, to our choices.

Now authority is going back to the clouds, but not to God, but to the clouds of Google or Amazon, there is so much data about each individual that the algorithm will get to know me better than I know myself.

And when there is an entity that knows me better than I know myself, authority inevitably passes from me to this entity.

Up until now, throughout history, all kinds of institutions tried to understand me, the individual, they tried to collect information about me, the Catholic Church or the Soviet KGB tried to follow me and understand me.

But up until now, nobody had achieved the biological knowledge to truly understand the individual, to understand my emotions, my desires, my personality, and at the same time, computer scientists are developing more and more powerful computers and algorithms that are capable of making sense of all this information.

When you put the two together, the biological knowledge of the human mind and body, and the computing power of new computers and algorithms.

We get an external system that for the first time in history can understand me better than I understand myself.

Usted titula su libro Homo Deus, dice, el hombre podrá ser como Dios, bien, dice, no como el Dios monoteísta que tendemos los cristianos o los judíos, sino como los dioses griegos y romanos que eran una cosa un poco más humana, más a ras de suelo, con pasiones, con debilidades, pero con capacidades creadoras.

Entonces, en este mapa que usted, el hombre que avanzará por esa pradera llena de algoritmos que marcan su camino incluso por encima de su voluntad, tendrá sin embargo capacidad de actuar como Dios.

¿En qué sentido?

Haciendo qué tipo de cosas?

Well, humans will evolve into gods.

And that's why I titled the book Homo Deus, meaning man-god, because we will gain, thanks to the help of all these algorithms.

Divine abilities to create, in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, the first thing God does is create animals, plants, and humans according to his will.

Now, in the 21st century, we ourselves will have this ability to start creating, building, and designing bodies and brains, animals and humans.

So, in this sense, we will be like gods.

We will be able to start creating life.

We will be able to change our own bodies, our own personalities.

We will acquire the same control over our inner world that we previously had over our outer world.

I mean, previously, we had mosquitoes bothering us, so an insecticide was invented that killed all the mosquitoes.

We could get rid of mosquitoes, but we couldn't get rid of annoying thoughts in our mind.

If you have a thought that is like a mosquito in your mind, constantly bothering you, you are helpless.

You can't do anything, in the 21st century, we will create new technologies.

Biotechnology will allow us, for example, to get rid of annoying thoughts in the same way that we could get rid of annoying mosquitoes.

Of course, there will be a lot of danger, when we get rid of mosquitoes and other animals, we start to destroy the ecological system in a way that we don't understand.

Similarly, as we try to change our internal world to fulfill our desires, we may discover that there are also many unforeseen consequences that could be very, very negative.

But still.

We will try to do it, because this is what humans do.

Humans always fight to have more power in the world and over themselves, and when there are problems, then they think, it's because I need more power.

Se inventarán tecnoreligiones nuevas.

Yes, I think that in the 21st century, the most interesting place in the world from a religious point of view will not be the Middle East, it will be Silicon Valley.

This is where the new religions of the 21st century will be created.

They will be techno-religions, religions based on technology, not on the belief in gods and angels.

Religions that will make all the traditional promises, they will also promise people joy, health, and justice, and even immortality.

But not after dying in heaven, but here on Earth, with the help of biotechnology, algorithms, etc.

De todas maneras, creo que los ricos y los pobres seguirán mandando mucho.

Usted en un momento dice, habla de Kurzweil, que nos habla de la inmortalidad, estuvimos hablando nosotros con gente de la Singularity University, que nos habla de la inmortalidad.

Bueno, yo calculo que de 20 a 30 años nosotros vamos a curar el envejecimiento.

Y ahí soy hasta más radical, a mí me gusta hablar que nosotros vamos a ver la muerte de la muerte.

El año 2050, si usted tiene un cuerpo y tiene dinero.

Podrá engañarle a la muerte.

Cada 10 años usted regenerará las células, usted podrá jugar con la vida y con la muerte mucho.

Pero ha dicho si tiene dinero.

Lo cual me permite preguntarle.

Si todos estos cambios finalmente van a poder avanzar en la vía de un mundo más igualitario o más desigual.

Porque por un lado nos dice, las leyes de Darwin siempre dijeron que la selección natural se produce porque el más débil cae y el más fuerte avanza.

De alguna manera diríamos que estamos la justicia está contra la ley de Darwin.

Pero por otro lado está también esta especie de sueño del hombre de hacer un mundo más más igual, ¿no?

Será.

Como hoy un mundo en el que habrá ricos y pobres.

Y que los ricos tendrán todas las ventajas de todo este arco de posibilidades que usted nos cuenta.

Y los pobres todas las desventajas de este arco de posibilidades que usted nos cuenta.

This is one of the dangers.

Again, it's not a prophecy.

Because nothing is certain.

But it's a great danger.

The 21st century will create the most unequal societies in history, because before, inequality was social, economic, and political, but it was not biological.

There was really no biological difference between the king and the peasant.

In the 21st century, we may see for the first time humanity dividing into different biological castes, it will be possible with the help of biotechnology to transfer economic inequality into biological inequality.

So this is.

I think it's a big problem that we face.

But.

It's not too late.

We can still do something and we can try to ensure that new technologies create an equitable society and not the other way around.

Considerando un deadline.

25 años, como mi deadline.

20, 25 años.

Fuerce un poco su imaginación, señor Harari.

Sitúese dentro de 25 años.

Cuando usted tenga la edad que tengo yo ahora, aproximadamente, ¿eh?

¿Cómo cree usted que será el mundo?

Dentro de 25 años.

We really know nothing about how the world will be in 25 years.

Hay muchas posibilidades.

There are many possibilities, but for the first time in history, we don't know the basics.

We don't know what the job market will be like, we don't know what family relationships will be like, we don't know if men and women will still exist as different gender types in 25 years.

It is possible that I can change my body with all kinds of nanotechnologies and bioengineering.

So, as I said, I think for the first time in history, if we look at the future in 25 years, we can say that we know nothing.

Muchas gracias, señor Harari.

Muchas gracias.

Homo Deus.

Hombre, Dios.

Harari sospecha que finalmente evolucionaremos hasta convertirnos precisamente en dioses.

Construiremos, diseñaremos y crearemos vida.

Y la Tierra estará poblada por seres a semejanza nuestra, que muy poco tendrán que ver con nosotros, o quizás sí.

Nos enfrentamos a un destino post-humano, se verá sometida a la voluntad del individuo a la autoridad suprema de los algoritmos.

Terminará siendo el ser humano irrelevante.

La única y mayor constante de la historia es su imprevisibilidad, porque todo cambia constantemente.