Unfortunately, I wasn’t satisfied by his answer to the purpose question. He suggests that finding a new purpose requires us to develop new religion-using the word in a much broader sense than most people do, something like “organizing principles that direct our lives.” And he deserves credit for venturing an answer to it. Harari does the best job I have seen of explaining the purpose problem. But what if such a life was guaranteed for every child on Earth? How would that change the role parents play? Like every parent, I want my children to lead happy, healthy, fulfilling lives. My family gives my life purpose-being a good husband, father, and friend. I think of this question in terms of my own life. In this version of the future, our biggest worry is not an attack by rebellious robots, but a lack of purpose. What if we solved big problems like hunger and disease, and the world kept getting more peaceful: What purpose would humans have then? What challenges would we be inspired to solve? I am more interested in what you might call the purpose problem. And there is not a lot to say about it, since the technology in question doesn’t exist yet. But this is an engineering problem-what you could call the control problem. It is true that as artificial intelligence gets more powerful, we need to ensure that it serves humanity and not the other way around. In addition, in my view, the robots-take-over scenario is not the most interesting one to think about. We should try to narrow the gap even more, but the larger point is clear: Inequity is not inevitable. Now-thanks to efforts by pharmaceutical companies, foundations, and governments-there are cases where that lag time is less than a year. For example, it used to take decades for lifesaving vaccines developed in the rich world to reach the poor. But we can work to close that gap and reduce the time it takes for innovation to spread. The private market in particular serves the needs of people with money and, left to its own devices, often misses the needs of the poor.
I agree that, as innovation accelerates, it doesn’t automatically benefit everyone. He argues that humanity’s progress toward bliss, immortality, and divinity is bound to be unequal-some people will leap ahead, while many more are left behind. But I am more optimistic than he is that this future is not pre-ordained. Harari does a great job of showing how we might arrive at this grim future.
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He foresees a potential future where a small number of elites upgrade themselves through biotechnology and genetic engineering, leaving the masses behind and creating the godlike species of the book’s title where artificial intelligence “knows us better than we know ourselves” and where these godlike elites and super-intelligent robots consider the rest of humanity to be superfluous. Here is Harari’s most provocative idea: As good as it sounds, achieving the dream of bliss, immortality, and divinity could be bad news for the human race.
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Advances in science and technology will help people live much longer and go a long way toward ending disease and hunger. War and violence are at historical lows and still declining. What would the world be like if we actually achieved those things? This is not entirely idle speculation. Taking these goals to their logical conclusion, Harari says humans are striving for “bliss, immortality, and divinity.” We have organized to meet basic human needs: being happy, healthy, and in control of the environment around us.
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So far, the things that have shaped society-what we measure ourselves by-have been some combination of religious rules about how to live a good life, and more earthly goals like getting rid of sickness, hunger, and war. Homo Deus argues that the principles that have organized society will undergo a huge shift in the 21st century, with major consequences for life as we know it. I don’t agree with everything the author has to say, but he has written a thoughtful look at what may be in store for humanity. Rather than looking back, as Sapiens does, it looks to the future. Harari’s new book is as challenging and readable as Sapiens.