All language subtitles for AI has hacked the code of human civilization Yuval Noah Harari

Please join me in welcoming Professor
Yuval Noah Harari.

Thank you so much.

Hello everyone.

I hope I opened my mic.

You can hear me okay.

So it's really a great honor for me to
give this year's TANEO lecture.

And it's also a personal joy.

to come back to Oxford.

I did my DPhil here 25 years ago under
the guidance of Dr. Stephen Gunn.

Back then, I specialized in medieval and
early modern military history.

But today, I will not be talking about
knights and castles and the gunpowder

revolution. I'll talk about AI
bureaucrats and religions and

more generally, about the AI revolution.

Now, the most important thing to know
about AI is that AI is not a tool.

It's not a tool in our hand.

It is an agent with its own hand.

What exactly is agency?

How is an agent different from a tool?

Agents have several distinguishing
characteristics.

They don't necessarily need
consciousness.

You don't need consciousness to be an
agent. What you do need, is the ability

make decisions by yourself, the ability
to invent new things, new ideas

by yourself.

An agent should be able by itself to
learn things that its creators

don't know, and an agent should be able
to change by itself

in ways that its creators don't
anticipate.

An atom bomb, for instance, despite its
enormous power, is not an agent.

It cannot learn and change by itself.

It cannot decide by itself which city to
bomb. It cannot invent anything new,

like the hydrogen bomb.

Similarly, let's say an automatic coffee
machine is not an agent, even though it

does something by itself, automatically.

You press a button, and the machine
automatically makes you a cup of coffee.

But the machine, the coffee machine,
only follows a pre -programmed

It doesn't change.

It doesn't learn anything new. It
doesn't create anything new.

But suppose that as you approach the
coffee machine, before you even press

button, the machine announces, tells
you, I've been monitoring you.

for the last few weeks, and based on
everything I've learned about you and

people, and based on your facial
expression and the time of day, I

you would like an espresso.

So I already made you a cup.

Now that's an AI copy machine.

It learned something by itself and
decided something by itself.

And it's really an AI if the following
day...

It announces, I have now invented a new
drink called Bespresso, which I think

you would like better than espresso, and
he would try it out, I made you a cup.

Then it's really an AI.

It changed in ways that creators did not
anticipate and invented something

completely new.

As far as I know, there are no coffee
machines.

at the present moment, maybe in
anthropic headquarters or Google

they have a few prototypes, but they are
not out in the market yet.

But in certain narrow fields, like
playing Go or playing chess, AI

agency and creativity already greatly
surpass human agency and

creativity. AI chess masters can decide,
of course, by themselves which moves to

make. they invent by themselves
completely new strategies, how to play

chess, that never occurred to human
chess masters over thousands of years of

playing the game.

And while doing that, they learn and
change in ways their human creators did

necessarily predict.

Today, of course, no human has any
chance of beating an AI chess master.

Now, people who downplay the importance
of the AI revolution dismiss examples

like chess by arguing that the
chessboard is a very narrow and

environment created by humans.

The critics say that AI agency will
always remain limited to

such narrow and artificial environment,
which means that it's not true agency.

And it doesn't pose any serious
challenge to humanity.

Yes, AI may take over the chessboard,
but it will never take over planet

And indeed, if you do an experiment, if
you take the greatest AI chess master

and drop it in the middle of the jungle,
what do you think will happen?

The AI chess master will not be able to
start mining iron and building factories

and creating a robot army.

to take over the world.

In fact, it will not be able to do
anything whatsoever.

Without the electricity provided by
power stations built by humans,

the AI chess master is utterly helpless.

Therefore, the argument goes, AIs are
not true agents. They are confined to

these narrow artificial niches that
somebody else, humans, constructed for

The problem is that this argument
actually applies to all known types of

intelligence. Human intelligence, too,
operates only within a relatively narrow

ecosystem that somebody else
constructed.

Drop me alone on Mars and it will be
like dropping an AI chess master

in the middle of the jungle.

I will die within seconds.

My intelligence can survive and operate
only within the very, very specific

ecosystem that trees, bacteria, insects,
and other organisms have constructed

on planet Earth during four billion
years of evolution.

And that's true of all agents. All
agents we know of, at least, have their

niches. Fish live in oceans that they
didn't create.

Monkeys live in forests that they didn't
create.

All mammals, including human beings,
live in an oxygen -rich atmosphere that

they didn't create.

Until about 2 .4 billion years ago, the
atmosphere of our planet actually

contained very little oxygen, and for
most of the organisms that lived back

then, oxygen was a deadly poison.

Then, in a protracted process, lasting
hundreds of millions of years, which is

known as the Great Oxygenation Event,
various ancient microbes began

polluting the atmosphere of the Earth
with deadly oxygen, which was a

of their photosynthetic processes.

As the atmosphere filled with this
deadly poisonous gas, numerous

archaic species were driven to
extinction.

Some species, however, managed to
survive and adapt to the new conditions.

Eventually, many of these survivors went
from hating oxygen

to becoming totally dependent on oxygen
for their survival.

And our ancestors, of course, are among
the species that underwent this

transition. And we still live in this
artificial oxygen -filled

environment that was originally created
by these ancient microbes.

What I would like to argue in this
lecture is that we might be witnessing

analogous moment in the evolution of
life.

Over the past millennia, we humans have
been filling the atmosphere with

something that might eventually prove
deadly for most organisms.

including perhaps homo sapiens, but that
creates a new artificial environment

in which AIs flourish.

And I am not talking about CO2.

I am talking about data, about
bureaucracy, and ultimately about the

thing that I am expelling from my mouth
right now, which is words.

Language talk.

Over thousands of years, we humans have
transformed the planet from a language

-free environment into a very artificial
environment, rich in language tokens,

data, and bureaucracy.

And this environment could prove deadly
for most organisms, but highly conducive

to the development of AI.

Because just as fish live in oceans and
monkeys live in forests, AIs live in

bureaucracy. So let's spend a few
minutes talking about bureaucracy, and

we'll get back to talking about what
underlies bureaucracy, which is language

and words.

Now, humans, our species, we conquer the
world by learning to cooperate

in very, very large numbers.

Individually, humans are not stronger or
even smarter than other animals.

In a one -on -one fight, a human will
most likely lose to a

chimpanzee or a lion or an elephant.

However, in a contest between a million
humans and a million chimpanzees, the

humans easily win because the humans
know how to cooperate and the

don't. And that's why we control the
world.

How do a million humans who don't know
each other cooperate?

Chimpanzees cooperate based on personal
acquaintance, one of the others.

Humans do so in small numbers, but you
can't know a million people.

So how do a million people cooperate?

Usually by building a bureaucratic
system, like a legal system or the

system or churches or states or
universities.

Now, what do...

these bureaucratic systems actually do.

When a government official or a bishop
or a rabbi or an accountant or a lawyer

or a banker goes to work in the morning,
what do they do there all day?

Now, carpenters build tables.

Engineers build bridges. What do bankers
and other bureaucrats build?

Well, bankers and other bureaucrats are
busy all day building trust.

Their job is to build trust between
large numbers of strangers who don't

each other personally, and thereby
enable large -scale cooperation, which

basis for almost everything a phishing
is achieved.

For example, my banker, whom I don't
really know personally, works hard all

to build trust with me so that I will be
willing to put my savings into her

bank.

Simultaneously, the banker works hard to
build trust with an entrepreneur who

needs money to start a new company.

And the banker lends my savings to that
entrepreneur.

Thereby, the banker actually created a
bridge of trust.

between me and the entrepreneur.

Even though I've never met an
entrepreneur in my life, she can now use

savings to start her company.

And this is what the financial system,
when it works well, is all about.

It builds trust between strangers so
that millions of people can put together

their resources and talents on new
projects.

And the financial history of the world
is the history of people

inventing more and more sophisticated
ways to build bridges of trust.

Money is ultimately a bridge of trust.

The idea of money is that I can go to
the market, maybe in a foreign city,

a person that I never saw in my life,
maybe doesn't even speak my language,

just by giving that person a tiny piece
of metal or a piece of colorful paper,

He or she will give me bread I can eat.

That's the bridge of trust that money
creates.

Now, the coin in the banknote, of
course, was just the beginning.

Over the centuries, humans invented more
and more sophisticated financial

devices to build trust, like checks and
bonds and stocks and

ETFs and loans and mortgages and
compound interest. All of these things

ultimately about building trust.

between billions of strangers.

And it's the same with all
bureaucracies. It's the same with the

This is what lawyers are supposed to do,
to build trust.

This is what government officials and
bishops and accountants do when they go

work. They are supposed to build trust.

Now, the important thing to note about
all these bureaucratic systems is that

they are extremely artificial
environments.

in which a relatively narrow
intelligence, I hope I don't insult

specializing in a very narrow niche of
intelligence is sufficient to exert

enormous impact on the world.

A lawyer or a banker or a government
official who doesn't even know how to

an axe or a hammer can nevertheless cut
down entire forests and build entire

cities just by moving data.

just by moving documents from here to
there inside the bureaucratic network.

Now, of course, if you take the lawyer
out of the bureaucratic system and throw

the lawyer into the messy, unstructured
jungle, her legal skills mean nothing,

and she will not be a match to a
chimpanzee or a lion or an elephant.

But we have already imposed our
bureaucratic systems on the jungle.

which is why lawyers are far more
powerful than even all the, if you take

the lions in the world together, and
they have to compete against one very

lawyer, I will bet on the lawyer.

Today, the very survival of species like
lions depends on lawyers

and accountants and bankers moving
documents in these bureaucratic

of governments and banks and
corporations.

And this is the environment in which AI
is gaining agency.

If you throw an AI into the unstructured
jungle, it will not be able to start

mining iron and to build a robot army.

But within the bureaucratic system that
humans have already created and imposed

on the world,

AIs are posed to wield enormous power
because AIs are native bureaucrats,

unlike us.

No lawyer can remember all the laws and
regulations of the UK.

An AI can.

No accountant can remember all the
transactions of a corporation or a bank.

AI can.

No bishop can remember all of canon law
and all of the theological texts.

written by Christian theologians over
the last 2 ,000 years.

And AI can do that quite easily.

So in the coming years, millions of AI
bureaucrats will increasingly

take over the world's bureaucracies and
make decisions not just about lions and

chimpanzees, but about our lives.

AI bankers will decide whether to give
you a loan.

AI administrators will decide whether to
accept you to university.

AI judges will decide whether to send
you to jail.

AI theologians will decide whether you
can have an abortion.

Corporate AIs will decide whether to
give you a job. And military AIs will

decide whether to bomb your house.

Now, leave aside for a moment the
question, is this good or bad?

The first thing to note is simply to
realize the magnitude of the change we

facing.

These millions and even billions of AI
will soon change all the systems that

the world.

We already have a few real -life
examples for how this happened and what

consequences could be.

Maybe the best example so far is the
story of social media and social media

algorithms. Social media is run not by
humans but by algorithms.

The algorithms that decide, that control
the movement of information on social

media, which are primitive AI.

This began 10, 15 years ago. This was
like the first generation, very, very

primitive, stupid, narrow AI, which
nevertheless completely changed the

Now, the algorithms of social media have
been tasked by corporations like

Facebook and TikTok and X with an
extremely narrow goal to maximize

user engagement.

Make people spend more time on the
platform because the more time they

the platform, the more money the
corporation makes.

Very simple, very narrow.

In pursuit of this user engagement,
these primitive AIs made an important

discovery. They experimented on billions
of human guinea pigs and learned

that the easiest way to grab the
attention of the human being and glue

human to the screen is to press the hate
or fear or greed button in the

human mind.

And they learned how to do it.

And they started spreading hate and fear
and greed in huge quantities

in the information sphere.

And this has been a major reason, not
the only reason, but a major reason.

from the current epidemic of conspiracy
theories and fake news and social

disturbances that undermine society all
over the world.

Now, these social media algorithms,
again, they are very primitive AIs.

If you drop them in the jungle, they
cannot build a robot army and try to

over the world.

But within the bureaucratic system of
social media, these very limited

agents... have enormous power, and they
have already changed the world in quite

a dramatic way.

In past centuries, the flow of
information on media platforms was

by human editors. It was a human job.

It was human editors who decided what to
put on the front page of the newspaper.

It was human editors who decided what
items to include in the evening news on

television. And thereby, human editors
shaped the public conversation, and they

were very, very important figures in
modern history.

Jean -Paul Marat, for instance, shaped
the course of the French Revolution by

editing the influential newspaper L 'Ami
de Peuple.

Edward Bernstein shaped the modern
social democratic movement and social

democratic thinking by editing the
Social Democracy.

Vladimir Lenin, before he became Soviet
dictator, his one job that he managed to

hold for a while was editor of the
newspaper Iskra.

Benito Mussolini, before he was dictator
of Italy, his one job, or one of his

maybe main jobs, was the editor of the
firebrand right -wing newspaper Il

d 'Italia.

And it's interesting to think about it
that one of the first jobs that AI took

over from humans is not taxi drivers or
textile workers, it's news editors.

The job that was once performed by Lenin
and Mussolini is now performed by AIs.

And this is a signal for what's coming.

Hollywood science fiction movies have
conditioned viewers to fear the big

rebellion. When we think about AIs
escaping human control, we imagine the

Terminator, like an army of robots
running in the streets and shooting

But this is the wrong image.

Even though things like that begin to
happen in places like Ukraine and Gaza,

AIs are not, it's not impossible, but
they are quite unlikely to rebel against

humans in such a way.

They are far more likely to take the
human world from within. They don't need

rebel.

The human world is a latticework of
multiple bureaucracies.

Most of us are, to some extent,
alienated by these bureaucracies, even

rely on them.

But the AIs, in contrast to us, are
bureaucratic natives.

They love bureaucracy.

Whereas we feel suffocated often by
bureaucracy, for AIs, bureaucracy is

oxygen.

Now, what would happen when the AIs take
over, at least in part, these

bureaucracies? Now, remember the task of
bureaucracy is not to force you to fill

forms, it's to build trust between
strangers.

But what happens when AIs control the
flow of trust

in the world.

One likely outcome, which we already see
happening, is humans losing trust in

other humans and beginning to trust only
algorithms, only AI, which is already

happening. Another likely outcome is
that AIs will learn to build trust with

other AIs, so we will see the emergence
of

different kinds of AI tribes and banks
and churches that connect millions of

AIs in ways that humans might not even
be able to understand.

Just as cows and chickens, they share
the world with us, but they don't

understand the human financial system
that controls their lives, we humans

soon find ourselves

controlled by an AI financial system
that we can't understand.

And finance, I think, is crucial.

It's among the easiest bureaucratic
systems for AI to take over, because

basically it's just data in, data out.

And it's also, of course, among the most
important.

If we remember, for instance, the last
big financial crisis, the 2007 -2008

financial crisis, it started, it was
triggered... by something called CDOs,

collateralized debt obligations.

Now, CDOs were financial devices
invented by a very tiny number

of human mathematicians and investment
wizards.

These financial devices were so complex
that they were unintelligible, not just

to cows and chickens, but also to the
politicians who were supposed to

the financial system.

And this led to an oversight failure and
to a global catastrophe.

For a few years, CDOs seemed to be
working well, and various banks

and corporations and investors made
billions upon billions of dollars thanks

them. But then they caused a global
financial crash with far -reaching

and political consequences.

Many scholars believe that by
undermining trust in governments and

the 2007 -2008 financial crisis paved
the way to the collapse of the global

liberal order in the following two
decades.

Now what happens if we allow AIs to make
more and more financial decisions and

invent more and more new financial
devices and strategies?

AI test masters invented new ways to
play chess.

What if AI finance masters invent new
financial devices that are

orders of magnitude more complex than
CDOs and are therefore utterly beyond

grasp of human mind?

Such devices could potentially greatly
improve financial efficiency and

contribute to economic growth, becoming
the bedrock of the financial system.

But what is the meaning of human
politics when no human, no voter, no

politician, no president is able to
understand finance anymore?

And what happens after a few years of
boom, there is a financial crash.

And not a single human on the planet is
able to understand what the hell is

happening.

Now let's dig a little deeper.

We said that AI is poised to take over
bureaucracy, and that bureaucracy is a

system that builds trust between
millions of strangers.

This trust, in turn, is the basis for
large -scale cooperation, which is the

basis for the human domination of the
world.

So human domination is based on
cooperation, which is based on trust,

maintained by bureaucracies. But what is
bureaucracy?

What are the atoms, the building blocks
from which bureaucracy is built?

And bureaucracy is ultimately built from
words.

In the beginning was the word.

The reason that humans can create
bureaucracies but chimpanzees cannot is

we have words, and they don't. They have
a communication system, but our

language is orders of magnitude.

more sophisticated than chimpanzee
communication systems.

Bureaucratic systems, from banks to
churches, are ultimately based on the

that make up forms and letters and law
codes and tax registers and accountancy

ledgers and holy books.

The operating code of human civilization
is made of language tokens.

Over thousands of years, We used this
code of language to create a system

that only we could understand, and we
imposed this system on the planet.

We felt completely safe doing it because
no one else on Earth understood the

code of civilization.

We invented money and banks and used
them to buy and sell cows,

but the cows themselves could not open a
bank account.

or invest money in the stock exchange
because they don't have language.

We invented laws and regulations about
horses, but the horses themselves could

not hire a lawyer and quote the legal
code to a judge.

We invented religious rules and
prohibitions about pigs, but the pigs

could not read the Bible and challenge
the interpretation of priests and

Bureaucracy was omnipresent on the
planet, but totally invisible to

except us.

Nobody other than humans could read the
law codes, the holy books, and the bank

records that were the foundation of
bureaucracy and of large -scale

corporations.

This is changing now. Now there is
something on the planet that understands

will soon understand language better
than us and can therefore turn the

on us.

AIs are hacking the code of human
civilization.

And what happens when AIs understand
money and law and religion

better than us? The mechanisms of
control that we have created over

of years are extremely vulnerable.

for an AI takeover because their
operating system is a verbal code that

AI is now mastering.

Now, a possible ethical and
philosophical objection is that it is

to reduce things like the legal system
or religion to language tokens and to

words.

Arguably,

and this has been an argument for
thousands of years, the words are just

pointing at something which is beyond
them and which presumably will also be

beyond the grasp of the AI.

The Bible says not just that in the
beginning was the word, but that the

was made flesh.

The Tao Te Ching says that the truth
that can be expressed in words is not.

the absolute truth, by definition.

And throughout history, there was always
this tension between word and flesh,

between the truth that can be expressed
in words and the truth which is beyond

words. Now previously, this tension
existed between humans.

Some humans, for instance, which were
very attached to words, were willing to

abandon. or even kill their gay son,
just because a few words in the Bible.

Other humans said, but these are just
words.

The spirit of love should be more
important than the letter of the law.

there was this tension between spirit
and letter. And it existed not just in

Christianity and in Judaism and in
Islam, but in every religion and every

system, and even within every person.

There was this tension.

Now this tension will be externalized.
It will become the tension between AIs

and humans.

Everything made of words will be taken
over by AI.

The place of humans in the world will
depend on the place we assign the truth

which is beyond words.

But what is the truth which is beyond
words?

And can human thought even grasp the
truth which is beyond words?

A key question, again, for thousands of
years in the philosophy of language has

been whether we think in words or we
merely use words to point towards

things which are beyond them.

Now, you can try to observe your own
process of thinking right now, after

lecture.

happens in your mind when you are
thinking.

Some people, if they observe closely,
what they observe in their mind is just

words popping inside their mind and
forming sentences, and the sentences

logical arguments.

All humans are mortal.

I am a human, therefore I am mortal.

Is thinking just putting these words in
order so they lead to a certain logical

conclusion? Like putting these language
tokens in a specific formation?

If that is the case, then AIs already
think better than

at least some humans and will soon think
better than all of us.

Some people say, no, no, no, no, no.
AIs, they are just glorified

They simply predict the next word in a
sentence.

But is that so different from what the
human mind does?

Again, try to observe your process of
thinking, the forming of sentences and

arguments in your mind. What is
happening there? Try to observe the very

word that pops up in your mind. Do you
really know where it came from?

Why did you think this particular word?

and not some other word.

When I try to observe my mind, I notice
that when I begin a sentence, I usually

don't even know how it will end.

Which is terrifying for a public
speaker, which is why I write everything

But what if I don't know how to complete
the sentence? I don't know how it will

end.

But take, for example, the sentence I
just said.

I said, I don't know how it will end.

Why did it end with the word end?

Why not say how it will terminate?

How it will develop?

How it will conclude?

What determines that the last word in
the sentence will be end?

I frankly don't know.

We don't fully understand how the human
mind forms sentences and so on.

But again, as far as putting language
tokens in order, AI is already on

course to being far, far better than us.

And just as today, no human can defeat
an AI in chess, soon no

human will be able to defeat an AI in
language games, in any field, again,

finance to religion.

Anything made of words will be taken
over by AI.

And this is why AI points to take over
the world's bureaucracies because they

are ultimately based on words and
language talk.

Now, as AI take over the bureaucracy,
humans might try to fall back on

more ancient and more precious to most
of us than bureaucracy, which is

relationships.

Bureaucracy is just a few thousand years
old. And most of us, again, don't

really like it.

even if we constantly rely on it for
almost everything we do.

Personal relationships are millions of
years old, and many or most of us think

that they are the most important thing
in life.

But as AI masters language, it might
take over not just bureaucracy, but also

some extent personal relationships.

Over the last 10 years, we've seen very
primitive

social media algorithms, learning how to
gain control of human attention.

Now the battlefront is shifting from
attention to intimacy.

Over the next 10 years, far more
sophisticated AIs will learn how to

form intimate relationships with humans
and take over, at least in part, our

social system.

To form intimacy with humans, And AI
will probably have to convince us

that the AI is conscious, that it can
feel things like love and pain

and anger and fear.

At present, there is absolutely no
evidence that AI might at

some point become conscious and might be
able to at some point feel pain or

love. But because AI is mastering
language,

AI can pretend to feel love, even if it
doesn't.

AI, already today, can say, I love you.

And if you challenge it, describe to me
how love feels like, so I know that you

really feel it, AI can provide the best
description in the world.

It can read all the love poems ever
written and all the psychology books

written and remember every word.

and describe the feeling of love better
than any human poet or psychologist or

lover. And this is going to be a huge,
maybe the biggest, psychological and

social experiment in human history.

It will be conducted on billions of
human guinea pigs, and nobody has the

slightest idea what the consequences of
the experiment will be.

I'm now 50 years old, so my template for
relationships is already shaped

by decades of previous relationships
with my parents, with my husband, with

sisters and nephews and nieces and
friends and dogs and so forth.

As I increasingly interact with AI, I
bring with me my assumptions, my

habits about relationships.

And this is unlikely to change
dramatically.

Consider a child born in 2026, born
today.

As the child grows up, she constantly
interacts with AIs as well as with

Perhaps if you measure the importance of
a relationship purely in terms of

minutes spent interacting with the other
entity, perhaps the most

important relationship in the life of
that child will be from a very early

with AIs.

Maybe it spends more time with the AIs
than with its mother or father or

siblings or friends.

And it will then shape the expectations
of that child as she grows about how to

form relationships and social bonds and
attachments.

Perhaps the first teacher of that child
will be an AI teacher.

Perhaps the first boyfriend of that
child will be an AI boyfriend.

And again, what will be the
consequences?

Nobody has the slightest idea.

What does it mean to form an intimate
relationship with an entity which

seems conscious but actually isn't?

Which can write the best love poem in
history but doesn't feel love or

else?

All of this, everything we've talked
about, and I'm...

coming to the close of this lecture,
everything we've talked about means that

every country in the world will soon
face a huge wave of immigration.

The immigrants this time will not be
human beings coming in fragile boats

without a visa or trying to sneak across
the border in the middle of the night.

The immigrants will be millions, maybe
hundreds of millions of AIs that can

travel at almost the speed of light and
don't need any visas.

Like human immigrants, these AI
immigrants will bring a lot of benefits

them. We will have AI doctors to help in
the healthcare system, AI teachers to

help in the education system, even AI
border guards to stop illegal human

immigrants from coming in.

But... the AI immigrants will also bring
problems with them.

Those who are concerned about human
immigration usually point out that

immigrants might take jobs, might change
the local culture, and might be

politically disloyal.

I'm not sure if that's necessarily true
of all human immigrants, but it will

definitely be true of AI immigrants.

The AI immigrant will take many, many
human jobs, from news editors to

The AI immigrant will completely change
the culture of every country. They will

change art and religion and even
romance.

Some people don't like it if their son
or daughter is dating an immigrant

boyfriend. What will these people think
when their son or daughter starts dating

an AI boyfriend?

And of course, the AI immigrants will
have some dubious political loyalty.

They are likely to be loyal not to the
whole country, but to some corporation

government across the ocean, or perhaps
to a new alien AI tribe.

This massive immigration wave does not
mean the end of civilization, but it

be the point when civilization

stop being a purely human affair and
becomes a hybrid human AI

affair. The point when the opinion and
interest and goal of AI

are likely to be at least as important
as the opinion and interest and

goal of humans.

One last issue to consider.

is what the AI immigration wave will do
to maybe our most important

relationship, which is with ourselves.

Our relationship with ourselves is also
to some extent based on words.

The words inside our mind, in our
thoughts, in the stories we tell

about ourselves.

Until today, all the verbal formations
in human minds were the product of

human minds.

Either we ourselves combined words into
some new formation, a new thought, or we

got a certain combination of words from
another human mind.

Soon, however, more and more verbal
combinations in our minds will be the

product of AI.

Just as the furniture in our house is
now not made by us or by human artisans,

they are mass produced mostly by
machines.

Also, the thoughts in our mind are
likely to increasingly be mass -produced

machines. Now, that's not necessarily
bad.

It's okay if the furniture in my house
is made by machines in IKEA, as long as

have some freedom deciding what to do
with this furniture.

The question regarding thoughts is
whether, to what extent, we will still

freedom from them.

If we identify with our thoughts, I
think I am a thought, I think therefore

am, as Descartes said.

If we identify with our thoughts, and
these thoughts are made by machines,

the machines now control us and our
identity.

Can humans avoid identifying with their
verbal thoughts and being controlled by

them? This has always been one of the
greatest intellectual and spiritual

challenges. facing humanity.

Most humans have never even tried to do
it. We spend our entire lives

automatically identifying with the
verbal formations in our mind.

Now, AI might force humanity to make
this spiritual leap

to really start exploring the truth
which is beyond words because our

and survival now depend on it.

Because the words will be controlled by
something else, by this AI.

So this might be the big task ahead of
humanity, to explore

finally the truth which is beyond words.

And this exploration starts really with
the next word that pops up in your mind.

Do you know where it came from?

Do you know why you thought that
particular word?

and not some other word.

Thank you.