Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari
E book
Non Fiction genre
Rating- 3.5/5
Long review since this is also a summary for those who may not have time to read the book! Rest assured though, even if you read the novel later, this is only a preview!
The lower rating is because of the high expectations! It is another book on history and no matter how much you try to make history interesting or sugar coat it, the fact of the matter is that History is boring!
The whole book seems to be a collection of blogs and articles though it is arranged in three sections and this may be one of the few books of history which may be interesting!
Even Yuval has accepted that he is not an expert in AI, but from 2018 he has had access to information which may change or challenge the way we think about AI
This is a doomsday novel against AI and there is no doubt in that!
Before Yuval dives into the AI he gives us an overview of the history and the regimens! There is an obvious bias and though he tries to be as neutral as possible, I guess in this day of Social media there is actually no one who is neutral!
SO the first part of this book surveys the historical development of human information networks. He has told some stories of the Bible.
He tells about some self-correcting mechanisms like the early modern European witch hunts.
He also tries to give differentiation between information and knowledge.
There are some amazing incidents narrated in the Novel some of which are about the AI while many are historical! Most historical ones are those you would already know while some AI ones are rather shocking!
In the Novel Nexus Yuval gives an introduction to one of the most frustrating activities the modern day civilisation has ever insisted! Red tape or bureaucracy
Then there is the amazing story of Cher ami, the wonderful carrier pigeon who saved so many soldiers! Or did he! Read that to know how stories can be told or exaggerated and made into reality!
Then there is the story the chemist Dan Shechtman. In April 1982, while observing through an electron microscope, Shechtman saw something that all contemporary theories in chemistry claimed simply could not exist: the atoms in a mixed sample of aluminium and manganese were crystallised in a pattern with a fivefold rotational symmetry! Shechtman’s discovery of what came to be called quasicrystals sounded so unbelievable that it was not accepted for even a peer reviewed journal to publish! It was a big issue that he was a junior scientist with no previous major invention or reputation! He also was not working in his own laboratory but in the laboratory of someone else! Now since this was the modern times, there were no witch hunts or killing! He was tolerated and later even won the Nobel prize! This incident was told in distinction to the past when there would have been witch hunts!
He then tells the story of Goethe and the Sorcerer’s apprentice and the about the Rh group how the information was good at that time.
He also tells about how a scientific book is not a good seller while a book which tells about how to hunt and identify a witch is a best seller!
He tries to give an intro about the political systems like the United States and the USSR in terms of information flows which explains much about their differing trajectories.
He then goes further and tells about Stalin and his whole regime and how totalitarian it was and how he used to have so much control! Even so much that there was a computer tech who had a person who used to watch him the whole day for more than twenty years! The other person’s job was only to watch him!
He says how a deep knowledge of history is also vital to understand what is new about AI, how it is fundamentally different from printing presses and radio sets, and in what specific ways an AI dictatorship could be very unlike anything we have seen before!
Here he tells the influence of modern techs at the time like the telegraph and then the radio and then the TV!
He also tells about the role of facebook in so many current world events and how the algorithms made the choice but the app developers did not take any responsibility of the aftermath!
The third and final part of the book – ‘Computer Politics’ – examines how different kinds of societies might deal with the threats and promises of the inorganic information network.
Here he tells about the two super powers of the world US and China who are distinct in that while US does not spy on its citizens, China has tried to take complete control! In fact they also have social scores systems in place! They have banned Google and FB and You tube!
Would these two emerge as the new leaders with data or some other countries like Russia, India and others who would join and form a third party!
Though he tells about India in so many places, it is understood that his knowledge of India is only second hand! He makes several mentions of P M Modi and the digital revolution.
He tells about how AI can help and has helped in finding lost people or solving crimes by using advanced level of image processing!
He tells how your cat images are the raw data which makes AI processing better everyday!
He tells about how what we did not imagine AI to do before like defeat someone in Chess or crack the CAPTCHA has been done and dusted by the latest AI! In fact there is an ancient game which was thought to be unbreakable by the AI which was finally done by AI and it also invented a new method of winning the game!
An AI made one person an assassin! He got inspired by the AI to kill queen Elizabeth!
Another AI made someone risk his job when the employer refused to shut it down by getting influenced by the AI!
The fact that AI does not have emotions is not the matter! The real issue is that the AI knows that humans have emotions which can be manipulated and that is what the Chat GPT did to crack the CAPTCHA! It asked a human to crack it for it by pretending to be another human with limited vision!
In another incident the AI was monitoring your heart rate and the increase in heart rate and pupil dilatations to understand what makes you more interested!
He tells how with the power of Data and database, now there can be no search engine which is better than Google which was actually what Larry the creator of Google wanted in the first place!
He tells how humans have always been wary of each other and with an example of a past king he states how the king’s minister isolated the king and controlled the whole empire! What guarantee we have that a future king or president may not give this right to an AI who will decide that the human is destroying the planet and in an attempt to save the planet simply annihilate humans!?
In this he gives an example of a book in which a computer is entrusted in making paper clip! With no end task the machine then takes it upon itself to simply go on making paper clip till there is not resource left and neither earth!
He also mentions how the AI does not sleep or take rest or stop! It just goes on and on and relentlessly collects data over data!
Even if it gets the answer wrong it tries to collect more data, it communicates with you and finally it gets it right!
If you do not believe Yuval you can call up your Google or Alexa and play a game called Akinator! You will be surprised or shocked!
One of the most surprising things is that most of the work in some places like judiciary where the calculation of term of punishment is to be done or in a bank where the eligibility of a loan is to be determined, the work is now actually done by a computer using some algorithm which even the Judge or the banker is not sure of! The next time your bank loan is not approved, you can blame the ‘intel inside’!
Racism, Judges, Russia, America, Qatar, China, India and so many countries and their policies and some history here and there is thrown around for good measure!
Every word and statement is backed by reference which runs into pages and pages so you know at least he is stating one version of the facts!
Yuval tries a balancing act here and has some clear bias which comes out though! He himself has admitted of not being a computer geek but a historian but it is an attempt by a historian to use history to warn us of the dangers of AI!
Ironically I read this book on the kindle and not as a paper back!
You make your choice! Anyway you know that the AI is watching!
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