The Israeli author and thought leader Yuval Noah Harari has warned that an algorithm could understand people better in the future than they themselves.
“Biological Knowledge multiplied by the computing power multiplied by the data results in the ability to hack the people,” he said at the conference “Online Marketing Rockstars” in Hamburg. The Algorithms could say our decisions and our behavior and our desires to manipulate. “They will know us better than we ourselves. This is not impossible, because most people don’t know themselves very well.”
Generally, such technologies could have a positive impact, for example in the area of health in the early detection of diseases. The 43-Year-old warned in his presentation, “Hacking Humans”, but also in front of dramatic consequences. So-called trolls may use the personal Fears in order to spread deliberately Fake News and Propaganda. Authoritarian governments could create a total surveillance systems. Harari stressed that it is tell you before, but the possibilities handle.
The best-selling author, to be referred to in subsequent conversation with the previous “image,”editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, neither as optimists, nor as pessimists, but as realists. He was also not against technology, he wanted to apply to his purpose. “You have to use technology and not be used.”
Harari is currently one of the most sought-after authors. His book “A short history of humanity” became a success-Bestseller, as well as the successor to “Homo Deus” and his latest work, “21 lessons for the 21st century. Century”.
Harari spoke to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg: “He and many others in Silicon Valley created these immense machines with a very naive view of human nature,” he said. They had the idea of people together. In the last few years, they would have realized that there were evil people that needed these systems miss. But they were not yet to see so far, that there is perhaps also the depth of structural problems in the platforms themselves.
In the struggle for the advance of Artificial intelligence (AI) Harari for their role. “I hope that Europe will follow the American or the Chinese path, but a path of its own. Because it can’t win,” he said. “Europe should find its own Solutions, such as AI applications develop, which protects the private sphere of people to hack instead of you.”
For this year’s conference, the Online Marketing Rockstars 52,000 visitors had come.
dpa
