21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari

  7 For a survey of the causes of car accidents in the US, see: Daniel J. Fagnant and Kara Kockelman, ‘Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles: Opportunities, Barriers and Policy Recommendations’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 77 (2015), 167–81; for a general worldwide survey, see, for example: OECD/ITF, Road Safety Annual Report 2016 (Paris: OECD, 2016).

  8 Kristofer D. Kusano and Hampton C. Gabler, ‘Safety Benefits of Forward Collision Warning, Brake Assist, and Autonomous Braking Systems in Rear-End Collisions’, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 13:4 (2012), 1546–55; James M. Anderson et al., Autonomous Vehicle Technology: A Guide for Policymakers (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2014), esp. 13–15; Daniel J. Fagnant and Kara Kockelman, ‘Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles: Opportunities, Barriers and Policy Recommendations’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 77 (2015), 167–81; Jean-François Bonnefon, Azim Shariff and Iyad Rahwan, ‘Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?’, arXiv (2015), 1–15. For suggestions for inter-vehicle networks to prevent collision, see: Seyed R. Azimi et al., ‘Vehicular Networks for Collision Avoidance at Intersections’, SAE International Journal of Passenger Cars – Mechanical Systems 4:1 (2011), 406–16; Swarun Kumar et al., ‘CarSpeak: A Content-Centric Network for Autonomous Driving’, SIGCOM Computer Communication Review 42:4 (2012), 259–70; Mihail L. Sichitiu and Maria Kihl, ‘Inter-Vehicle Communication Systems: A Survey’, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 10:2 (2008); Mario Gerla et al., ‘Internet of Vehicles: From Intelligent Grid to Autonomous Cars and Vehicular Clouds’, 2014 IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT) (2014), 241–6.

  9 Michael Chui, James Manyika and Mehdi Miremadi, ‘Where Machines Could Replace Humans – and Where They Can’t (Yet)’, McKinsey Quarterly, July 2016.

  10 Wu Youyou, Michal Kosinski and David Stillwell, ‘Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans’, PANS, vol. 112 (2014), 1036–8.

  11 Stuart Dredge, ‘AI and music: will we be slaves to the algorithm?’ Guardian, 6 August 2017. For a general survey of methods, see: Jose David Fernández and Francisco Vico, ‘AI Methods in Algorithmic Composition: A Comprehensive Survey’, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 48 (2013), 513–82.

  12 Eric Topol, The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands (New York: Basic Books, 2015); Robert Wachter, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2015); Simon Parkin, ‘The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now’, MIT Technology Review 9 March 2016; James Gallagher, ‘Artificial intelligence “as good as cancer doctors”’, BBC, 26 January 2017.

  13 Kate Brannen, ‘Air Force’s lack of drone pilots reaching “crisis” levels’, Foreign Policy, 15 January 2015.

  14 Tyler Cowen, Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation (New York: Dutton, 2013); Brad Bush, ‘How combined human and computer intelligence will redefine jobs’, TechCrunch, 1 November 2016.

  15 Ulrich Raulff, Farewell to the Horse: The Final Century of Our Relationship (London: Allen Lane, 2017); Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 286; Margo DeMello, Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 197; Clay McShane and Joel Tarr, ‘The Decline of the Urban Horse in American Cities’, Journal of Transport History 24:2 (2003), 177–98.

  16 Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger, ‘The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015’, National Bureau of Economic Research (2016); Peter H. Cappelli and J. R. Keller, ‘A Study of the Extent and Potential Causes of Alternative Employment Arrangements’, ILR Review 66:4 (2013), 874–901; Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Lindsey Cameron and Lyndon Garrett, ‘Alternative Work Arrangements: Two Images of the New World of Work’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 4 (2017), 473–99; Sarah A. Donovan, David H. Bradley and Jon O. Shimabukuru, ‘What Does the Gig Economy Mean for Workers?’, Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, 2016; ‘More Workers Are in Alternative Employment Arrangements’, Pew Research Center, 28 September 2016.

  17 David Ferrucci et al.,‘Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!’, Artificial Intelligence 199–200 (2013), 93–105.

  18 ‘Google’s AlphaZero Destroys Stockfish in 100-Game Match’, Chess.com, 6 December 2017; David Silver et al., ‘Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm’, arXiv (2017), https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf; see also Sarah Knapton, ‘Entire Human Chess Knowledge Learned and Surpassed by DeepMind’s AlphaZero in Four Hours’, Telegraph, 6 December 2017.

  19 Cowen, Average is Over, op. cit.; Tyler Cowen, ‘What are humans still good for? The turning point in freestyle chess may be approaching’, Marginal Revolution, 5 November 2013.

  20 Maddalaine Ansell, ‘Jobs for Life Are a Thing of the Past. Bring On Lifelong Learning’, Guardian, 31 May 2016.

  21 Alex Williams, ‘Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax’, New York Times, 10 June 2017.

  22 Simon Rippon, ‘Imposing Options on People in Poverty: The Harm of a Live Donor Organ Market’, Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (2014), 145–50; I. Glenn Cohen, ‘Regulating the Organ Market: Normative Foundations for Market Regulation’, Law and Contemporary Problems 77 (2014); Alexandra K. Glazier, ‘The Principles of Gift Law and the Regulation of Organ Donation’, Transplant International 24 (2011), 368–72; Megan McAndrews and Walter E. Block, ‘Legalizing Saving Lives: A Proposition for the Organ Market’, Insights to A Changing World Journal 2015, 1–17.

  23 James J. Hughes, ‘A Strategic Opening for a Basic Income Guarantee in the Global Crisis Being Created by AI, Robots, Desktop Manufacturing and BioMedicine’, Journal of Evolution and Technology 24 (2014), 45–61; Alan Cottey, ‘Technologies, Culture, Work, Basic Income and Maximum Income’, AI and Society 29 (2014), 249–57.

  24 Jon Henley, ‘Finland Trials Basic Income for Unemployed’, Guardian, 3 January 2017.

  25 ‘Swiss Voters Reject Proposal to Give Basic Income to Every Adult and Child’, Guardian, 5 June 2017.

  26 Isabel Hunter, ‘Crammed into squalid factories to produce clothes for the West on just 20p a day, the children forced to work in horrific unregulated workshops of Bangladesh’, Daily Mail, 1 December 2015; Chris Walker and Morgan Hartley, ‘The Culture Shock of India’s Call Centers’, Forbes, 16 December 2012.

  27 Klaus Schwab and Nicholas Savis, Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution (World Economic Forum, 2018), 54. On long-term development strategies, see Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem Press, 2003).

  28 Lauren Gambini, ‘Trump Pans Immigration Proposal as Bringing People from “Shithole Countries”’, Guardian, 12 January 2018.

  29 For the idea that an absolute improvement in conditions might be coupled with a rise in relative inequality, see in particular Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

  30 ‘2017 Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (2017), https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439; Melanie Lidman, ‘As ultra-Orthodox women bring home the bacon, don’t say the F-word’, Times of Israel, 1 January 2016.

  31 Lidman, ‘As ultra-Orthodox women bring home the bacon’, op. cit; ‘Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 18 (2016). As for happiness, Israel was recently ranked eleventh out of thirty-eight in life satisfaction by the OECD: ‘Life Satisfaction’, OECD Better Life Index, http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/life-satisfaction/, accessed 15 October 2017.

  32 ‘2017 Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Inst
itute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (2017), https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439.

  3. Liberty

  1 Margaret Thatcher, ‘Interview for Woman’s Own (“no such thing as society”)’, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, 23 September 1987.

  2 Keith Stanovich, Who Is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning (New York: Psychology Press, 1999).

  3 Richard Dawkins, ‘Richard Dawkins: We Need a New Party – the European Party’, New Statesman, 29 March 2017.

  4 Steven Swinford, ‘Boris Johnson’s allies accuse Michael Gove of “systematic and calculated plot” to destroy his leadership hopes’, Telegraph, 30 June 2016; Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart, ‘Gove’s thunderbolt and Boris’s breaking point: a shocking Tory morning’, Guardian, 30 June 2016.

  5 James Tapsfield, ‘Gove presents himself as the integrity candidate for Downing Street job but sticks the knife into Boris AGAIN’, Daily Mail, 1 July 2016.

  6 In 2017 a Stanford team has produced an algorithm that can purportedly detect whether you are gay or straight with an accuracy of 91 per cent, based solely on analysing a few of your facial pictures (https://osf.io/zn79k). However, since the algorithm was developed on the basis of pictures that people self-selected to upload to dating sites, the algorithm might actually identify differences in cultural ideals. It is not that the facial features of gay people are necessarily different from those of straight people. Rather, gay men uploading photos to a gay dating site try to conform to different cultural ideals than straight men uploading photos to straight dating sites.

  7 David Chan, ‘So Why Ask Me? Are Self-Report Data Really That Bad?’ in Charles E. Lance and Robert J. Vandenberg (eds.), Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends (New York: Routledge, 2009), 309–36; Delroy L. Paulhus and Simine Vazire, ‘The Self-Report Method’ in Richard W. Robins, R. Chris Farley and Robert F. Krueger (eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Personality Psychology (London: Guilford Press, 2007), 228–33.

  8 Elizabeth Dwoskin and Evelyn M. Rusli, ‘The Technology that Unmasks Your Hidden Emotions’, Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2015.

  9 Norberto Andrade, ‘Computers Are Getting Better Than Humans at Facial Recognition’, Atlantic, 9 June 2014; Dwoskin and Rusli, ‘The Technology That Unmasks Your Hidden Emotions’; Sophie K. Scott, Nadine Lavan, Sinead Chen and Carolyn McGettigan, ‘The Social Life of Laughter’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18:12 (2014), 618–20.

  10 Daniel First, ‘Will big data algorithms dismantle the foundations of liberalism?’, AI and Society, June 2017.

  11 Carole Cadwalladr, ‘Google, Democracy and the Truth about Internet Search’, Guardian, 4 December 2016.

  12 Jeff Freak and Shannon Holloway, ‘How Not to Get to Straddie’, Red Land City Bulletin, 15 March 2012.

  13 Michelle McQuigge, ‘Woman Follows GPS; Ends Up in Ontario Lake’, Toronto Sun, 13 May 2016; ‘Woman Follows GPS into Lake’, News.com.au, 16 May 2016.

  14 Henry Grabar, ‘Navigation Apps Are Killing Our Sense of Direction. What if They Could Help Us Remember Places Instead?’ Slate, 10 July 2017.

  15 Joel Delman, ‘Are Amazon, Netflix, Google Making Too Many Decisions For Us?’, Forbes, 24 November 2010; Cecilia Mazanec, ‘Will Algorithms Erode Our Decision-Making Skills?’, NPR, 8 February 2017.

  16 Jean-François Bonnefon, Azim Shariff and Iyad Rahwan, ‘The Social Dilemma of Autonomous Vehicles’, Science 352:6293 (2016), 1573–6.

  17 Christopher W. Bauman et al., ‘Revisiting External Validity: Concerns about Trolley Problems and Other Sacrificial Dilemmas in Moral Psychology’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 8:9 (2014), 536–54.

  18 John M. Darley and Daniel C. Batson, ‘“From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27:1 (1973), 100–8.

  19 Kristofer D. Kusano and Hampton C. Gabler, ‘Safety Benefits of Forward Collision Warning, Brake Assist, and Autonomous Braking Systems in Rear-End Collisions’, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 13:4 (2012), 1546–55; James M. Anderson et al., Autonomous Vehicle Technology: A Guide for Policymakers (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2014), esp. 13–15; Daniel J. Fagnant and Kara Kockelman, ‘Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles: Opportunities, Barriers and Policy Recommendations’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 77 (2015), 167–81.

  20 Tim Adams, ‘Job Hunting Is a Matter of Big Data, Not How You Perform at an Interview’, Guardian, 10 May 2014.

  21 For an extremely insightful discussion, see Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York: Crown, 2016). This is really an obligatory read for anyone interested in the potential effects of algorithms on society and politics.

  22 Bonnefon, Shariff and Rahwan, ‘The Social Dilemma of Autonomous Vehicles’.

  23 Vincent C. Müller and Thomas W. Simpson, ‘Autonomous Killer Robots Are Probably Good News’, University of Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government Policy Memo, November 2014; Ronald Arkin, Governing Lethal Behaviour: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, Mobile Robot Lab, 2007, 1–13.

  24 Bernd Greiner, War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, trans. Anne Wyburd and Victoria Fern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 16. For at least one reference for the emotional state of the soldiers see: Herbert Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, ‘The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience’ in Jodi O’Brien and David M. Newman (eds.), Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life Reading (Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press, 2010), 13–25.

  25 Robert J. Donia, Radovan Karadžić: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). See also: Isabelle Delpla, Xavier Bougarel and Jean-Louis Fournel, Investigating Srebrenica: Institutions, Facts, and Responsibilities (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012).

  26 Noel E. Sharkey, ‘The Evitability of Autonomous Robot Warfare’, International Review of the Red Cross 94 (886) 2012, 787–99.

  27 Ben Schiller, ‘Algorithms Control Our Lives: Are They Benevolent Rulers or Evil Dictators?’, Fast Company, 21 February 2017.

  28 Elia Zureik, David Lyon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban (eds.), Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power (London: Routledge, 2011); Elia Zureik, Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine (London: Routledge, 2015); Torin Monahan (ed.), Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2006); Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘E-Resistance and Technological In/Security in Everday Life: The Palestinian Case’, British Journal of Criminology, 52:1 (2012), 55–72; Or Hirschauge and Hagar Sheizaf, ‘Targeted Prevention: Exposing the New System for Dealing with Individual Terrorism’, Haaretz, 26 May 2017, https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/.premium-1.4124379, accessed 17 September 2017; Amos Harel, ‘The IDF Accelerates the Crisscrossing of the West Bank with Cameras and Plans to Surveille all Junctions’, Haaretz, 18 June 2017; Neta Alexander, ‘This is How Israel Controls the Digital and Cellular Space in the Territories’, Haaretz, 31 March 2016; Amos Harel, ‘Israel Arrested Hundreds of Palestinians as Suspected Terrorists Due to Publications on the Internet’, Haaretz, 16 April 2017; Alex Fishman, ‘The Argaman Era’, Yediot Aharonot, Weekend Supplement, 28 April 2017, 6.

  29 Yotam Berger, ‘Police Arrested a Palestinian Based on an Erroneous Translation of “Good Morning” in His Facebook Page’, Haaretz, 22 October 2017.

  30 William Beik, Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2000).

  31 O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, op. cit; Penny Crosman, ‘Can AI Be Programmed to Make Fair Lending Decisions?’, American Banker, 27 September 2016.

  32 Matt Reynolds, ‘Bias Test to Prevent Algorithms Discriminating Unfairly’, New Scientist, 29 May 2017; Claire Cain Miller, ‘When Algorithms Discriminate’, New York Times, 9 July 2015; Hann
ah Devlin, ‘Discrimination by Algorithm: Scientists Devise Test to Detect AI Bias’, Guardian, 19 December 2016.

  33 Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, op. cit.

  34 Anna Lisa Peterson, Being Animal: Beasts and Boundaries in Nature Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 100.

  4. Equality

  1 ‘Richest 1 Percent Bagged 82 Percent of Wealth Created Last Year – Poorest Half of Humanity Got Nothing’, Oxfam press release, 22 January 2018; Josh Lowe, ‘The 1 Percent Now Have Half the World’s Wealth’, Newsweek, 14 November 2017; Adam Withnall, ‘All the World’s Most Unequal Countries Revealed in One Chart’, Independent, 23 November 2016.

  2 Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016).

  3 Cara McGoogan, ‘How to See All the Terrifying Things Google Knows about You’, Telegraph, 18 August 2017; Caitlin Dewey, ‘Everything Google Knows about You (and How It Knows It)’, Washington Post, 19 November 2014.

  4 Dan Bates, ‘YouTube Is Losing Money Even Though It Has More Than 1 Billion Viewers’, Daily Mail, 26 February 2015; Olivia Solon, ‘Google’s Bad Week: YouTube Loses Millions As Advertising Row Reaches US’, Guardian, 25 March 2017; Seth Fiegerman, ‘Twitter Is Now Losing Users in the US’, CNN, 27 July 2017.

  5. Community

  1 Mark Zuckerberg, ‘Building Global Community’, Facebook, 16 February 2017.

  2 John Shinal, ‘Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook can play a role that churches and Little League once filled’, CNBC, 26 June 2017.

  3 Shinal, ‘Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook can play a role’, op. cit; John Shinal, ‘Zuckerberg says Facebook has a new missioin as it deals with fake news and hate speech,’ CNBC, 22 June 2017.

  4 Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  5 See, for example, Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the Present (London: Penguin, 2017).