While we fiddle.

I read another masterpiece this week by the most ardent and the most prophetic futurist of our times, Yuval Noah Hariri, the author of Sapiens and Homo Deus. By now everyone conversant with English language has a copy even if those wait to be read. Hariri is an Israeli Jew and originally writes in Hebrew which then translates into English. He can write exceptionally well in English too and moves within mediums. His latest is a concise article on GPT-4 the AI Chatbot that everyone is speaking to and relating to us in their terms.

This is what Hariri says (I paraphrase): 'Human civilization has an operating system called Language, through which they share values, beliefs and aspirations over generations giving rise to what we today term the civilized world. Regardless of what God you believe in, or what culture you belong to, or what to you is of immense value in human development, or who you love, your hopes and fears, you are sure to have coined, formed and used some combination of words in a language to share, express, advise or convey the sentiment to another human. Language is the operating system through which we narrate, relate and profess. Prophets, poets and politicians (note the composition) formulate and sell their dreams in words and languages to people and help create cultures where humans forge common purpose and common cause as societies, nations and cultures. Hariri then proposes, 'what if this operating system was taken over by another entity which over time could learn and then dominate the control, sense and emotion in a language to begin to command the same societies and cultures through infusion of differently intended emotion, aspiration, belief or a religion?' He believes, unless bridled, humankind is about to lose control of its operating system to AI led GPT-4 and its later versions.'

Technology will inevitably lead to mimicking man, especially his brain, as computing powers quadruple with amazing speed with its own derivative benefits but then Hariri also points to the need to control the power and the speed of the computed BOT regardless of the purpose it is assigned. I guess his biggest concern is with the speed of development which in the backdrop of a brewing cold war between China and the USA is being sacrificed to be the first past the post. In his piece for the NYT, he relates various Sci-Fi movies - where extra-terrestrials or Sci-Fi characters freely roam the streets of our cities - which could soon be a...