Will I love Nexus?

I loved the way Nexus looks at human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us and our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. Will we lose that power to AI? I believe Harari adds an important historical perspective to complement Kurzweil’s view of the future.

I found Harari’s account about the role of Facebook’s AI in the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar to be fascinating. 

If anyone is still under any illusion that AI is some sort of saviour for mankind, read this book. Its comprehensive arguments draw on history, creativity, science, politics, every facet of human life, to offer, guidance, warnings, and red flags to look out for. We're already crashing through those red flags, this book is urgent.

Okay, this one could surely be part of a list of books on artificial intelligence, but it's more than that: it's about the effects of networks of information—both real and fabricated, hallucinated, or intentionally-distorted —and their evolution and spread over the history of human culture, and secondarily, perhaps, about AI and its growing role as part of those information networks.

Despite a few flaws I found maddening (a brief section early in the book argues that genes don’t carry information), it is a very thoughtful and provocative work.

Harari cuts to the chase. Who else would try to tell the history of humankind, as he did in Sapiens, in just over 400 pages?

His trick is mapping patterns to narratives: Religion is a story; nations are a story; money is a story. 

And information networks carry those stories. Such networks long predate the internet, but social media algorithms have distorted their function, spreading outrage in order to maximize user engagement and increase profits.

Because AI can think and act on its own, Harari writes, it “changes the fundamental structure of our information network.” Plus, it can process vast… show more.

I've never felt my perspective shift so dramatically while reading a book! I remember sitting in my favorite reading nook at 3 am, absolutely thunderstruck by how Harari connected our ancient information networks to modern AI.

The way he traced humanity's journey from cave paintings to neural networks made my brain fizz with excitement. I kept texting my friends, "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS," passages in the middle of the night!

Yuval Harari's work is always compelling, thought-provoking and deeply human. As a historian, he is skilled at linking humanity's present times and crises with similar events in our past to suggest and warn how future events might play out. In Nexus, he examines the history of human information networks from the Stone Age to our current troubles with social media etc. He is particularly compelling on the subject of artificial intelligence, showing how, unless we are very careful, we will find ourselves controlled by AI. Human civilizations and indeed our very survival are at stake, he warns..

I thoroughly enjoyed Sapiens and later devoured Homo Deus. I like the author's style, approach and flow of argument. That's not to say I always agree or think that something may be missing or simplified, but that's also part of the reading experience - that the imagination is stimulated and assumptions challenged. In short, his books are always thought provoking. Consequently, I seized this copy as soon as I could and thoroughly enjoyed my first read and have returned to it to re-read some sections in slower time. I value the opportunity to read and internalize the ideas, processing and… show more.

While this is not my favorite Harari book, the author is such a good writer and provocative, original thinker and historian that I'll read anything he writes. I was not disappointed, as this book brings to light so many of the issues we face with AI. The history of how governments control information for good or ill was also fascinating. Books such as Homo Deus and Sapiens are so good that they would be hard to match, but this one is well worth a read.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus examines how information has shaped humanity throughout history, from the Stone Age to modern politics, and the existential challenges we now face. As a psychologist and applied neuroscientist, I resonate with his insights into how information influences both our behavior and societies. His exploration of its complex role, from myth to power, aligns with my own work on adaptability and resilience in the face of rapid technological change.

Nexus offers a thought-provoking perspective on navigating the future and rediscovering our shared humanity amid these challenges. For anyone interested in the broader impact of technology on the… show more.