for exactly this meaning of if it's a bond it's a network uh the big question is what is information people often think that information is about the truth but information is not necessarily about the truth information is essentially a connection and very often the truth is not a strong connection it's much easier to connect people with fantasies with fictions than it is with the truth and you know the the basic question of the book is if people are so smart why are we so stupid we are the most smartest animal in the world we know
so much and yet we engage in so many self-destructive activities like Wars like the ecological destruction and now is AI we are creating a technology that might destroy us why is it and it's not because there is something wrong with us individually it's not about human nature the answer the book gives is that good people kind people wise people will make bad and destructive decisions if they are given bad information and the world is flooded by bad information because unfortunately it's the easiest way to create bonds between people uh with fictions and Fantasies and not
with the truth so the the book is really about this phenomen on of how do you connect people and what are the problems but the pitfalls when you try to connect a very large number of people absolutely um you know we have the most sophisticated information technology in history and we are losing the ability to talk with each other we see that the public conversation in many countries around the world in Israel in the United States in Brazil the public conversation is collapsing people don't agree on any facts they can't trust each other they can't
listen to each other why is it that we have such good information technology and people can't talk uh it's a it's the big Paradox of of our present era we think that with better technology uh things will improve but it doesn't and now we uh we seem not to be learning the lesson because we are creating even much more powerful technology than social media or the technology of the previous decade now we are uh creating AI which is different from every previous technology in history because it's the first technology that can make decisions by itself
can create new IDE by itself it's no longer a tool it's an agent you know even an atom bomb was a very powerful technology but it gave power to us because the atom bomb could not decide where to explode who to attack and it couldn't create anything new AI is much more powerful because it can make decisions at autonomous weapon system can for instance decide who to attack where to strike and it can also invent new kinds of weapons new kinds of strategies uh so in this sense it is taking power away from us you
cannot put a company if you're a car company you produce cars you have to invest a lot of money in safety if you don't uh uh if you don't do research and you don't develop safety mechanisms for the car seat belts and brakes and all kinds of other gadgets to make sure the car is safe you are not allowed to put the car on the road it's the same when you develop medicines you can't just invent a medicine and without any safety measures without any checks just release it to the public let's see what happens
it's not allowed in medicine why is it allowed with AI what happens if you give AI Control of the financial system most more and more of the transactions in the stock exchange in in in all these fin financial institutions is done by Ai and there is a huge financial CR crisis it's not the Hollywood scenarios of robots rebelling against humans it's something like AI causing a financial crisis and again it's it it is possible to make to do it in a safe way yes most information is not about the truth because it you you you
need to invest effort time in order to create truthful information the truth is more difficult than to produce fiction producing fiction is easy you just invent anything you want uh you know to to to to say to invent some conspiracy theory it takes seconds you want to write something truthful it's much more difficult so if you want the truth you need to work hard most of the information is not the truth this is why you need to invest in building institutions like uh uh newspapers like universities like research institutions because you need to work hard
to produce the truth now what we see with populist leaders that they completely undermine the trust of people in everything they tell us that everybody is lying they tell us that we shouldn't trust any Institution they depict the world as just a power struggle just like the old marxists the old marxists they told people that the whole world is just a power struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed anytime two people interact this is a power struggle so whenever you hear somebody say something you don't ask what is the truth you ask whose interests are
being served d by this this is a very very cynical view of the world uh which destroys trust which destroys democracy because if you can't trust anybody then democracy collapses so the antidote to this is to remind people just think about yourself do you personally care about the truth are you just engaged in power struggles with everybody are you just trying to manipulate everybody or you yourself you care about the truth right when you engage with people with your friends with your family this is not just a power struggle so if you think like this
about yourself why don't you think like this about other people almost all the people in the world are like you they also are interested genuinely in the truth yes there are also power struggle that's right that's part of reality it but this is not the whole of reality [Music] the first step is to recognize the danger because some people say that uh we've learned from history that every time there is a new technology you have these uh doomsday scenarios people are afraid of the consequences and in the end it's okay like when the Industrial Revolution
came there were all these scary scenarios but in the end industry made life better for most humans and this is true but the problem is the transition period the learning how to to use the new technology when the Industrial Revolution invented steam engines and telegraphs nobody knew how to build a good industrial society so people experimented imperialism was an experiment in building industrial societies lots of people in the US in Germany in Japan they said the only industrial society can be an Empire because you need to control the sources of raw materials and the mar
and it took a 100 Years of terrible Wars and oppression to realize that this wasn't so you had other people like Hitler and Stalin and musolini telling people that the only the best industrial society was a totalitarian society and again it took many generations and millions of victims to realize this wasn't true in the end we learned how to build good in industrial societies but think about the the cost of learning this if we have to go again with AI through the same process of Empires and totalitarianism and world wars then we this this will
be catastrophic for Humanity uh the basic understanding should be again that we make mistakes don't assume that the technology is perfect and don't assume that you know how to use it therefore we need to invest a lot in safety and in very strong self-correcting mechanisms
