Harari is an extremely lucid author who excels at distilling the complex into the simple. As in all his books, he seamlessly takes the reader from the distant past to the present to the future. In this case his subject is information and the networks we use to manage and disseminate it. As such it is, but isn’t, a book about AI. “My goal with this book is to provide a more accurate historical perspective on the AI revolution.”

In many ways, it is a book about politics, although the author never names names or talks in terms of blue and red. And his canvas is global and spans history. He does, however, talk about democracy, populism, totalitarianism, and such, terms that are being bandied about a lot in the US this election year. And that, I suspect, is why the reviews of the book vary so widely. We are a polarized nation and want to inject politics into just about everything.

Harari, however, is not a politician or political commentator. He is an historian who, of course, has not defined that history. His job is to spot the patterns. And in this case the pattern has a political implication. “Democracy and dictatorship are typically discussed as contrasting political and ethical systems. This chapter seeks to shift the terms of the discussion, by surveying the history of democracy and dictatorship as contrasting types of information networks.”

Which ultimately, of course, brings us to AI. The author correctly notes that AI is different from all prior information networks (e.g., printing, the telegraph, the Internet, the pre-modern church, etc.) in that it is the first network capable of acting independently of humans. And, as a result, it deserves special consideration, both for its opportunity and its menace.

Adding a bit of gravity and urgency to the matter, Harari notes: “The main argument of this book is that humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely. Our problem, therefore, is a network problem.”

Harari, among many other prominent voices, as a result, argues that we must manage the future application of AI. I agree. Our tech leaders, unfortunately, have shown themselves to be as independent of oversight as AI itself. And given the enormous amounts of capital that AI will undoubtedly unleash, my personal fear is that Silicon Valley, at Wall Street’s urging, will unleash AI before there is any public consensus on its application. After all, that is what they have done at every step of the digital revolution. They routinely release powerful new products that must almost immediately be updated to fix flaws and security oversights in their design. The earliest pioneers of the internet, as but one example, now readily admit that they did not foresee the degree to which it could be abused by malevolent actors. With AI, however, we may not get the chance to address the problems in retrospect.

As part of its mission, the book also offers a plethora of insights into several important underlying currents of thought and conviction important to current culture. Some of my favorite quotes:

“But power isn’t wisdom…”

“The naïve view [of information] thinks that disagreements about values turn out on closer inspection to be the fault of either the lack of information or deliberate disinformation.”

“History isn’t the study of the past; it is the study of change.”

“However, democracy doesn’t mean majority rule; rather, it means freedom and equality for all.”
“It is particularly crucial to remember that elections are not a method for discovering truth. Rather, they are a method for maintaining order by adjudicating between people’s conflicting desires.”

“…information isn’t truth.”

In the end, I believe it is an author’s job, with few exceptions, not to tell us what to believe, but to make us think. And with this book, in addition to his many others, this author has done just that. I do believe, therefore, that this book is worth every reader’s time. You won’t agree with everything he says. I didn’t, either. And it is true that the higher you take the camera the simpler the landscape looks, to the point of causing you to make erroneous conclusions about what you see. Not all patterns have meaning. Sometimes they are just patterns.

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Rating	4.5 (607 ratings)
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Category	Computers & Technology

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI