WEF Lackey: AI Will Write the 'Correct' Bible

Yuval Noah Harari, a guru to Barack Obama, Karl Schwab, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, says it's time for a new Bible

“We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”
Hildegard of Bingen

In the age of fast-food intellectualism, Yuval Noah Harari’s books are the Big Macs of nothingburgers. With best-sellers like Sapiens and Homo Deus, Harari struck a chord with the pseudo-intellectual pseudo-elites, with his seemingly grandiose insights and sweeping narratives.

Harari writes stupid books. The problem is that stupid sells. Their allure lies in their ability to cater to the intellectual deficiencies of the average modern Westerner, who craves the illusion of profound thought without having to confront the complexities and ambiguities that accompany an honest search for knowledge.

I always deemed Harari to be nothing but a conman. But I might have misjudged him. There might be less to him than meets the eye, as he has recently displayed a sense of genuineness in his stupidity that I start to believe could trump his guile. We need a new word for it, the stupidity that comes from self-infatuation.

When a Conman Falls for His Own Con

Not long ago, Harari declared that the era of free will was over. Given his unofficial position as a mouthpiece for Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF), it was only natural to hear him espouse and promote such a fascistic idea/ideal.

But last week, Harari made an impromptu admission to an aspiration that, while still in step with the trials and tribulations of the rise of woke fascism, revealed a glimpse into his mind, a sign that he might believe a little too much in the lies he’s been spinning for his own sake:

Harari believes that “AI is the first technology in the world that can create new ideas.” Which is obviously untrue. The problem with the statement is that AI is a simulacrum, a mish-mash of human-directed statistical methods used to combine human-curated ideas and create intelligible groupings of words that some might mistake for text.

In a way, such a process actually resembles Harari’s own style of writing. Take, for example, Harari’s central thesis in Sapiens: that the true driving force behind human history is our ability to create and believe in collective myths. While this notion is not without merit, it is hardly groundbreaking. The idea that shared beliefs underpin human societies is a cornerstone of anthropology and sociology. Yet, in the process of popularising these ideas, Harari’s work becomes little more than a rehashing of existing theories, dressed up in dramatic prose and sensationalist claims.

What If the Marching Words of Woke Fascism Could be Rewritten as a Holy Book?

“In the future, we might see the first cults and religions in history whose revered texts were written by a non-human intelligence [A.I.].” he continues. This idea actually a good follow up act to with his grandiose announcement that free will is ‘dead.’ If, indeed the era of free will is over — after 2,000 years —it would make sense that it would come to the end by massive conversion to a secular religion by the “hands” of a “non-human intelligence” as he calls A.I. Harari seems to believe A.I. is the god built at men’s image.

He then proceeds to hit every nail on the head that you would expect a fascist to hit:

“The printing press printed as many copies of the Bible as Gutenberg instructed it, but it did not create a single new page […] It had no ideas of its own about the Bible. Is it good, is it bad, how to interpret this, how to interpret that.”

First, as a good, old technocrat, Harari believes the human mind ‘wanders too much’ for its own good. His insistence on the primacy of myths in human affairs often leads to a reductive and deterministic view of history. By reducing human history to a series of myths, Harari denies the importance of economic, political, and moral factors, as well as the role of individual decision-making and chance events.

Here he conspicuously conflates very different concepts — determining if something is ‘good or bad’ and how to interpret a message according to that determination, are not equivalent calls. AI can’t make such judgments on whether ideas are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ unless some very human intelligence tells it what is good or bad. Then, and only then, it can apply its optimising algorithms to ‘interpret’ the ideas in light of a given moral code.

Sure enough, it can make a call on whether something is coherent, consistent, or contradictory. But not if it is right or wrong. And to say that is a dangerous claim.

In Homo Deus, Harari ventures into the realm of futurology, a field already fraught with conjecture and speculation, where he promotes the view that humanity is on the verge of transcending its biological limitations and becoming godlike through the convergence of technology and data. Then, instead of engaging with the serious ethical, philosophical, and social implications of such a transformation, Harari opts for a more superficial analysis, replete with sweeping generalisations and glib pronouncements.

No wonder he arrives at conclusions like, since “AI can create new ideas,” ergo “it can even write a new Bible.” The problem here is that the ‘new Bible’ is already being written by human hands. Harari has added a few ‘gospels’ to it, to be sure. AI is only being weaponised to make its adoption quicker and irreversible, and that's what a fascist such as Harari is pushing for.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

And, like a cliché James Bond villain, he proceeds with the detailing of his grand plan: “all religions claim other religion books were written by humans, but [their] book, no, it came from a superhuman intelligence.” That’s a ridiculous and uninformed point to make, since not all religions claim that. Actually very few do.

Interestingly enough, the Quran is the only mainstream religious book whose followers claim to be the literal word of their god. The Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, are ‘divinely inspired.’ The sacred texts of Hinduism and Buddhism are regarded as the work of sages and philosophers; the same goes for Confucianism and the Shinto religion. I believe Harari is pretty aware of that, and he is willingly misrepresenting those claims. Which becomes clearer when he makes his point more objectively:

“Throughout history, religions dreamt about having a book written by a superhuman intelligence, a non-human entity […] In a few years, there might be religions that are actually correct. Just think about a religion whose holy book is written by AI. That could be a reality in a few years.”

Surprisingly, I think he is spot-on here, and I think some of the criticism towards him is misguided. When he says “correct” here he doesn’t mean as if the hypothetical AI holy book would be theologically correct, as opposed to the other holy books. Rather, he means that people would be correct to say such a book came from a superhuman intelligence. Which, as with most things Harari says, is right, but also wrong.

Because it is right in a very stupid way. AI is not superhuman. It is subhuman. It cannot make a decision. It doesn’t know it is making a decision. And it will not be able to make a decision until we tell it to do so and also how. It can only apply pre-baked decisions coming from human judgment.

His interviewer in the event above, former CNN anchor Pedro Pinto, actually admitted to something interesting in that sense:

“When I was preparing this interview, I wrote down questions that I would like to ask you [Harari] and then I asked ChatGPT to create ten questions that it would like to ask you […] and its questions were better than mine […] and it took it five seconds.”

Yes, Pedro just realized that, like AI and like Harari, he is not really creating anything original, he is just a parrot. His job is to catalog, summarise, broadcast and rehash the same talking points. Nothing original. And he does it with much less efficiency than a bunch of code on a server, unfortunately for him.

If Pedro was capable of thinking of original, thought-provoking questions, he wouldn’t have to fear for his job...

Can I Put My Name On Your Paper?

When you make any effort to take Harari’s works seriously, you realise that his intellectual shallowness is most apparent in his treatment of complex philosophical and ethical issues. For example, in both Sapiens and Homo Deus, he dismisses the concept of free will as an illusion, citing a supposed deterministic nature of our biology and environment. Of course, he fails to engage with the rich philosophical tradition that has grappled with this question for centuries, offering little more than a cursory nod to the likes of Kant, Hume, and Schopenhauer.

In his discussion of human happiness, Harari uncritically adopts the hedonic treadmill theory — the idea that people’s happiness levels remain relatively constant over time, regardless of their circumstances. While this concept might have some empirical support, it is far from being universally accepted, and its implications are heavily debated among psychologists and philosophers alike. Once again, Harari chooses to sidestep these complexities, presenting his readers with a simplistic and reductive account of a deeply nuanced issue.

Perhaps the most damning critique of Harari’s work is its pandering to the intellectual laziness of his target audience. His books are riddled with attention-grabbing, provocative statements designed to shock and titillate, rather than question or challenge. For instance, in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari claims that “the most important fact about living in a post-truth era is that we are all potential victims of our own biases and irrational beliefs.” While pushing another fascistic talking point (“post-truth”), Harari serves more of a soundbite than a meaningful contribution to the discourse on truth, media, and information.

In the same vein, Harari’s treatment of religion is fraught with oversimplification and a lack of nuance. He often characterises religious beliefs as mere fictions, dismissing the profound psychological, social, and philosophical dimensions that underpin faith.

But that’s only a building block in Harari’s full-blown dismissal of individuality, as he contends that humans are little more than algorithms and data-processing machines, betraying a deep ignorance of the vast body of literature on the human condition.

Undoubtedly, Harari’s works are emblematic of the intellectual malaise afflicting contemporary Western society. His ideas, while alluring and accessible, are ultimately shallow and disingenuous, providing readers with little more than a veneer of sophistication and understanding. Instead of challenging our preconceptions and urging us to think more deeply about the world, Harari’s books serve as a testament to the triumph of style over substance, and the appeal of superficial thinking.

Intellectual Dadaism

The popularity of Harari’s works is as regrettable as understandable in a world where stupid sells. It stands as a sobering reminder of the need for critical thought and genuine engagement with the complexities and ambiguities that make our lives worth living.

I tend to agree that in the near future, AI will write an actual new ‘Bible,’ and that we already have a secular religion in the works that will adopt it. We might be witnessing the rise of a global secular theocracy after all.

The Bible written by AI wouldn't be too different from the works written by Harari. Perhaps that’s why he finds the idea so fascinating. Harari’s books feel like they’ve been written on an Excel spreadsheet, ultimately making the world simplistic rather than simple for the reader. That would likely be the goal of such new Bible.

So, it is no wonder that he thinks AI is capable of original thoughts. Because he also fancies himself capable of doing so. And thinking that AI can have original thoughts is nothing really original, to begin with... it’s just the old idea of Dadaism applied to technocratic daydreams.

While Harari is a prototypical left-leaning talking head, his works are not even relevant to that side of the aisle. Thomas Piketty, Slavoj Žižek, Zygmunt Bauman, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, and Richard Dawkins have all dealt with similar topics in much more competent ways. Harari has only managed to prove himself as the poster child for idiotic common nonsense, so far.