Claude and ChatGPT are just like Indian govt clerks and that's a problem, says Yuval Noah Harari

When you think of AI, you may recall making photos with ChatGPT or coding with Claude. AI, in a sense, is a tool that you use to make things easier or do tasks quicker. But Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari believes that the way ChatGPT or Claude work is not that different from an Indian government clerk.Speaking on his YouTube channel, Harari said humans had spent thousands of years creating an artificial environment rich in data, language and bureaucracy. And this is perfectly suited for AI. “Just as fish live in oceans and monkeys live in forests, AIs live in bureaucracies,” he added.To make his point clear, Yuval Noah Harari explained that all bureaucracies are “extremely artificial environments,” where narrow intelligence can allow anyone to have a big impact. “A banker who doesn't know how to use an axe or a hammer can nevertheless cut down entire forests and build huge cities and towers just by writing documents and moving them around in the bureaucratic network,” he explained. Harari added that due to the bureaucratic system, “the banker becomes far more powerful than any hunter-gatherer or tiger.”AIs are bureaucratsExplaining why humans often feel alienated by bureaucracy, Harari said, “We were born in the forest, not in the office.” Humans, he said, were biologically and evolutionarily older than bureaucratic systems. Bureaucracy, by contrast, was like oxygen for AI, raising the possibility that humans could lose control of these systems. That is, unlike the government clerk you may have met for some bureaucratic work recently, AIs can be much more efficient. “No banker can remember all the transactions of a bank or a corporation. An AI can,” Harari added. “No lawyer can remember all the laws and regulations of Italy or the EU. An AI can.”While AI may not be able to do much in an unstructured jungle, Yuval Noah Harari added, within the bureaucratic systems “AIs can wield enormous power.”The problem of AI clerks Moving beyond a single scenario, Harari predicted that we were nearing a future where AI bureaucrats, in essence, ran the world. “AI bankers will decide whether to give us a loan. AI judges will decide whether to send us to jail. AI theologians will decide whether you can get an abortion,” he noted. “Corporate AIs will decide whether to give you a job. And military AIs will decide whether to bomb your home.”While AI running the world may sound dystopian in itself, Yuval Noah Harari believes that there are more concerns attached to it. “One likely outcome of AI taking over the bureaucracies is that humans will lose trust in other humans and instead learn to trust only AIs,” he said.He cited social media as an example, claiming that platforms, which were run by AI algorithms, were “spreading distrust between humans (and) increasing social tensions all over the world,” Yet, the same humans, Harari added, “who are losing trust in human journalists, bankers and governments blindly trust the AIs who are showing them all the fake news and conspiracy theories on social media.”While Yuval Noah Harari touched upon the possibilities of this world of AI clerks, including those of AI tribes and AI banks, one scenario seems to be the scariest. “Perhaps the most frightening outcome is that just as cows and chickens don't understand the human financial system that controls their lives, we humans will not be able to understand the new AI systems that will control our lives,” Harari noted.- Ends