Yuval Harari Says AI Bots Should Identify Themselves Or Stay Silent, 'You Cannot Predict What Kind Of Ideas AI Will Invent'

Historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari has a message for anyone sleepwalking through the AI revolution: wake up—before the algorithms finish rewriting our reality.

What Happened: During his recent trip to Japan to promote his book Nexus, Harari warned that artificial intelligence is not just a technological shift — it's an existential one.

"Now we have created something which is not human — AI — that has mastered language and mathematics better than us," he said in an interview with Nikkei.

‘Breeding Ground’

Harari pointed to social media as a breeding ground for chaos, fueled by bots that impersonate people and flood platforms with fake news, conspiracy theories, and rage — all to drive engagement.

"The two most obvious countermeasures are, first of all, to ban fake humans," he said. "They are welcome to talk with human beings only if they clearly identify themselves as AIs." He stressed the psychological manipulation that occurs when people believe a trending story is organically popular, not realizing it's being pushed by a swarm of bots.

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The second safeguard, he said, involves accountability: "Companies should be liable for the actions of their algorithms." He dismissed the common defense of free speech, saying, "The problem is not what human beings are saying. The problem is the decisions of algorithms."

Harari’s Views On Politics

On politics, Harari didn't hold back. He said, "Democracy is all about self-correcting mechanisms. The danger is: What if you give power to somebody that doesn't want to give it back?" He described Trump's worldview as one where "the strong rule and the weak must obey the strong," warning that such thinking could escalate global militarization and undermine cooperation.

Harari also sounded the alarm over AI monopolies: "It would be very dangerous if only two countries or a few countries monopolize AI technology." He urged global cooperation, especially among nations like Japan, India, Brazil, and the EU, to prevent domination by the U.S. and China.

Despite the warnings, Harari sees hope. "AI can invent new medicines, can help us deal with climate change," he said. But he cautioned that its unpredictability makes it "an alien intelligence." The challenge now? "You cannot predict what kind of ideas AI will invent or what kind of decision it will make."

Criticism From The Scientific Community, Academics

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens has faced criticism from scientists and academicians for its speculative approach and lack of rigorous evidence. Anthropologist Christopher Robert Hallpike dismissed the book as making no “serious contribution to knowledge,” describing it as infotainment filled with sensational speculation rather than substantive analysis. Similarly, Charles C. Mann critiqued Harari’s assertions as unsourced and overly simplistic, likening them to “dorm-room bull sessions”.

Moreover, Harari’s evolutionary explanations for religion and human cognition have been called reductive; his reliance on “accidental genetic mutations” and naturalistic assumptions oversimplifies complex phenomena, failing to account for deeper religious and societal intricacies. Such critiques highlight the book’s tendency toward engaging narrative over scientific rigor.

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