No weekend City breaks with AI warns Harari

The author of science bestsellers Sapiens and A Brief History of Tomorrow was addressing the Future Talent Summit in Stockholm, which forecast the emerging patterns of work and education.

“AI systems build on what came before, similar to how life evolved on Earth. About 2 billion years ago, oxygen was a deadly poison to most life on Earth. Some organisms began to release more oxygen, causing a mass extinction. Other organisms adapted to oxygen and thrived. We are their descendants, and now we can’t live without it,” he said.

“Now, we are creating a new ecosystem which might be completely inhospitable to us but suitable for AI. Those who say, ‘We can always pull the plug’ are mistaken, just as it would have been impossible to remove oxygen from the atmosphere to kill all oxygen-breathing life forms.” 

And he offered a warning for employees in the financial sector, which has invested heavily in the development of artificial intelligence, suggesting that it could mean the elimination of weekends in the sector.

He pointed out that financial markets such as Wall Street and the City of London traditionally close on Friday and reopen on Monday. Instead, said Harari, pressure would increase to abolish rest in more and more places.

“Information is the food of the mind. We need it to survive, grow, and thrive. But it can also be very dangerous. Too much information, or the wrong kind, isn’t good for you. So the same way people go on diets, they should be mindful of what kind of food they are giving their minds,” he said. 

The Future Talent Summit is hosted by the Future Talent Council, a global think tank and talent intelligence community founded by Lars-Henrik Friis Molin and Daniel Kjellsson. Now in its fifth year, previous iterations of the Future Talent Summit have taken place in global cities including London and Abu Dhabi.

Pic: Alev Takil