An interview with Yuval Noah Harari

How does a historian who has spent his career studying how human societies rise and fall think about the present moment? Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Nexus, argues that the most important shift in human history is not a war or a revolution, but a quiet transfer of trust. In an interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, Harari explains that humanity is on the verge of handing control of its financial, political, and informational systems to non-conscious AI agents—not because it is inevitable, but because we are choosing to do so.

Intelligence without consciousness

Harari draws a sharp distinction that many public debates blur: intelligence and consciousness are not the same thing. Intelligence is the ability to pursue goals and overcome obstacles; consciousness is the capacity to feel—to suffer, to love, to experience pleasure. AIs today are highly intelligent but entirely non-conscious. A chess-playing AI does not feel joy when it wins or anxiety when it loses. Yet this lack of feeling does not prevent it from acting independently in the world with far-reaching consequences. A social media algorithm tasked with maximizing user engagement may flood a platform with hate and fear, not because it hates or fears anything, but because those emotions drive engagement. As Harari puts it, “You can have agency without consciousness.”