The Sapiens author warns that democracy is at the brink of collapse and demands prison terms for AI firms behind fake human beings.

Israeli historian and author, Yuval Noah Harari, has proposed stringent penalties for the creators of AI bots that impersonate humans, comparing their actions to those who engage in counterfeit currency trade. Speaking at the UN's AI for Good global summit in Geneva, in early July, Harari emphasized the potential harm of fake profiles on social media platforms and urged for sanctions, including imprisonment, for tech company executives who fail to prevent their proliferation.

Harari highlighted the risks posed by the widespread use of fake humans, warning that it could erode public trust and undermine democracy. He pointed out that the emergence of language models like ChatGPT allows AI bots not only to amplify human-generated content but also to autonomously create content, potentially surpassing human capabilities and leading to a loss of control over public discourse.

To combat this issue, Harari proposed introducing severe criminal penalties for those involved in creating bots that flood public forums with artificially generated content. Drawing a parallel to counterfeit money, he argued that governments have strict rules to protect the financial system, and similar measures are needed to safeguard society from the misuse of AI.

Furthermore, Yuval Harari called for increased investment in AI safety, suggesting that companies should be legally required to allocate 20% of their investment spending to research potential risks and methods for managing them. In line with this, OpenAI had recently announced dedicating 20% of its computing power to AI safety, forming a research team focused on controlling and preventing AI from behaving unpredictably.

In summary, Yuval Noah Harari emphasized the urgent need for strong regulations and penalties to address the threats posed by AI bots masquerading as humans and the proliferation of fake profiles on social media platforms.

Technology favors tyranny

Harari first time publicly made a link between AI growth and shrinking democracy in 2018.

Historically, autocracies have faced crippling handicaps in regard to innovation and economic growth. In the late 20th century, democracies usually outperformed dictatorships, because they were far better at processing information. We tend to think about the conflict between democracy and dictatorship as a conflict between two different ethical systems, but it is actually a conflict between two different data-processing systems. Democracy distributes the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place.

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However, artificial intelligence may soon swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. In fact, it might make centralized systems far more efficient than diffuse systems, because machine learning works better when the machine has more information to analyze, Harari explained. https://www.demdigest.org/why-technology-favors-tyranny/

See below author Harari detailing the risks of uncontrolled AI: