Matthew Kern

“People often confuse intelligence with consciousness, and many consequently jump to the conclusion that non-conscious entities cannot be intelligent. But intelligence and consciousness are very different. Intelligence is the ability to attain goals, such as maximising user engagement on a social media platform. Consciousness is the ability to experience subjective feelings like pain, pleasure, love and hate. In humans and other mammals, intelligence often goes hand in hand with consciousness.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Truth, then, isn’t a one-to-one representation of reality. Rather, truth is something that brings our attention to certain aspects of reality while inevitably ignoring other aspects. No account of reality is 100 percent accurate, but some accounts are nevertheless more truthful than others.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Novel technology often leads to historical disasters, not because the technology is inherently bad, but because it takes time for humans to learn how to use it wisely.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI