Harari, Humans, Algorithms, and AI

This post was originally published at Mind Matters.

Recently, famed technologist Yuval Noah Harari spoke at the 2026 World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland. Harari, known for his “history of the future” approach to examining questions on technology, transhumanism, and AI, made some startling claims about the direction he sees AI moving.

First, he claimed that AI would soon take over “anything made of words.” This includes laws, books, and religions, especially those rooted in holy texts such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Second, this takeover will occur because “As far as putting words in order is concerned, AI already thinks better than many of us.” AI, with its ability to analyze books (and therefore laws and religious texts) in seconds, will soon become the undeniable “expert” of those domains.

As a starting point, I think we can, at a basic level, grant Harari that AI will be able to read collected texts faster than any human. It can already write words faster than humans can. At the moment of this writing, AI would be able to create a piece roughly this length in a fraction of the time it will take me.

Despite all of this, I think Harari is fundamentally wrong about his claims. His claims make sense as far as his logic goes; it is not his logic, but rather his metaphysics, that are the problem. I will examine each metaphysical issue in turn.

The full article can be found here.