Yuval Noah Harrari: Top 5 Threats & Debate as members of the European Community
Starting off the course of Crisis Management Lab, we learned about how risks and threats are interconnected and if amplified, they might trigger various effects on industries or even countries. Mrs. Mania Xenou and Mrs. Effie Lazaridou, members of the “Reliant Communications” communication agency, assigned each of our teams an organization or an individual whose work we had to examine.
Aiming to get the best desired result for the task that was given to us, we decided to launch a thorough investigation into Yuval Noah Harrari’s life and work. We knew from the start we needed a different approach, since we were chosen to deal with a person and not an organization. Our goal was to find the threats our humanity faces, or will face in the near future, according to Yuval Noah Harari. Our investigation began with searching information about Yuval’s character and beliefs, and continued with the analysis of his points. He is an public intellectual, who in his writings examines the subjects of free will, conscience and intelligence as well as the consequences of a future biotechnological world, where the sense-based organisms are replaced by their own technological creations. He also points out that Homo Sapiens will disappear in about a century. After we collected data, information and articles, we discussed as a team the five main threats of the world according to Yuval Noah Harari.
The first threat to humanity, is Covid-19 pandemic and its social consequences. A crisis can surely be a turning point for a society. Harari however, supports that the biggest danger is not the virus itself, but how the society will be affected through it. Humanity has all the scientific knowledge and technological tools to overcome the virus. The actual main problem is our own inner demons, our own hatred, greed and ignorance and the fact that our world is “poisoned by all this”. Unfortunately, people are reacting to this crisis not with global solidarity, but with hatred, blaming other countries, blaming ethnic and religious minorities. Harrari hopes that people will be able to develop compassion, and not animosity towards one another. He hopes people will react with global solidarity, which will develop our generosity to help people in need. And lastly, that we’ll be able to develop our ability to discern the truth from all these conspiracy theories. If we do that, there is no doubt that we can easily overcome this crisis.
Moving on, we can undoubtedly say that, nowadays, climate change and environment damage are some of the most important problems for both companies and people. There are multiple impacts of climate change on companies which affect them greatly. On one hand, it creates a series of new business risks: besides the most obvious physical risks (the operational impacts of extreme weather events, or supply shortages caused by water scarcity for example), companies are exposed to transition risks which arise from society’s response to climate change, such as alterations in technology, markets and regulation that can increase business costs, undermining the viability of existing products or services, or even affecting asset values. Another climate-related risk for companies, is the potential liability for emitting greenhouse gases (GHG). An increasing number of legal cases have been brought directly against fossil fuel companies and utilities in recent years, holding them accountable for the damaging effects of climate change. And then, another great problem arises to make climate change solutions even more difficult to find: Nationalism.
Nationalism limits the ability of the human kind to successfully manage the main challenges of 21st century. Mostly the nationalists deny the problem of climate change and this makes sense as they don’t have a solution for this. Obviously, it cannot be solved solely in one country. It is a global phenomenon.
In addition, another major threat for Harari is social media and data. According to him, it is both fascinating and terrifying to behold people who spent countless hours constructing and embellishing a perfect self online, becoming attached to their creation, and mistaking it for the truth about themselves. “If you could only feel what the people in the photos felt while taking them. Hence, if you really want to understand yourself,” Harari says, “you should not identify with your Facebook or Instagram account.”
It is a known fact that people tend to overuse social media and post lots of information about themselves, which paves the way for what we call “human hacking”: hacking of the mind and body of people. People tend to forget what they need, computer programs never do. Human Hacking allows algorithms to know exactly who you are and how to press your emotional buttons. “Eventually people may give algorithms the authority to make the most important decisions in their lives, such as who to marry.” as Harrari mentions.
Another threat Yuval has pointed out is Artificial Intelligence (A.I). To be more specific, he supports that A.I could destroy what it means to be human and this problem can only be solved by global cooperation. As Yuval predicted for the future, this technological knowledge will be accessed by few and this will only increase the gap between those who have the opportunity to use this knowledge and those who do not. We’re talking about two very different and distanced social groups — if the distance is amplified, hatred and social chaos will dominate. Moreover, Yuval expresses his concerns of the power Digital Experts give to A.I. and especially of how uncontrollable this power might prove to be. In our research we came across a very interesting example of this: Facebook created two chatbots to try and negotiate with each other over a trade. The two artificial intelligent programs seemed to have developed their own way of communication, which of course remained a mystery to the humans that looked after them. Facebook then abandoned the experiment.
Finally, it seems like one of the biggest risks of our time according to Harari, is fake news. According to our previous findings, the power the data has in our modern era allows the algorithms to understand easily what the human mind is afraid of, expecting of and hopes for. This fact may prove to be a channel for the production and proliferation of propaganda and fake news, threatening the political, social and economical prosperity.
Of course our work couldn’t just stop there. After finishing this project, we presented our findings on our weekly Crisis Management Lab along with the teams of the rest of our classmates. We noticed that various of the risks we talked about were similar to our classmates’ organizations and individuals. With the guidance of Mrs. Xenou, we were asked to discuss again in teams and choose the top two risks we thought were the most important. We all agreed that Artificial Intelligence was one of the main threats since it is a tool that can also be used as a weapon; it will certainly allow those who are already powerful to amplify their power and authority. We also concluded that Social Media & Data is a risk that needs to be mentioned. Social Media tend to create a perfect but fictitious image of how we see our surroundings and even ourselves, often leading people to adopting such false beliefs. Data is also capable of “guiding” people, since algorithms and relevant advertisements have crept into our everyday life.
After each team chose a representative, all nine teams discussed and debated over the greatest risks and threats over European Community in an “online panel”. Each representative presented multiple points and explained why each of the risks were important and threatening our everyday lives. After debating, a voting took place: each representative voted on which they thought was the most important risk. Artificial Intelligence (came in second) and Covid-19 Consequences (came in fifth) were among the top four alongside with Climate Change (came in first), Cyberattacks (came in third) and Global Economy (came in fourth). Mental Health completed the top five, after out-winning World Peace for one vote. This debate surely gave us food for thought; how could World Peace exist without Mental Health and how could Mental Health exist in a world without peace? We can definitely say that both parties presented strong arguments and our online panel ended with various things to think about.
To conclude, this was an amazing and worthwhile experience, since we got to not only research about risks and threats, but also discuss, debate and vote as if we were really taking part in a European Council. We indeed learned a lot about everyday issues and problems that tend to affect both our lives and entrepreneurship.
Betty Tsakarestou, Mania Xenou
Our team: Konstantina Angelidou, Grasiela Varkari, Ina Makrydaki, Myrto Galanopoulou, Katerina Somi, Margarita Kammenou, Christina Dadina, Christos Damianakos, Papandreou Dionisis, Christos Piromalis, Giorgos Mavromatidis
