Book Review: Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari

About:

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari is a philosophy book, steeped in history, about the power of stories and the lessons we should learn in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Professor Harari is an academic historian, philosopher and educator teaching in Jerusalem and Cambridge.

• 528 pages
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House
  
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 059373422X

My rating for Nexus – 5
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Thoughts:

This book took me longer to read because I kept rereading certain parts. This is not because the book is difficult, quite the opposite, but because I wanted to understand the author’s ideas, or let it sink into my head.

Mr. Harari’s ability to explain complex ideas in simple terms is one to be envied. I can do so, and very well, but only with technology, but my skills are minimized compared to his.

Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari is actually two books in one. The first is a history of how information was passed before we were all connected, from Assyrian clay tablets, to books, to TV. This part hammered in the power of stories and the way they get people to work together towards a common goal. Mr. Harari talks about how governments handle information and its role in democracies and dictatorships. In Harari’s world, democracies are transparent with vast flow of information, while dictatorships are oblique and information gets centralized into one place. Of course, these days information is cheap and centralizing it and controlling it by a dictator is an impossible task.

The second part, the meat of the book, is basically a brief about AI, risks, misinformation, disinformation, and policies that can or should be implemented. Both parts were extremely fascinating, but this one was excellent. The author warns us of a “Silicon Curtain” which will descend between us and the algorithms which will run our lives. The danger of algorithms making financial decisions is already here.

Many parts of this book are worth rereading and internalizing. The bottom line is something I can agree with: AI cannot be left to startups and billionaires, but must be regulated.

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More Books by Yuval Noah Harari*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer:I bought this book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account, the money is usually spent on books