biography of yuval noah harari

The Guardian

Book review of ‘nexus’ – rage against the machine.

The Daily Show with Jordan Klepper

‘nexus’ & threat of ai in the information age.

CNBC Squawk Box with Andrew Ross Sorkin

Finance is the ideal playing ground for ai.

CNN GPS with Fareed Zakaria

What’s different about ai.

The Challenges of Tomorrow (Virtual)

Introducing Nexus – Lincoln Theater

Introducing nexus – robert frost auditorium.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Sapiens: A Graphic History

Unstoppable Us

Themes from books.

• TED Speaker

Yuval Noah Harari

Why you should listen.

Yuval Noah Harari lectures as a professor of history at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he specializes in world history, medieval history and military history. His current research focuses on macro-historical questions: What is the relationship between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded? These topics are explored in his books, which have sold more than 40 million copies in 65 languages. Harari regularly connects broad historical questions to current global events in mainstream media, and has written and spoken extensively on the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Harari's 2011 book,  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , explores what made homo sapiens the most successful species on the planet. His answer: We are the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in our imagination, such as gods, states, money, human rights, corporations and other fictions, and we have developed a unique ability to use these stories to unify and organize groups and ensure cooperation.  Sapiens  has sold more than 21 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages.  Bill Gates ,  Mark Zuckerberg  and  President Barack Obama  have recommended Sapiens as a must-read.

Yuval Noah Harari’s TED talks

What explains the rise of humans?

Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide

Why fascism is so tempting — and how your data could power it

The war in Ukraine could change everything

The actual cost of preventing climate breakdown

More news and ideas from yuval noah harari, what’s next for climate action the talks from the ted countdown new york session 2022.

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TED original podcast The TED Interview kicks off Season 2

TED returns with the second season of The TED Interview, a long-form podcast series that features Chris Anderson, head of TED, in conversation with leading thinkers. The podcast is an opportunity to reconnect with renowned speakers and dive deeper into their ideas within a different global climate. This season’s guests include Bill Gates, Monica Lewinsky, […]

In Case You Missed It: An audacious day 2 at TED2018

Three stellar main stage sessions of talks — including the launch of the Audacious Project — plus workshops, exhibits and TED Unplugged, a session of talks given by audience members, made for a jam-packed day 2 at TED2018. Here are some of the themes we heard echoing through the opening day, as well as some […]

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Prof. Yuval Noah Harari

Harari originally specialized in world history, medieval history and military history. His current research focuses on macro-historical questions such as: What is the relationship between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded? What ethical questions do science and technology raise in the 21st century?

Harari is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Sapiens: A Graphic History, and more recently, the children's book series "Unstoppable Us".

Born in Israel in 1976, Harari received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2002. In 2019, following the international success of his books, Yuval Noah Harari and Itzik Yahav co-founded  Sapienship : a social impact company with projects in the fields of entertainment and education. Sapienship’s main goal is to focus the public conversation on the most important global challenges facing the world today.

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Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, Ever

In 2008, Yuval Noah Harari, a young historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, began to write a book derived from an undergraduate world-history class that he was teaching. Twenty lectures became twenty chapters. Harari, who had previously written about aspects of medieval and early-modern warfare—but whose intellectual appetite, since childhood, had been for all-encompassing accounts of the world—wrote in plain, short sentences that displayed no anxiety about the academic decorum of a study spanning hundreds of thousands of years. It was a history of everyone, ever. The book, published in Hebrew as “A Brief History of Humankind,” became an Israeli best-seller; then, as “ Sapiens ,” it became an international one. Readers were offered the vertiginous pleasure of acquiring apparent mastery of all human affairs—evolution, agriculture, economics—while watching their personal narratives, even their national narratives, shrink to a point of invisibility. President Barack Obama, speaking to CNN in 2016, compared the book to a visit he’d made to the pyramids of Giza.

“Sapiens” has sold more than twelve million copies. “Three important revolutions shaped the course of history,” the book proposes. “The Cognitive Revolution kick-started history about 70,000 years ago. The Agricultural Revolution sped it up about 12,000 years ago. The Scientific Revolution, which got under way only 500 years ago, may well end history and start something completely different.” Harari’s account, though broadly chronological, is built out of assured generalization and comparison rather than dense historical detail. “Sapiens” feels like a study-guide summary of an immense, unwritten text—or, less congenially, like a ride on a tour bus that never stops for a poke around the ruins. (“As in Rome, so also in ancient China: most generals and philosophers did not think it their duty to develop new weapons.”) Harari did not invent Big History, but he updated it with hints of self-help and futurology, as well as a high-altitude, almost nihilistic composure about human suffering. He attached the time frame of aeons to the time frame of punditry—of now, and soon. His narrative of flux, of revolution after revolution, ended urgently, and perhaps conveniently, with a cliffhanger. “Sapiens,” while acknowledging that “history teaches us that what seems to be just around the corner may never materialise,” suggests that our species is on the verge of a radical redesign. Thanks to advances in computing, cyborg engineering, and biological engineering, “we may be fast approaching a new singularity, when all the concepts that give meaning to our world—me, you, men, women, love and hate—will become irrelevant.”

Harari, who is slim, soft-spoken, and relentless in his search for an audience, has spent the years since the publication of “Sapiens” in conversations about this cliffhanger. His two subsequent best-sellers—“ Homo Deus ” (2017) and “ 21 Lessons for the 21st Century ” (2018)—focus on the present and the near future. Harari now defines himself as both a historian and a philosopher. He dwells particularly on the possibility that biometric monitoring, coupled with advanced computing, will give corporations and governments access to more complete data about people—about their desires and liabilities—than people have about themselves. A life under such scrutiny, he said recently, is liable to become “one long, stressing job interview.”

If Harari weren’t always out in public, one might mistake him for a recluse. He is shyly oracular. He spends part of almost every appearance denying that he is a guru. But, when speaking at conferences where C.E.O.s meet public intellectuals, or visiting Mark Zuckerberg ’s Palo Alto house, or the Élysée Palace, in Paris, he’ll put a long finger to his chin and quietly answer questions about Neanderthals, self-driving cars, and the series finale of “Game of Thrones.” Harari’s publishing and speaking interests now occupy a staff of twelve, who work out of a sunny office in Tel Aviv, where an employee from Peru cooks everyone vegan lunches. Here, one can learn details of a scheduled graphic novel of “Sapiens”—a cartoon version of Harari, wearing wire-framed glasses and looking a little balder than in life, pops up here and there, across time and space. There are also plans for a “Sapiens” children’s book, and a multi-season “Sapiens”-inspired TV drama, covering sixty thousand years, with a script by the co-writer of Mel Gibson’s “ Apocalypto .”

Harari seldom goes to this office. He works at the home he shares with Itzik Yahav, his husband, who is also his agent and manager. They live in a village of expensive modern houses, half an hour inland from Tel Aviv, at a spot where Israel’s coastal plain is first interrupted by hills. The location gives a view of half the country and, hazily, the Mediterranean beyond. Below the house are the ruins of the once mighty Canaanite city of Gezer; Harari and Yahav walk their dog there. Their swimming pool is blob-shaped and, at night, lit a vivid mauve.

At lunchtime one day in September, Yahav drove me to the house from Tel Aviv, in a Porsche S.U.V. with a rainbow-flag sticker on its windshield. “Yuval’s unhappy with my choice of car,” Yahav said, laughing. “He thinks it’s unacceptable that a historian should have money.” While Yahav drove, he had a few conversations with colleagues, on speakerphone, about the fittings for a new Harari headquarters, in a brutalist tower block above the Dizengoff Center mall. He said, “I can’t tell you how much I need a P.A.”—a personal assistant—“but I’m not an easy person.” Asked to consider his husband’s current place in world affairs, Yahav estimated that Harari was “between Madonna and Steven Pinker .”

Harari and Yahav, both in their mid-forties, grew up near each other, but unknown to each other, in Kiryat Ata, an industrial town outside Haifa. (Yahav jokingly called it “the Israeli Chernobyl.”) Yahav’s background is less solidly middle class than his husband’s. When the two men met, nearly twenty years ago, Harari had just finished his graduate studies, and Yahav teased him: “You’ve never worked? You’ve never had to pick up a plate for your living? I was a waiter from age fifteen!” He thought of Harari as a “genius geek.” Yahav, who was then a producer in nonprofit theatre, is now known for making bold, and sometimes outlandish, demands on behalf of his husband. “Because I have only one author, I can go crazy,” he had told me. In the car, he noted that he had declined an invitation to have Harari participate in the World Economic Forum, at Davos, in 2017, because the proposed panels were “not good enough.” A year later, when Harari was offered the main stage, in a slot between Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron , Yahav accepted. His recollections of such negotiations are delivered with self-mocking charm and a low, conspiratorial laugh. He likes to say, “You don’t understand—Yuval works for me!  ”

We left the highway and drove into the village. He said of Harari, “When I meet my friends, he’s usually not invited, because my friends are crazy and loud. It’s too much for him. He shuts down.” When planning receptions and dinners for Harari, Yahav follows a firm rule: “Not more than eight people.”

For more than a decade, Harari has spent several weeks each year on a silent-meditation retreat, usually in India. At home, he starts his day with an hour of meditation; in the summer, he also swims for half an hour while listening to nonfiction audiobooks aimed at the general reader. (Around the time of my visit, he was listening to a history of the Cuban Revolution, and to a study of the culture of software engineering.) He swims the breaststroke, wearing a mask, a snorkel, and “bone conduction” headphones that press against his temples, bypassing the ears.

When Yahav and I arrived at the house, Harari was working at the kitchen table, reading news stories from Ukraine, printed for him by an assistant. He had an upcoming speaking engagement in Kyiv, at an oligarch-funded conference. He was also planning a visit to the United Arab Emirates, which required some delicacy—the country has no diplomatic ties with Israel.

The house was open and airy, and featured a piano. (Yahav plays.) Harari was wearing shorts and Velcro-fastened sandals, and, as Yahav fondly observed, his swimming headphones had left imprints on his head. Harari explained to me that the device “beams sound into the skull.” Later, with my encouragement, he put on his cyborgian getup, including the snorkel, and laughed as I took a photograph, saying, “Just don’t put that in the paper, because Itzik will kill both me and you.”

Unusually for a public intellectual, Harari has drawn up a mission statement. It’s pinned on a bulletin board in the Tel Aviv office, and begins, “Keep your eyes on the ball. Focus on the main global problems facing humanity.” It also says, “Learn to distinguish reality from illusion,” and “Care about suffering.” The statement used to include “Embrace ambiguity.” This was cut, according to one of Harari’s colleagues, because it was too ambiguous.

One recent afternoon, Naama Avital, the operation’s C.E.O., and Naama Wartenburg, Harari’s chief marketing officer, were sitting with Yahav, wondering if Harari would accept a hypothetical invitation to appear on a panel with President Donald Trump.

“I think that whenever Yuval is free to say exactly what he thinks, then it’s O.K.,” Avital said.

Yahav, surprised, said that he could perhaps imagine a private meeting, “but to film it—to film Yuval with Trump?”

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“You’d have a captive audience,” Wartenburg said.

Avital agreed, noting, “There’s a politician, but then there are his supporters—and you’re talking about tens of millions of people.”

“A panel with Trump ?” Yahav asked. He later said that he had never accepted any speaking invitations from Israeli settlers in the West Bank, adding that Harari, although not a supporter of settlements, might have been inclined to say yes.

Harari has acquired a large audience in a short time, and—like the Silicon Valley leaders who admire his work—he can seem uncertain about what to do with his influence. Last summer, he was criticized when readers noticed that the Russian translation of “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” had been edited to make it more palatable to Vladimir Putin’s government. Harari had approved some of these edits, and had replaced a discussion of Russian misinformation about its 2014 annexation of Crimea with a passage about false statements made by President Trump.

Harari’s office is still largely a boutique agency serving the writing and speaking interests of one client. But, last fall, it began to brand part of its work under the heading of “Sapienship.” The office remains a for-profit enterprise, but it has taken on some of the ambitions and attributes of a think tank, or the foundation of a high-minded industrialist. Sapienship’s activities are driven by what Harari’s colleagues call his “vision.” Avital explained that some projects she was working on, such as “Sapiens”-related school workshops, didn’t rely on “everyday contact with Yuval.”

Harari’s vision takes the form of a list. “That’s something I have from students,” he told me. “They like short lists.” His proposition, often repeated, is that humanity faces three primary threats: nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption. Other issues that politicians commonly talk about—terrorism, migration, inequality, poverty—are lesser worries, if not distractions. In part because there’s little disagreement, at least in a Harari audience, about the seriousness of the nuclear and climate threats, and about how to respond to them, Harari highlights the technological one. Last September, while appearing onstage with Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s President, at an “influencers’ summit” in Tel Aviv, Harari said, in Hebrew, “Think about a situation where somebody in Beijing or San Francisco knows what every citizen in Israel is doing at every moment—all the most intimate details about every mayor, member of the Knesset, and officer in the Army, from the age of zero.” He added, “Those who will control the world in the twenty-first century are those who will control data.”

He also said that Homo sapiens would likely disappear, in a tech-driven upgrade. Harari often disputes the notion that he makes prophecies or predictions—indeed, he has claimed to do “the opposite”—but a prediction acknowledging uncertainty is still a prediction. Talking to Rivlin, Harari said, “In two hundred years, I can pretty much assure you that there will not be any more Israelis, and no Homo sapiens —there will be something else.”

“What a world,” Rivlin said. The event ended in a hug.

Afterward, Harari said of Rivlin, “He took my message to be kind of pessimistic.” Although the two men had largely spoken past each other, they were in some ways aligned. An Israeli President is a national figurehead, standing above the political fray. Harari claims a similar space. He speaks of looming mayhem but makes no proposals beyond urging international coöperation, and “focus.” A parody of Harari’s writing, in the British magazine Private Eye , included streams of questions: “What does the rise of Donald Trump signify? If you are in a falling lift, will it do any good to jump up and down like crazy? Why is liberal democracy in crisis? What is the state capital of Wyoming?”

This tentativeness at first seems odd. Harari has the ear of decision-makers; he travels the world to show them PowerPoint slides depicting mountains of trash and unemployed hordes. But, like a fiery street preacher unable to recommend one faith over another, he concludes with a policy shrug. Harari emphasizes that the public should press politicians to respond to tech threats, but when I asked what that response should be he said, “I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t think it will come from me. Even if I took three years off, and just immersed myself in some cave of books and meditation, I don’t think I would emerge with the answer.”

Harari’s reluctance to support particular political actions can be understood, in part, as instinctual conservatism and brand protection. According to “Sapiens,” progress is basically an illusion; the Agricultural Revolution was “history’s biggest fraud,” and liberal humanism is a religion no more founded on reality than any other. Harari writes, “The Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of.” In such a context, any specific policy idea is likely to seem paltry, and certainly too quotidian for a keynote speech. A policy might also turn out to be a mistake. “We are very careful, the entire team, about endorsing anything, any petition,” Harari told me.

Harari has given talks at Google and Instagram. Last spring, on a visit to California, he had dinner with, among others, Jack Dorsey , Twitter’s co-founder and C.E.O., and Chris Cox, the former chief product officer at Facebook. It’s not hard to understand Harari’s appeal to Silicon Valley executives, who would prefer to cast a furrowed gaze toward the distant future than to rewrite their privacy policies or their algorithms. (Zuckerberg rarely responds to questions about the malign influence of Facebook without speaking of his “focus” on this or that.) Harari said of tech entrepreneurs, “I don’t try intentionally to be a threat to them. I think that much of what they’re doing is also good. I think there are many things to be said for working with them as long as it’s possible, instead of viewing them as the enemy.” Harari believes that some of the social ills caused by a company like Facebook should be understood as bugs—“and, as good engineers, they are trying to fix the bugs.” Earlier, Itzik Yahav had said that he felt no unease about “visiting Mark Zuckerberg at his home, with Priscilla, and Beast, the dog,” adding, “I don’t think Mark is an evil person. And Yuval is bringing questions.”

Harari’s policy agnosticism is also connected to his focus on focus itself. The aspect of a technological dystopia that most preoccupies him—losing mental autonomy to A.I.—can be at least partly countered, in his view, by citizens cultivating greater mindfulness. He collects examples of A.I. threats. He refers, for instance, to recent research suggesting that it’s possible to measure people’s blood pressure by processing video of their faces. A government that can see your blood boiling during a leader’s speech can identify you as a dissident. Similarly, Harari has observed that, had sophisticated artificial intelligence existed when he was younger, it might have recognized his homosexuality long before he was ready to acknowledge it. Such data-driven judgments don’t need to be perfectly accurate to outperform humans. Harari argues that, though there’s no sure prophylactic against such future intrusions, people who are alert to the workings of their minds will be better able to protect themselves. Harari recently told a Ukrainian reporter, “Freedom depends to a large extent on how much you know yourself, and you need to know yourself better than, say, the government or the corporations that try to manipulate you.” In this context, to think clearly—to snorkel in the pool, back and forth—is a form of social action.

Naama Avital, in the Tel Aviv office, told me that, on social media, fans of Harari’s books tend to be “largely male, twenty-five to thirty-five.” Bill Gates is a Harari enthusiast, but the more typical reader may be a young person grateful for permission to pay more attention to his or her needs than to the needs of others. (Not long ago, one of Harari’s YouTube admirers commented, “Your books changed my life, Yuval. Just as investing in Tesla did.”)

Harari doesn’t dismiss more active forms of political engagement, particularly in the realm of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, but his writing underscores the importance of equanimity. In a section of “Sapiens” titled “Know Thyself,” Harari describes how the serenity achieved through meditation can be “so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it.” “21 Lessons” includes extended commentary on the life of the Buddha, who “taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying.” Harari continues, “You can explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy, of your body, or of your mind, but you will never encounter something that does not change, that has an eternal essence, and that completely satisfies you. . . . ‘What should I do?’ ask people, and the Buddha advises, ‘Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ ”

Harari didn’t learn the result of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election until five weeks after the vote. He was on a retreat, in England. In Vipassana meditation, the form that Harari practices, a retreat lasts at least ten days. He sometimes does ten-day retreats in Israel, in the role of a teaching assistant. Once a year, he goes away for a month or longer. Participants at a Vipassana center may talk to one another as they arrive—while giving up their phones and books—but thereafter they’re expected to be silent, even while eating with others.

I discussed meditation with Harari one day at a restaurant in a Tel Aviv hotel. (A young doorman recognized him and thanked him for his writing.) We were joined by Itzik Yahav and the mothers of both men. Jeanette Yahav, an accountant, has sometimes worked in the Tel Aviv office. So, too, has Pnina Harari, a former office administrator; she has had the task of responding to the e-mail pouring into Harari’s Web site: poems, pieces of music, arguments for the existence of God.

Harari said of the India retreats, which take place northeast of Mumbai, “Most of the day you’re in your own cell, the size of this table.”

“Unbelievable,” Pnina Harari said.

During her son’s absences, she and Yahav stay in touch. “We speak, we console each other,” she said. She also starts a journal: “It’s like a letter to Yuval. And the last day of the meditation I send it to him.” Once back in Mumbai, he can open an e-mail containing two months of his mother’s news.

Before Itzik Yahav met Harari, through a dating site, he had some experience of Vipassana, and for years they practiced together. Yahav has now stopped. “I couldn’t keep up,” he told me. “And you’re not allowed to drink. I want to drink with friends, a glass of wine.” I later spoke to Yoram Yovell, a friend of Harari’s, who is a well-known Israeli neuroscientist and TV host. A few years ago, Yovell signed up for a ten-day retreat in India. He recalled telling himself, “This is the first time in ten years that you’re having a ten-day vacation, and you’re spending it sitting on your tush, on this little mat, inhaling and exhaling. And outside is India!  ” He lasted twenty-four hours. (In 2018, two years after authorities in Myanmar began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims, Jack Dorsey completed a ten-day Vipassana retreat in that country, and defended his visit by saying, “This was a purely personal trip for me focused on only one dimension: meditation.”)

At lunch, Pnina Harari recalled the moment when Yuval’s two older sisters reported to her that Yuval had taught himself to read: “He was three, not more than four.”

Yuval smiled. “I think more like four, five.”

She described the time he wrote a school essay, then rewrote it to make it less sophisticated. He told her that nobody would have understood the first draft.

From the age of eight, Harari attended a school for bright students, two bus rides away from his family’s house in Kiryat Ata. Yuval’s father, who died in 2010, was born on a kibbutz, and maintained a life-long skepticism about socialism; his work, as a state-employed armaments engineer, was classified. By the standards of the town, the Harari household was bourgeois and bookish.

The young Yuval had a taste for grand designs. He has said, “I promised myself that when I grew up I would not get bogged down in the mundane troubles of daily life, but would do my best to understand the big picture.” In the back yard, he spent months digging a very deep hole; it was never filled in, and sometimes became a pond. He built, out of wood blocks and Formica tiles, a huge map of Europe, on which he played war games of his own invention. Harari told me that during his adolescence, against the backdrop of the first intifada, he went through a period when he was “a kind of stereotypical right-wing nationalist.” He recalled his mind-set: “Israel as a nation is the most important thing in the world. And, obviously, we are right about everything. And the whole world doesn’t understand us and hates us. So we have to be strong and defend ourselves.” He laughed. “You know—the usual stuff.”

He deferred his compulsory military service, through a program for high-achieving students. (The service was never completed, because of an undisclosed health problem. “It wasn’t something catastrophic,” he said. “I’m still here.”) When he began college, at Hebrew University, he was younger than his peers, and he had not shared the experience of three years of activity often involving groups larger than eight. By then, Harari’s nationalist fire had dimmed. In its place, he had attempted to will himself into religious conviction—and an observant Jewish life. “I was very keen to believe,” he said. He supposed, wrongly, that “if I read enough, or think about it enough, or talk to the right people, then something will click.”

In Chapter 2 of “Sapiens,” Harari describes how, about seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens began to develop nuanced language, and thereby began to dominate other Homo species, and the world. Harari’s discussion reflects standard scholarly arguments, but he adds this gloss: during what he calls the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens became uniquely able to communicate untruths. “As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled,” he writes, referring to myths and gods. “Many animals and human species could previously say ‘Careful! A lion!’ Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens acquired the ability to say, ‘The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.’ ” This mental leap enabled coöperation among strangers: “Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins.”

In the schema of “Sapiens,” money is a “fiction,” as are corporations and nations. Harari uses “fiction” where another might say “social construct.” (He explained to me, “I would almost always go for the day-to-day word, even if the nuance of the professional word is a bit more accurate.”) Harari further proposes that fictions require believers , and exert power only as long as a “communal belief” in them persists. Every social construct, then, is a kind of religion: a declaration of universal human rights is not a manifesto, or a program, but the expression of a benign delusion; an activity like using money, or obeying a stoplight, is a collective fantasy, not a ritual. When I asked him if he really meant this, he laughed, and said, “It’s like the weak force in physics—which is weak, but still strong enough to hold the entire universe together!” (In fact, the weak force is responsible for the disintegration of subatomic particles.) “It’s the same with these fictions—they are strong enough to hold millions of people together.”

In his representation of how people function in society, Harari sometimes seems to be extrapolating from his personal history—from his eagerness to believe in something. When I called him a “seeker,” he gave amused, half-grudging assent.

As an undergraduate, Harari wrote a paper, for a medieval-history class, that was later published, precociously, in a peer-reviewed journal. “ The Military Role of the Frankish Turcopoles: A Reassessment ” challenged the previously held assumption that, in crusader armies, most cavalrymen were heavily armored. Harari proposed, in an argument derived from careful reading of sources across several centuries, that many were light cavalrymen. Benjamin Kedar, who taught the class, told me that the paper “was absolutely original, and really a breakthrough.” It seems to be generally agreed that, had Harari stuck solely to military history of this era, he would have become a significant figure in the field. Idan Sherer, a former student and research assistant of Harari’s who now teaches at Ben Gurion University, said, “I don’t think the prominent scholar, but definitely one of them.”

In academic prose, especially philosophy, Harari seems to have found something analogous to what he had sought in nation and in faith. “I had respect for, and belief in, very dense writing,” he recalled. “One of the first things I did when I came out, to myself, as gay—I went to the university library and took out all these books about queer theory, which were some of the densest things I’ve ever read.” He jokingly added, “It almost converted me back. It was ‘O.K., now you’re gay, so you need to be very serious about it.’ ”

In 1998, he began working toward a doctorate in history, at the University of Oxford. “He was oppressed by the grayness,” Harari’s mother recalled, at lunch. Harari agreed: “It wasn’t the greatest time of my life. It was a culture shock, it was a climate shock. I just couldn’t grasp it could be weeks and weeks and you never see the sun.” He later added, “It was a personal impasse. I’d hoped that, by studying and researching, I would understand not only the world but my life.” He went on, “All the books I’d been reading and all the philosophical discussions—not only did they not provide an answer, it seemed extremely unlikely that any answer would ever come out of this.” He told himself, “There is something fundamentally wrong in the way that I’m approaching this whole thing.”

One reason he chose to study outside Israel was to “start life anew,” as a gay man. On weekends, he went to London night clubs. (“I think I tried Ecstasy a few times,” he said.) And he made dates online. He set himself the target of having sex with at least one new partner a week, “to make up for lost time, and also understand how it works—because I was very shy.” He laughed. “Very strong discipline!” He treated each encounter as a credit in a ledger, “so if one week I had two, and then the next week there was none, I’m O.K.”

These recollections contain no regret, but, Harari said, “coming out was a kind of false enlightenment.” He explained, “I’d had this feeling— this is it . There was one big piece of the puzzle that I was missing, and this is why my life was completely fucked up.” Instead, he felt “even more miserable.”

On a dating site, Harari met Ron Merom, an Israeli software engineer. As Merom recently recalled, they began an intense e-mail correspondence “about the meaning of life, and all that.” They became friends. (In 2015, when “Sapiens” was first published in English, Merom was working for Google in California, and helped arrange for Harari to give an “Authors at Google” talk, which was posted online—an important early moment of exposure.) Merom, who now works at Facebook, has forgotten the details of their youthful exchanges, but can recall their flavor: Harari’s personal philosophy at the time was complex and dark, “even a bit violent or aggressive”—and this included his discussion of sexual relationships. As Merom put it, “It was ‘I need to conquer the world—either you win or you lose.’ ”

Merom had just begun going on meditation retreats. He told Harari, “It sounds like you’re looking for something, and Vipassana might be it.” In 2000, when Harari was midway through his thesis—a study of how Renaissance military memoirists described their experiences of war—he took a bus to a meditation center in the West of England.

Ten days later, Harari wrote to Amir Fink, a friend in Israel. Fink, who now works as an environmentalist, told me that Harari had quoted, giddily, the theme song of a “Pinocchio” TV show once beloved in Israel: “Good morning, world! I’m now freed from my strings. I’m a real boy.”

At the retreat, Harari was told that he should do nothing but notice his breath, in and out, and notice whenever his mind wandered. This, Harari has written, “was the most important thing anybody had ever told me.”

Steven Gunn, an Oxford historian and Harari’s doctoral adviser, recently recalled the moment: “I sort of did my best supervisorial thing. ‘Are you sure you’re not getting mixed up in a cult?’ So far as I could tell, he wasn’t being drawn into anything he didn’t want to be drawn into.”

On a drive with Yahav and Harari from their home to Jerusalem, I asked if it was fair to think of “Sapiens” as an attempt to transmit Buddhist principles, not just through its references to meditation—and to the possibility of finding serenity in self-knowledge—but through its narrative shape. The story of “Sapiens” echoes the Buddha’s “basic realities”: constant change; no enduring essence; the inevitability of suffering.

“Yes, to some extent,” Harari said. “It’s definitely not a conscious project. It’s not ‘O.K.! Now I believe in these three principles, and now I need to convince the world, but I can’t state it directly, because this would be a missionary thing.’ ” Rather, he said, the experience of meditation “imbues your entire thinking.”

He added, “I definitely don’t think that the solution to all the world’s problems is to convert everybody to Buddhism, or to have everybody meditating. I meditate, I know how difficult it is. There’s no chance you can get eight billion people to meditate, and, even if they try, in many cases it could backfire in a terrible way. It’s very easy to become self-absorbed, to become megalomaniacal.” He referred to Ashin Wirathu, an ultranationalist Buddhist monk in Myanmar, who has incited violence against Rohingya Muslims.

In “Sapiens,” Harari went on, part of the task had been “to show how everything is impermanent, and what we think of as eternal social structures—even family, money, religion, nations—everything is changing, nothing is eternal, everything came out of some historical process.” These were Buddhist thoughts, he said, but they were easy enough to access without Buddhism. “Maybe biology is permanent, but in society nothing is permanent,” he said. “There’s no essence, no essence to any nation. You don’t need to meditate for two hours a day to realize that.”

We drove to Hebrew University, which is atop Mt. Scopus. We walked into the humanities building, and, through an emergency exit, onto a rooftop. There was a panoramic view of the Old City and the Temple Mount. Harari recalled his return to the university, from Oxford, in 2001, during the second intifada. The university is surrounded by Arab neighborhoods that he’s never visited. In the car, he had been talking about current conditions in Israel; in recent years, he had said, “many, if not most, Israelis simply lost the motivation to solve the conflict, especially because Israel has managed to control it so efficiently.” Harari told me that, as a historian, he had to dispute the assumption that an occupation can’t last “for decades, for centuries”—it can, and new surveillance technologies can enable oppression “with almost no killing.” Harari saw no alternative other than “to wait for history to work its magic—a war, a catastrophe.” With a dry laugh, he said, “Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran—a couple of thousand people die, something . This can break the mental deadlock.”

Harari recalled a moment, in 2015, when he and Yahav had accidentally violated the eight-person rule. They had gone to a dinner that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to attend. Netanyahu was known to have read “Sapiens.” “We were told it would be very intimate,” Harari said. There were forty guests. Harari shared a few pleasantries with Netanyahu, but they had “no real exchange at all.”

Yahav interjected to suggest that, because of “Sapiens,” Netanyahu “started doing Meatless Monday.” Harari, who, like Yahav, largely avoids eating animal products, writes in “Sapiens” that “modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history.” When Netanyahu announced a commitment “to fight cruelty toward animals,” friends encouraged Harari to take a little credit.

“People told me this was my greatest achievement,” Harari said. “I managed to convince Netanyahu of something! It didn’t matter what.” This assessment gives some indication of Harari’s local politics, but Yoram Yovell, his TV-presenter friend, said that he had tried and failed to persuade Harari to speak against Netanyahu publicly. Yovell said that Harari, although “vehemently against Netanyahu,” seemed to resist “jumping into the essence of life—the blood and guts of life,” adding, “I actually am disappointed with it.” Harari, who has declined invitations to write a regular column in the Israeli press, told me, “I could start making speeches, and writing, ‘Vote for this party,’ and maybe, one time, I can convince a couple of thousand people to change their vote. But then I will kind of expend my entire credit on this. I’ll be identified with one party, one camp.” He did acknowledge that he was discouraged by the choice presented by the September general election , which was then imminent: “It’s either a right-wing government or an extreme-right-wing government. There is no other serious option.”

At Hebrew University, his role is somewhat rarefied: he has negotiated his way to having no faculty responsibilities beyond teaching; he currently advises no Ph.D. students. (He said of his professional life, “I write the books and give talks. Itzik is doing basically everything else.”) Harari teaches one semester a year, fitting three classes into one day a week. His recent courses include a history of relations between humans and animals—the subject of a future Harari book, perhaps—and another called History for the Masses, on writing for a general reader. During our visit to the university, he took me to an empty lecture hall with steeply raked seating. “This is where ‘Sapiens’ originated,” he said. He noted, with mock affront, that the room attracts stray cats: “They come into class, and they grab all the attention. ‘A cat! Oh!’ ”

“It’s hard to keep a good friendship when someone’s financial status changes,” Amir Fink told me. Fink and his husband, a musicologist, have known Harari since college. “We have tried to keep his success out of it. As two couples, we meet a lot, we take vacations abroad together.” (Neither couple has children.) Fink went on, “We love to come to their place for the weekend.” They play board games, such as Settlers of Catan, and “whist—Israeli Army whist.”

Fink spoke of the scale of the operation built by Harari and Yahav. “I hope it’s sustainable,” he said. With “Sapiens,” he went on, Harari had written “a book that summarizes the world.” The books that followed were bound to be “more specific, and more political.” That is, they drew Harari away from his natural intellectual territory. “Homo Deus” derived directly from Harari’s teaching, but “21 Lessons,” Fink said, “is basically a collection of articles and responses to the present day.” He added, “It’s very hard for Yuval to keep himself as a teacher,” noting, “He becomes, I guess, what the French would call a philosophe .”

While Harari was at Oxford, he read Jared Diamond’s 1997 book, “ Guns, Germs, and Steel ,” and was dazzled by its reach, across time and place. “It was a complete life-changer,” Harari said. “You could actually write such books!” Steven Gunn, Harari’s Oxford adviser, told me that, as Harari worked on his thesis, he had to be discouraged from taking too broad a historical view: “I have memories of numerous revision meetings where I’d say, ‘Well, all this stuff about people flying helicopters in Vietnam is very interesting, and I can see why you need to read it, and think about it, to write about why people wrote the way they did about battles in Italy in the sixteenth century, but, actually, the thesis has to be nearly all about battles in Italy in the sixteenth century.’ ”

After Harari received his doctorate, he returned to Jerusalem with the idea of writing a history of the gay experience in Israel. He met with Benjamin Kedar. Kedar recently said, “I gave him a hard look—‘Yuval, do it after you get tenure.’ ”

Harari, taking this advice, stuck with his specialty. But his continued interest in comparative history was evident in the 2007 book “ Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550 ,” whose anachronistic framing provoked some academic reviewers. And the following year, in “ The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450-2000 ,” Harari was at last able to include an extended discussion of Vietnam War memoirs.

In 2003, Hebrew University initiated an undergraduate course, An Introduction to the History of the World. Such classes had begun appearing in a few history departments in the previous decade; traditional historians, Kedar said, were often disapproving, and still are: “They say, ‘You teach the French Revolution, and if somebody looks out of the window they miss the revolution’—all those jokes.” Gunn said that “Oxford makes sure people study a wide range of history, but it does it by making sure that people study a wide range of different detailed things, rather than one course that goes right across everything.”

Harari agreed to teach the world-history course, as well as one on war in the Middle Ages. He had always hated speaking to people he didn’t know. He told me that, as a younger man, “if I had to call the municipality to arrange some bureaucratic stuff, I would sit for like ten minutes by the telephone, just bringing up the courage.” (One can imagine his bliss in the dining hall at a meditation retreat—the sound of a hundred people not starting a conversation.) Even today, Harari is an unassuming lecturer: conferences sometimes give him a prizefighter’s introduction, with lights and music, at the end of which he comes warily to the podium, says, “Hello, everyone,” and sets up his laptop. Yahav described watching Harari recently freeze in front of an audience of thousands in Beijing. “I was, ‘Start moving!  ’ ”

As an uncomfortable young professor, Harari tended to write out his world-history lectures as a script. At one point, as part of an effort to encourage his students to listen to his words, rather than transcribe them, he began handing out copies of his notes. “They started circulating, even among students who were not in my class,” Harari recalled. “That’s when I thought, Ah, maybe there’s a book in it.” He imagined that a few students at other universities would buy the book, and perhaps “a couple of history buffs.”

This origin explains some of the qualities that distinguish “Sapiens.” Unlike many other nonfiction blockbusters, it isn’t full of catchy neologisms or cinematic scene-setting; its impact derives from a steady management of ideas, in prose that has the unhedged authority—and sometimes the inelegance—of a professor who knows how to make one or two things stick. (“An empire is a political order with two important characteristics . . .”) “Guns, Germs, and Steel” begins with a conversation between Jared Diamond and a Papua New Guinean politician; in “Sapiens,” Harari does not figure in the narrative. He told me, “Maybe it is some legacy of my study of memoirs and autobiographies. I know how dangerous it is to make personal experience your main basis for authority.”

It still astonishes Harari that readers became so excited about the early pages of “Sapiens,” which describe the coexistence of various Homo species. “I thought, This is so banal!” he told me. “There is absolutely nothing there that is new. I’m not an archeologist. I’m not a primatologist. I mean, I did zero new research. . . . It was really reading the kind of common knowledge and just presenting it in a new way.”

The Israeli edition, “A Brief History of Humankind,” was published in June, 2011. Yoram Yovell recalled that “Yuval became beloved very quickly,” and was soon a regular guest on Israeli television. “It was beautiful to see the way he handled it,” Yovell added. “He’s intellectually self-confident but truly modest.” The book initially failed to attract foreign publishers. Harari and Yahav marketed a print-on-demand English-language edition, on Amazon; this was Harari’s own translation, and it included his Gmail address on the title page, and illustrations by Yahav. It sold fewer than two thousand copies. In 2013, Yahav persuaded Deborah Harris, an Israeli literary agent whose clients include David Grossman and Tom Segev, to take on the book. She proposed edits and recommended hiring a translator. Harris recently recalled that, in the U.K., an auction of the revised manuscript began with twenty-two publishers, “and it went on and on and on,” whereas, in the U.S., “I was getting the most insulting rejections, of the kind ‘Who does this man think he is?’ ” Harvill Secker, Harari’s British publisher, paid significantly more for the book than HarperCollins did in the U.S.

Harari and Yahav recently visited Harris at her house, in Jerusalem; it also serves as her office. They had promised to cart away copies of “Sapiens”—in French, Portuguese, and Malay—that were filling up her garden shed. At her dining table, Harris recalled seeing “Sapiens” take off: “The reviews were extraordinary. And then Obama. And Gates.” (Gates, on his blog : “I’ve always been a fan of writers who try to connect the dots.”) Harris began spotting the book in airports; “Sapiens,” she said, was reaching people who read only one book a year.

There was a little carping from reviewers—“Mr. Harari’s claim that Columbus ignited the scientific revolution is surprising,” a reviewer in the Wall Street Journal wrote —but the book thrived in an environment of relative critical neglect. At the time of its publication, “Sapiens” was not reviewed in the Times , The New York Review of Books , or the Washington Post. Steven Gunn supposes that Harari, by working on a far greater time scale than the great historical popularizers of the twentieth century, like Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler, substantially protected himself from experts’ scoffing. “ ‘Sapiens’ leapfrogs that, by saying, ‘Let’s ask questions so large that nobody can say, “We think this bit’s wrong and that bit’s wrong,” ’ ” Gunn said. “Because what he’s doing is just building an extremely big model, about an extremely big process.” He went on, “Nobody’s an expert on the meaning of everything, or the history of everybody, over a long period.”

Deborah Harris did not work on “Homo Deus.” By then, Yahav had become Harari’s agent, after closely watching Harris’s process, and making a record of all her contacts. “It wasn’t even done secretly!” she said, laughing.

Yahav was sitting next to her. “He’s a maniac and a control freak,” Harris said. In her own dealings with publishers, she continued, “I have to retain a semblance of professionalism—I want these people to like me. He didn’t care! He’s never going to see these people again, and sell anything else to them. They can all think he’s horrible and ruthless.”

They discussed the controversy over the pliant Russian translation of “21 Lessons.” Harris said that, if she had been involved, “that would not have happened.”

Yahav, who for the first time looked a little pained, asked Harris if she would have refused all of the Russian publisher’s requests for changes.

“Russia, you don’t fuck around,” she said. “You don’t give them an inch.” She asked Harari if he would do things differently now.

“Hmm,” he said. Harari drew a distinction between changes he had approved and those he had not: for example, he hadn’t known that, in the dedication, “husband” would become “partner.” In public remarks, Harari has defended allowing some changes as an acceptable compromise when trying to reach a Russian audience. He has also said, “I’m not willing to write any lies. And I’m not willing to add any praise to the regime.”

They discussed the impending “Sapiens” spinoffs. Harris, largely enthusiastic about the plans, said, “I’m just not a graphic-novel person.” She then told Harari to wait before writing again. “I think you should learn to fly a plane,” she said. “You could do anything you want. Walk the Appalachian Trail.”

One day in mid-September, Harari walked into an auditorium set up in an eighteenth-century armory in Kyiv, wearing a Donna Karan suit and bright multicolored socks. He had just met with Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian President. The next day, he would meet Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s former President, and accept a gift box of chocolates made by Poroshenko’s company. Harari was about to give a talk at a Yalta European Strategy conference, a three-day, invitation-only event modelled on Davos. YES is funded by Victor Pinchuk , the billionaire manufacturing magnate, with the aim of promoting Ukraine’s orientation toward the West, and of promoting Victor Pinchuk.

As people took their seats, Harari stood with Pinchuk at the front of the auditorium, and for a few minutes he was exposed to strangers. Steven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive psychologist, introduced himself. David Rubenstein, the billionaire investor and co-founder of the Carlyle Group, gave Harari his business card. Rubenstein has become a “thought leader” at gatherings like YES , and he interviews wealthy people for Bloomberg TV. (Later that day, during a YES dinner where President Volodymyr Zelensky was a guest, Rubenstein interviewed Robin Wright, the “ House of Cards ” star. His questions were not made less awkward by being barked. “ You’re obviously a very attractive woman ,” he said. “How did you decide what you wanted to do?”)

Harari’s talk lasted twenty-four minutes. He used schoolbook-style illustrations: chimney stacks, Michelangelo’s David. Nobody on Harari’s staff had persuaded him not to represent mass unemployment with art work showing only fifty men. He argued that the danger facing the world could be “stated in the form of a simple equation, which might be the defining equation of the twenty-first century: B times C times D equals AHH. Which means: biological knowledge, multiplied by computing power, multiplied by data, equals the ability to hack humans.” After the lecture, Harari had an onstage discussion with Pinchuk. “We should change the focus of the political conversation,” Harari said, referring to A.I. And: “This is one of the purposes of conferences like this—to change the global conversation.” Throughout Harari’s event, senior European politicians in the front row chatted among themselves.

When I later talked to Steven Pinker, he made a candid distinction between speaking opportunities that were “too interesting to turn down” and others “too lucrative to turn down.” Hugo Chittenden, a director at the London Speaker Bureau, an agency that books speakers for events like YES , told me that Harari’s fee in Kyiv would reflect the fact that he’s a fresh face; there’s only so much enthusiasm for hearing someone like Tony Blair give the speech he’s given on such occasions for the past decade. On the plane to Kyiv, Yahav had indicated to me that Harari’s fee would be more than twice what Donald Trump was paid when he made a brief video appearance at YES , in 2015. Trump received a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

In public, at least, Harari doesn’t echo Pinker’s point about money gigs, and he won’t admit to having concerns about earning a fee that might compensate him, in part, for laundering the reputations of others. “We can’t check everyone who’s coming to a conference,” he told me. He was unmoved when told that Jordan Peterson , the Canadian psychologist and self-help author known for his position that “the masculine spirit is under assault,” had cancelled his YES appearance. Later this year, in Israel, Harari plans to have a private conversation with Peterson. Harari said of Peterson’s representatives, “They offered to do a public debate. And we said that we don’t want to, because there is a danger that it will just be mud wrestling.” Yahav had earlier teased Harari, saying, “You don’t argue. If somebody says something you don’t like, you don’t say, ‘I don’t like it.’ You just shut up.”

In Kyiv, Harari gave several interviews to local journalists, and sometimes mentioned a man who had been on our flight from Israel to Ukraine. After the plane left the gate, there was a long delay, and the man stormed to the front, demanding to be let off. There are times, Harari told one reporter, when the thing “most responsible for your suffering is your own mind.” The subject of human suffering—even extreme suffering—doesn’t seem to agitate Harari in quite the way that industrial agriculture does. Indeed, Harari has taken up positions against what he calls humanism, by which he means “the worship of humanity,” and which he discovers in, among other places, the foundations of Nazism and Stalinism. (This characterization has upset humanists.) Some of this may be tactical—Harari is foregrounding a contested animal-rights position—but it also reflects an aspect of his Vipassana-directed thinking. Human suffering occurs; the issue is how to respond to it. Harari’s suggestion that the airline passenger, in becoming livid about the delay, had largely made his own misery was probably right; but to turn the man into a case study seemed to breeze past all of the suffering that involves more than a transit inconvenience.

The morning after Harari’s lecture, he welcomed Pinker to his hotel suite. They hadn’t met before this trip, but a few weeks earlier they had arranged to film a conversation, which Harari would release on his own platforms. Pinker later joked that, when making the plan, he’d spoken only with Harari’s “minions,” adding, “ I want to have minions.” Pinker has a literary agent, a speaking agent, and, at Harvard, a part-time assistant. Contemplating the scale of Harari’s operation, he said, without judgment, “I don’t know of any other academic or public intellectual who’s taken that route.”

Pinker is the author of, most recently, “ Enlightenment Now ,” which marshals evidence of recent human progress. “We live longer, suffer less, learn more, get smarter, and enjoy more small pleasures and rich experiences,” he writes. “Fewer of us are killed, assaulted, enslaved, oppressed, or exploited.” He told me that, while preparing to meet Harari, he had refreshed his skepticism about futurology by rereading two well-known essays—Robert Kaplan’s “ The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease Are Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet ,” published in The Atlantic in 1994, and “ The Long Boom ,” by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden, published in Wired three years later (“We’re facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?”).

As a camera crew set up, Harari affably told Pinker, “The default script is that you will be the optimist and I will be the pessimist. But we can try and avoid this.” They chatted about TV, and discovered a shared enthusiasm for “ Shtisel ,” an Israeli drama about an ultra-Orthodox family, and “ Veep .”

“What else do you watch?” Harari asked.

“ ‘ The Crown ,’ ” Pinker said.

“Oh, ‘The Crown’ is great!”

Harari had earlier told me that he prefers TV to novels; in a career now often focussed on ideas about narrative and interiority, his reflections on art seem to stop at the observation that “fictions” have remarkable power. Over supper in Israel, he had noted that, in the Middle Ages, “only what kings and queens did was important, and even then not everything they did,” whereas novels are likely “to tell you in detail about what some peasant did.” Onstage, at YES , he had said, “If we think about art as kind of playing on the human emotional keyboard, then I think A.I. will very soon revolutionize art completely.”

The taped conversation began. Harari began to describe future tech intrusions, and Pinker, pushing back, referred to the ubiquitous “telescreens” that monitor citizens in Orwell’s “ 1984 .” Today, Pinker said, it would be a “trivial” task to install such devices: “There could be, in every room, a government-operated camera. They could have done that decades ago. But they haven’t, certainly not in the West. And so the question is: why didn’t they? Partly because the government didn’t have that much of an interest in doing it. Partly because there would be enough resistance that, in a democracy, they couldn’t succeed.”

Harari said that, in the past, data generated by such devices could not have been processed; the K.G.B. could not have hired enough agents. A.I. removes this barrier. “This is not science fiction,” he said. “This is happening in various parts of the world. It’s happening now in China. It’s happening now in my home country, in Israel.”

“What you’ve identified is some of the problems of totalitarian societies or occupying powers,” Pinker said. “The key is how to prevent your society from being China.” In response, Harari suggested that it might have been only an inability to process such data that had protected societies from authoritarianism. He went on, “Suddenly, totalitarian regimes could have a technological advantage over the democracies.”

Pinker said, “The trade-off between efficiency and ethics is just in the very nature of reality. It has always faced us—even with much simpler algorithms, of the kind you could do with paper and pencil.” He noted that, for seventy years, psychologists have known that, in a medical setting, statistical decision-making outperforms human intuition. Simple statistical models could have been widely used to offer diagnoses of disease, forecast job performance, and predict recidivism. But humans had shown a willingness to ignore such models.

“My view, as a historian, is that seventy years isn’t a long time,” Harari said.

When I later spoke to Pinker, he said that he admired Harari’s avoidance of conventional wisdom, but added, “When it comes down to it, he is a liberal secular humanist.” Harari rejects the label, Pinker said, but there’s no doubt that Harari is an atheist, and that he “believes in freedom of expression and the application of reason, and in human well-being as the ultimate criterion.” Pinker said that, in the end, Harari seems to want “to be able to reject all categories.”

The next day, Harari and Yahav made a trip to Chernobyl and the abandoned city of Pripyat. They invited a few other people, and hired a guide. Yahav embraced a role of half-ironic worrier about health risks; the guide tried to reassure him by giving him his dosimeter, which measures radiation levels. When the device beeped, Yahav complained of a headache. In the ruined Lenin Square in Pripyat, he told Harari, “You’re not going to die on me. We’ve discussed this—I’m going to die first. I was smoking for years.”

Harari, whose work sometimes sounds regretful about most of what has happened since the Paleolithic era—in “Sapiens,” he writes that “the forager economy provided most people with more interesting lives than agriculture or industry do”—began the day by anticipating, happily, a glimpse of the world as it would be if “humans destroyed themselves.” Walking across Pripyat’s soccer field, where mature trees now grow, he remarked on how quickly things had gone “back to normal.”

The guide asked if anyone had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare—the video game, which includes a sequence set in Pripyat.

“No,” Harari said.

“Just the most popular game in the world,” the guide said.

At dusk, Harari and Yahav headed back to Kyiv, in a black Mercedes. When Yahav sneezed, Harari said, “It’s the radiation starting.” As we drove through flat, forested countryside, Harari talked about his upbringing: his hatred of chess; his nationalist and religious periods. He said, “One thing I think about how humans work—the only thing that can replace one story is another story.”

We discussed the tall tales that occasionally appear in his writing. In “Homo Deus,” Harari writes that, in 2014, a Hong Kong venture-capital firm “broke new ground by appointing an algorithm named VITAL to its board.” A footnote provides a link to an online article , which makes clear that, in fact, there had been no such board appointment, and that the press release announcing it was a lure for “gullible” outlets. When I asked Harari if he’d accidentally led readers into believing a fiction, he appeared untroubled, arguing that the book’s larger point about A.I. encroachment still held.

In “Sapiens,” Harari writes in detail about a meeting in the desert between Apollo 11 astronauts and a Native American who dictated a message for them to take to the moon. The message, when later translated, was “They have come to steal your lands.” Harari’s text acknowledges that the story might be a “legend.”

“I don’t know if it’s a true story,” Harari told me. “It doesn’t matter—it’s a good story.” He rethought this. “It matters how you present it to the readers. I think I took care to make sure that at least intelligent readers will understand that it maybe didn’t happen.” (The story has been traced to a Johnny Carson monologue.)

Harari went on to say how much he’d liked writing an extended fictional passage, in “Homo Deus,” in which he imagines the belief system of a twelfth-century crusader. It begins, “Imagine a young English nobleman named John . . .” Harari had been encouraged in this experiment, he said, by the example of classical historians, who were comfortable fabricating dialogue, and by “ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ,” by Douglas Adams, a book “packed with so much good philosophy.” No twentieth-century philosophical book besides “ Sources of the Self ,” by Charles Taylor, had influenced him more.

We were now on a cobbled street in Kyiv. Harari said, “Maybe the next book will be a novel.”

At a press conference in the city, Harari was asked a question by Hannah Hrabarska, a Ukrainian news photographer. “I can’t stop smiling,” she began. “I’ve watched all your lectures, watched everything about you.” I spoke to her later. She said that reading “Sapiens” had “completely changed” her life. Hrabarska was born the week of the Chernobyl disaster, in 1986. “When I was a child, I dreamed of being an artist,” she said. “But then politics captured me.” When the Orange Revolution began, in 2004, she was eighteen, and “ so idealistic.” She studied law and went into journalism. In the winter of 2013-14, she photographed the Euromaidan protests, in Kyiv, where more than a hundred people were killed. “You always expect everything will change, will get better,” she said. “And it doesn’t.”

Hrabarska read “Sapiens” three or four years ago. She told me that she had previously read widely in history and philosophy, but none of that material had ever “interested me on my core level.” She found “Sapiens” overwhelming, particularly in its passages on prehistory, and in its larger revelation that she was “one of the billions and billions that lived, and didn’t make any impact and didn’t leave any trace.” Upon finishing the book, Hrabarska said, “you kind of relax, don’t feel this pressure anymore—it’s O.K. to be insignificant.” For her, the discovery of “Sapiens” is that “life is big, but only for me.” This knowledge “lets me own my life.”

Reading “Sapiens” had helped her become “more compassionate” toward people around her, although less invested in their opinions. Hrabarska had also spent more time on creative photography projects. She said, “This came from a feeling of ‘O.K., it doesn’t matter that much, I’m just a little human, no one cares.’ ”

Hrabarska has disengaged from politics. “I can choose to be involved, not to be involved,” she said. “No one cares, and I don’t care, too.” ♦

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In his book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , scientist Yuval Noah Harari attempts a seemingly impossible task — packing the entirety of human history into 400 pages.

Harari, an Israeli historian, is interested in tackling big-picture questions and puncturing some of our dearly held beliefs about human progress.

"In some areas we've done amazingly well; in other areas we've done amazingly bad," he tells NPR's Arun Rath. "Humans are extremely good in acquiring new power, but they are not very good in translating this power into greater happiness, which is why we are far more powerful than ever before but we don't seem to be much happier."

The book charts humankind's journey from hunter-gatherer origins to a vision of the "superhumans" of the future.

Interview Highlights

On the various species of humanity

Until about 30,000 years ago there were at least five other species of humans on the planet. Homo Sapiens, our ancestors, lived mainly in East Africa, and you had the Neanderthal in Europe, Homo Erectus in part of Asia and so forth.

Just, I think, four or five years ago scientists completed the mapping of the Neanderthal genome and the most amazing discovery was that people of European origins today ... have up to 4 percent of their unique human genes from Neanderthal ancestors, which means there was some interbreeding. And this should make us realize that the gap between us and other animals is not as big as we tend to think.

Yuval Noah Harari teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ilya Malnikov/Courtesy of Harper hide caption

Yuval Noah Harari teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

On the concepts that separate humanity from other species

We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights. These are all things that do not exist objectively, but they exist only in the stories that we tell and that we spread around. This is something very unique to us, perhaps the most unique feature of our species.

You can never, for example, convince a chimpanzee to do something for you by promising that, "Look, after you die, you will go to chimpanzee heaven and there you will receive lots and lots of bananas for your good deeds here on earth, so now do what I tell you to do."

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But humans do believe such stories and this is the basic reason why we control the world whereas chimpanzees are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.

On the Agricultural Revolution being 'history's biggest fraud'

That's actually a quote from Jared Diamond. It's today, I think, quite common in the scientific community to acknowledge that the Agricultural Revolution was maybe not such a good idea. On the collective level, it's obvious that agriculture made humankind far more powerful. But the individual human being probably had a worse life after the revolution than before.

The average peasant, let's say, he or she had to work much harder and in exchange for all this hard work people actually got a much worse diet. Most of the population got maybe 90 percent of their calories from a single source of food, like wheat in the Middle East or rice in East Asia. On top of that, you had much worse social hierarchies and social exploitation. Very small elites exploit masses of people for their own needs.

On the future of humanity

I try to be a realist and not a pessimist or an optimist. Again, there are certain things that humans have been doing that have been immensely successful. People don't realize it usually, but we are living in the most peaceful era in history. There are of course wars in certain parts of the world; I come from Israel, from the Middle East, so I know it. But there are far fewer wars in most areas in the world than ever before.

Not only in the mere technological field, but also in the field of ethics and morality, humankind can make progress.

Watch CBS News

Yuval Noah Harari on the power of data, artificial intelligence and the future of the human race

By Anderson Cooper

October 31, 2021 / 7:05 PM EDT / CBS News

When Yuval Noah Harari published his first book, "Sapiens," in 2014 about the history of the human species, it became a global bestseller, and turned the little-known, Israeli history professor into one of the most popular writers and thinkers on the planet. But when we met with Harari in Tel Aviv this summer, it wasn't our species' past that concerned him, it was our future.  Harari believes we may be on the brink of creating not just a new, enhanced species of human, but an entirely new kind of being - one that is far more intelligent than we are. It sounds like science fiction, but Yuval Noah Harari says it's actually much more dangerous than that. 

Anderson Cooper: You said, "We are one of the last generations of Homo sapiens. Within a century or two, Earth will be dominated by entities that are more different from us than we are different from chimpanzees."

Yuval Noah Harari: Yeah. 

Anderson Cooper: What the hell does that mean? That freaked me out.

Yuval Noah Harari: You know we will soon have the power to re-engineer our bodies and brains, whether it is with genetic engineering or by directly connecting brains to computers, or by creating completely non-organic entities, artificial intelligence which is not based at all on the organic body and the organic brain. And these technologies are developing at break-neck speed.

Anderson Cooper: If that is true, then it creates a whole other species. 

Yuval Noah Harari: This is something which is way beyond just another species. 

Yuval Noah Harari is talking about the race to develop artificial intelligence, as well as other technologies like gene editing - that could one day enable parents to create smarter or more attractive children, and brain computer interfaces that could result in human/machine hybrids.

Anderson Cooper: What does that do to a society? It seems like the rich will have access whereas others wouldn't.

Yuval Noah Harari: One of the dangers is that we will see in the coming decades a process of-- of s-- of-- greater inequality than in any previous time in history because for the first time, it will be real biological inequality. If the new technologies are available only to the rich or only to people from a certain country then Homo sapiens will split into different biological castes because they really have different bodies and-- and different abilities.

Harari has spent the last few years lecturing and writing about what may lie ahead for humankind.

Harari at Davos in 2018: In the coming generations we will learn how to engineer bodies and brains and minds. 

He has written two books about the challenges we face in the future -- "Homo Deus" and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" -- which along with "Sapiens" have sold more than 35 million copies and been translated into 65 languages. His writings have been recommended by President Barack Obama, as well as tech moguls, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Anderson Cooper: You raise warnings about technology. You're also embraced by a lot of folks in Silicon Valley. 

Anderson Cooper: Isn't that sort of a contradiction?

Yuval Noah Harari: They are a bit afraid of their own power. That they have realized the immense influence they have over the world, over the course of evolution, really.  And I think that spooks at least some of them. And that's a good thing. And this is why they are kind of to some extent open to listening.

Anderson Cooper: You started as a history professor. What do you call yourself now?

Yuval Noah Harari: I'm still a historian. But I think history is the study of change, not just the study of the past. But it covers the future as well.

Harari got his Ph.D. in history at Oxford, and lives in Israel, where the past is still very present. He took us to an archeological site called Tel Gezer.

Harari says cities like this were only possible because about 70,000 years ago our species - Homo sapiens - experienced a cognitive change that helped us create language, which then made it possible for us to cooperate in large groups and drive Neanderthals and all other less cooperative human species into extinction. 

Harari fears we are now the ones at risk of being dominated, by artificial intelligence. 

Yuval Noah Harari: Maybe the biggest thing that we are facing is really a kind of evolutionary divergence. For millions of years, intelligence and consciousness went together. Consciousness is the ability to feel things, like pain and pleasure and love and hate. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. But computers or artificial intelligence, they don't have consciousness. They just have intelligence. They solve problems in a completely different way than us. Now in science fiction, it's often assumed that as computers will become more and more intelligent, they will inevitably also gain consciousness. But actually, it's-- it's much more frightening than that in a way they will be able to solve more and more problems better than us without having any consciousness, any feelings. 

Anderson Cooper: And they will have power over us?

Yuval Noah Harari:  They are already gaining power over us. 

Some lenders routinely use complex artificial intelligence algorithms to determine who qualifies for loans and global financial markets are moved by decisions made by machines analyzing huge amounts of data in ways even their programmers don't always understand. 

Harari says the countries and companies that control the most data will in the future be the ones that control the world. 

Yuval Noah Harari: Today in the world, data is worth much more than money. Ten years ago, you had these big corporations paying billions and billions for WhatsApp, for Instagram. And people wondered, "Are they crazy? Why do they pay billions to get this application that doesn't produce any money?" And the reason why? Because it produced data.

Anderson Cooper: And data is the key?

Yuval Noah Harari: The world is increasingly kind of cut up into spheres of-- of data collection, of data harvesting. In the Cold War, you had the Iron Curtain. Now we have the Silicon Curtain between the USA and China. And where does the data go? California or does it go to Shenzhen and to Shanghai and to Beijing? 

Harari is concerned the pandemic has opened the door for more intrusive kinds of data collection, including biometric data.

Anderson Cooper: What is biometric data?

Yuval Noah Harari: It's data about what's happening inside my body. What we have seen so far. It's corporations and governments collecting data about where we go, who we meet, what movies we watch. The next phase is surveillance going under our skin.

Anderson Cooper: I'm wearing a, like a tracker that tracks my heart rate, my sleep. I don't know where that information is going.

Yuval Noah Harari: You wear the KGB agent on your wrist willingly.

Anderson Cooper: And I think it's benefiting me.

Yuval Noah Harari: And it is benefiting you. I mean, the whole thing is that it's not just dystopian. It's also utopian. I mean, this kind of data can also enable us to create the best health care system in history. The question is what else is being done with that data? And who supervises it? Who regulates it? 

Earlier this year, the Israeli government gave its citizens' health data to Pfizer to get priority access to their vaccine. The data did not include individual citizens' identities.

Anderson Cooper: So what does Pfizer want the data of all Israelis for?

Yuval Noah Harari: Because to develop new medicines, new treatments you need the medical data. Increasingly, that's the basis for how-- for medical research. It's not all bad. 

Harari has been criticized for pointing out problems without offering solutions, but he does have some ideas about how to limit the misuse of data. 

Yuval Noah Harari: One key rule is that if you get my data, the data should be used to help me and not to manipulate me. Another key rule, that whenever you increase surveillance of individuals you should simultaneously increase surveillance of the corporation and governments and the people at the top. And the third principle is that, never allow all the data to be concentrated in one place. That's the recipe for a dictatorship. 

Harari speaking at The Future of Education: Netflix tells us what to watch and Amazon tells us what to buy. Eventually within 10 or 20 or 30 years such algorithms could also tell you what to study at college and where to work and whom to marry and even whom to vote for. 

Without greater regulation, Harari believes we are at risk of becoming what he calls "hacked humans."

Anderson Cooper: What does that mean?

Yuval Noah Harari: To hack a human being is to get to know that person better than they know themselves. And based on that, to increasingly manipulate you This outside system, it has the potential to remember everything. Everything you ever did. And to analyze and find patterns in this data and to get a much better idea of who you really are. I came out as gay when I was 21. It should've been obvious to me when I was 15 that I'm gay. But something in the mind blocked it. Now, if you think about a teenager today, Facebook can know that they are gay or Amazon can know that they are gay long before they do just based on analyzing patterns.

Anderson Cooper: And based on that, you can tell somebody's sexual orientation?

Yuval Noah Harari: Completely. And what does it mean if you live in Iran or if you live in Russia or in some other homophobic country and the police know that you are gay even before you know it?

Anderson Cooper: When people think about data they think about companies finding out what their likes and dislikes are but the data that you're talking about goes much deeper than that?

Yuval Noah Harari: Like, think in 20 years when the entire personal history of every journalist, every judge, every politician, every military officer is held by somebody in Beijing or in Washington? Your ability to manipulate them is like nothing before in history.

Harari lives outside Tel Aviv with his husband, Itzik Yahav. They have been together for nearly 20 years. It was Yahav who read Harari's lecture notes for a history course and convinced him to turn them into his first book – "Sapiens."   

Itzik Yahav: I read the lessons. I couldn't stop talking about it. For me, it was clear that it could be a huge bestseller.

Yahav is now Harari's agent, and together they started a company called Sapienship. They are creating an interactive exhibit that will take visitors through the history of human evolution and challenge them to think about the future of mankind. 

Harari also just published the second installment of a graphic novel based on "Sapiens." And he's teaching courses at Israel's Hebrew University in ethics and philosophy for computer scientists and bioengineers. 

Harari teaching: When people write code, they are reshaping politics and economics and ethics, and the structure of human society.

Anderson Cooper: When I think of coders and engineers, I don't think of philosophers and poets. 

Yuval Noah Harari: It's not the case now, but it should be the case because they are increasingly solving philosophical and poetical riddles. If you're designing, you know, a self-driving car, so the self-driving car will need to make ethical decisions. Like suddenly, a kid jumps in front of the car. And the only way to-- to-- to prevent running over the kid is to swerve to the side and be hit by a truck. And your own-owner who is asleep in the backseat will-- might be killed. You need to tell the algorithm what to do in this situation. So you need to actually solve the philosophical question, who to kill. 

Last month the United Nations suggested a moratorium on artificial intelligence systems that seriously threaten human rights until safeguards are agreed upon, and advisers to President Biden are proposing what they call a "bill of rights" to guard against some of the new technologies. Harari says just as Homo sapiens learned to cooperate with each other many thousands of years ago, we need to cooperate now. 

Yuval Noah Harari: Certainly. Now, we are at the point when we need global cooperation. You cannot regulate the explosive power of artificial intelligence on a national level. I'm not trying to kind of prophesy what will happen. I'm trying to warn people about the most dangerous possibilities, in the hope that we will do something in the present to prevent them.

Produced by Denise Schrier Cetta. Associate producer, Katie Brennan. Broadcast associate, Annabelle Hanflig. Edited by Stephanie Palewski Brumbach.

Anderson Cooper, anchor of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," has contributed to 60 Minutes since 2006. His exceptional reporting on big news events has earned Cooper a reputation as one of television's preeminent newsmen.

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Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli author and historian born in 1976, is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is renowned for his bestsellers “Sapiens,” “Homo Deus,” and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century,” which explore themes like free will, consciousness, and the future of humanity. Harari posits that Homo sapiens' rise began with a cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago. Harari predicts significant changes in human evolution due to biotechnological advancements [1†] [2†] [3†] .

Early Years and Education

Yuval Noah Harari was born in 1976 in Kiryat Atta, Haifa District, Israel [1†] [3†] . He was one of three children born to Shlomo and Pnina Harari and was raised in a secular Jewish family [1†] . His father was a state-employed armaments engineer, and his mother was an office administrator [1†] .

Harari showed an early aptitude for learning, teaching himself to read at the age of three [1†] . He studied in a class for intellectually gifted children at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa from the age of eight [1†] . Harari deferred mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces to pursue university studies as part of the Atuda program but was later exempted from completing his military service following his studies due to health issues [1†] .

He began studying history and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at age 17 [1†] . Harari then went on to receive his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002 [1†] [4†] [3†] . His doctoral thesis was titled “History and I: War and the Relations between History and Personal Identity in Renaissance Military Memoirs, c. 1450–1600” and was supervised by Steven Gunn [1†] .

Career Development and Achievements

After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002 [1†] [5†] [4†] , Yuval Noah Harari returned to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is now a tenured professor in the Department of History [1†] [5†] [6†] [4†] . His research focuses on macro-historical questions such as the relationship between history and biology, the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals, whether there is justice in history, whether history has a direction, whether people have become happier as history unfolded, and what ethical questions science and technology raise in the 21st century [1†] [5†] .

Harari is the author of the international bestsellers “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” (2014), “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” (2016), and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” (2018) [1†] [5†] [4†] . His books have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide [1†] [5†] . In “Sapiens”, Harari surveys human history from the evolutionary emergence of Homo sapiens to 21st-century political and technological revolutions [1†] . The book is based on his lectures to an undergraduate world history class [1†] .

In “Homo Deus”, Harari explores the opportunities and dangers humankind faces in this century and beyond [1†] [6†] . He discusses the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations [1†] . He has stated, "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so" [1†] .

Harari co-founded Sapienship with his husband and original agent, Itzik Yahav [1†] [5†] . Sapienship is a social impact company with projects in the fields of entertainment and education [1†] [5†] . Its mission is to clarify the public conversation, support the quest for solutions, and focus attention on the most important challenges facing the world today, such as technological disruption, ecological collapse, and the nuclear threat [1†] [5†] .

Harari has given keynote speeches on the future of humanity at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 and 2018 [1†] [5†] . He regularly discusses global issues with heads of state and has had public conversations with several world leaders [1†] [5†] . He also offers knowledge and time to various organizations and audiences on a voluntary basis [1†] [5†] .

First Publication of His Main Works

Yuval Noah Harari is the author of several popular science bestsellers [1†] [7†] [8†] [5†] . His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering [1†] . Here are some of his main works:

• “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” (2014) [1†] [7†] [8†] [5†] : This book surveys human history from the evolutionary emergence of Homo sapiens to 21st-century political and technological revolutions [1†] . The book is based on his lectures to an undergraduate world history class [1†] .
• “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” (2016) [1†] [7†] [8†] [5†] : In this book, Harari discusses the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations [1†] . He has said, "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so" [1†] .
• “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” (2018) [1†] [7†] [8†] [5†] : This book addresses the most urgent issues facing us today. It helps us to focus our minds on the essential questions we should be asking ourselves in the present day [1†] .

Each of these works has made significant contributions to popular science literature and has sparked widespread discussion and debate [1†] [7†] [8†] [5†] .

Analysis and Evaluation

Yuval Noah Harari’s work has been widely analyzed and evaluated by critics, scholars, and readers alike [8†] [9†] [10†] [11†] [12†] . His books, particularly “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, have been praised for their audacious imagination, clear exposition, and the ability to synthesize complex ideas in an accessible manner [8†] [9†] .

Harari’s work is characterized by its multifaceted review and analysis of human evolution and the forces behind major historical developments [8†] [10†] . He avoids simplistic explanations and instead offers a comprehensive retelling of the human story, seasoned with personal reflections on humanity’s tenancy of the planet [8†] [9†] .

Critics have noted that Harari’s underlying message is often dark, reflecting his view that the scientific revolution may yet have dire consequences for humanity [8†] [9†] . His writings discuss a “cognitive revolution” that occurred roughly 70,000 years ago when Homo sapiens supplanted the rival Neanderthals and other species of the genus Homo [8†] . This ascension was aided by the agricultural revolution and accelerated by the scientific revolution, which have allowed humans to approach near mastery over their environment [8†] .

Harari’s analysis extends to the future, examining the possible consequences of a biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations [8†] . He has stated, "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so" [8†] .

Despite the acclaim, some critics have pointed out potential oversimplifications in Harari’s work. His broad strokes approach to complex historical events and developments has been both praised for its accessibility and critiqued for its lack of nuance [8†] [9†] .

Overall, Harari’s work has had a significant impact on popular science literature and has sparked widespread discussion and debate [8†] [9†] [10†] [11†] [12†] .

Personal Life

Yuval Noah Harari is openly gay [1†] [8†] [13†] . He met his husband, Itzik Yahav, in 2002 [1†] [8†] [13†] . Harari has referred to Yahav as his "internet of all things" [1†] [13†] . Yahav has also served as Harari’s personal manager [1†] [8†] [13†] . They were married in a civil ceremony in Toronto, Canada [1†] [8†] [13†] .

Harari and Yahav currently reside in a suburb of Tel Aviv [1†] [8†] . Harari has expressed that he is happiest in the present, having learned to adjust his expectations to reality better than when he was younger [1†] [8†] . His most treasured possession is his body [1†] [8†] .

Despite his global recognition and busy schedule, Harari maintains a two-hour daily meditation practice. He credits this practice with giving him the focus and peace needed to write [1†] .

Conclusion and Legacy

Yuval Noah Harari’s work has had a profound impact on our understanding of human history and the future of our species [1†] [14†] . His books, particularly “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”, and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”, have been translated into numerous languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide [1†] . They have stimulated reflection and discussion among readers around the globe [1†] [14†] .

Harari’s unique perspective on the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the scientific revolution has challenged traditional narratives and offered new insights into the development and potential future of Homo sapiens [1†] . His exploration of themes such as free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering has resonated with a wide audience [1†] .

In addition to his contributions to literature and historical discourse, Harari is also known for his public intellectual work [1†] . He has used his platform to comment on contemporary issues, offering sharp critiques and challenging prevailing ideologies [1†] [14†] [15†] [16†] .

Despite the controversy and debate surrounding some of his ideas, Harari’s influence is undeniable [1†] [14†] . His work continues to inspire and provoke thought, cementing his legacy as one of the most influential thinkers of our time [1†] [14†] .

Key Information

• Also Known As : Yuval Noah Harari [1†] [4†] [17†]
• Born : February 24, 1976, Kiryat Atta, Haifa District, Israel [1†]
• Nationality : Israeli [1†]
• Occupation : Historian, Professor, Author [1†] [4†] [17†]
• Notable Works : “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” (2014) [1†] [4†] [17†] , “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” (2016) [1†] [4†] [17†] , “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” (2018) [1†] [4†] [17†]
• Notable Achievements : Harari’s books have sold over 35 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 65 languages [1†] [17†] . He has given keynote speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 and 2018 [1†] [4†] .

References and Citations:

• Wikipedia (English) - Yuval Noah Harari [website] - link
• Yuval Noah Harari - About [website] - link
• Goodreads - Author: Yuval Noah Harari (Author of Sapiens) [website] - link
• Britannica - Yuval Noah Harari [website] - link
• World Economic Forum - Yuval Noah Harari [website] - link
• thefutureorganization.com - Jacob Morgan - Yuval Harari On The Future of Jobs & Technology, Intelligence vs Consciousness, & Future Threats to Humanity [website] - link
• eNotes - Works by Yuval Noah Harari [website] - link
• The Guardian - None [website] - link
• The Guardian - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind review – thrilling story, dark message [website] - link
• Books on Google Play - Summary, Analysis & Review of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens by Eureka by Eureka [website] - link
• The Daily Genevan - Review Of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" (Part 1) [website] - link
• BookRags - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow Summary & Study Guide [website] - link
• GoBookMartd - Yuval Noah Harari's Biography [website] - link
• Secular Humanism - Free Inquiry - The Meaning and Legacy of Humanism: A Sharp Challenge from a Potential Ally [website] - link
• The Guardian - Yuval Noah Harari backs critique of leftist ‘indifference’ to Hamas atrocities [website] - link
• Al Arabiya English - Netanyahu legacy imperiled by judicial plan: Israeli author Harari [website] - link
• Google Books - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari [website] - link

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Yuval Noah Harari’s study of human communication may be anything but brief, but if you can make it to the second half, you’ll be both entertained and scared.

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NEXUS: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI , by Yuval Noah Harari

In the summer of 2022, a software engineer named Blake Lemoine was fired by Google after an interview with The Washington Post in which he claimed that LaMDA, the chatbot he had been working on, had achieved sentience.

A few months later, in March 2023, an open letter from the Future of Life Institute , signed by hundreds of technology leaders including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, called on A.I. labs to pause their research. Artificial intelligence, it claimed, posed “profound risks to society and humanity.”

The following month, Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of A.I.,” quit his post at Google, telling this newspaper that he regretted his life’s work. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he warned.

Over the last few years we have become accustomed to hare-eyed messengers returning from A.I.’s frontiers with apocalyptic warnings. And yet, real action in the form of hard regulation has been little in evidence. Last year’s executive order on A.I. was, as one commentator put it , “directional and aspirational” — a shrewdly damning piece of faint praise.

Meanwhile, stock prices for the tech sector continue to soar while the industry mutters familiar platitudes: The benefits outweigh the risks; the genie is already out of the bottle; if we don’t do it, our enemies will.

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Yuval Noah Harari Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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Yuval Noah Harari

How to pronounce Yuval Noah Harari: yoo-VALL ha-RAHR-ee

Yuval Noah Harari Biography

Professor Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century , and the series Sapiens: A Graphic History and Unstoppable Us . His books have sold forty-five million copies in sixty-five languages, and he is considered one of the world's most influential public intellectuals working today. Born in Israel in 1976, Harari received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002 and is currently a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He co-founded the social impact company Sapienship, focused on education and media, with his husband Itzik Yahav.

This bio was last updated on 09/03/2024. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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If you enjoyed: Sapiens

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Yuval Noah Harari

Learn about this topic in these articles:, essay on our nonconscious future.

…by superintelligent but completely nonconscious entities.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari (Hebrew: יובל נח הררי ; born 24 February 1976 ) is an Israeli professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind .

• 1.1 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)
• 1.2 Introduction to Animal Liberation (2015)
• 1.3 Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016)
• 1.4 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
• 1.5 The TED Interview with Chris Anderson (2022)
• 2 External links
• "#390 - Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies" on Lex Fridman Podcast, found on DeepCast (17 July 2023)
• " Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history ", The Guardian (25 September 2011)

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

• Seventy thousand years ago, homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.
• Understanding human history in the millennia following the Agricultural Revolution boils down to a single question: how did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts. These two inventions filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance.
• Yet from the viewpoint of the herd, rather than that of the shepherd, it’s hard to avoid the impression that for the vast majority of domesticated animals, the Agricultural Revolution was a terrible catastrophe. Their evolutionary ‘success’ is meaningless. A rare wild rhinoceros on the brink of extinction is probably more satisfied than a calf who spends its short life inside a tiny box, fattened to produce juicy steaks. The contented rhinoceros is no less content for being among the last of its kind. The numerical success of the calf’s species is little consolation for the suffering the individual endures.
• The food surpluses produced by peasants, coupled with new transportation technology, eventually enabled more and more people to cram together first into large villages, then into towns, and finally into cities, all of them joined together by new kingdoms and commercial networks.
• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most humans ran its course within three ancient frames: the nuclear family, the extended family and the local intimate community.
• Most people worked in the family business – the family farm or the family workshop, for example – or they worked in their neighbours’ family businesses. The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.
• Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha’s recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.
• Homo erectus , 'Upright Man,' [survived] for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.
• How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.
• As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.
• So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.
• One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.
• Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
• Biology enables, Culture forbids.
• In the last few decades we have at last made some real progress as far as the human condition is concerned, with the reduction of famine, plague and war. Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before, and the improvement in the lot of humanity is too recent and fragile to be certain of.

Introduction to Animal Liberation (2015)

• Animals are the main victims of history , and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history.
• Today more than ninety per cent of all large animals are domesticated. Consider the chicken , for example. Ten thousand years ago it was a rare bird confined to small niches of South Asia. Today billions of chickens live on almost every continent and island, bar Antarctica. The domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth. If you measure success in terms of numbers, chickens, cows and pigs are the most successful animals ever. Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering.
• The root of the problem is that domesticated animals have inherited from their wild ancestors many physical, emotional and social needs that are redundant in human farms. Farmers routinely ignore these needs without paying any economic price. They lock animals in tiny cages, mutilate their horns and tails, separate mothers from offspring, and selectively breed monstrosities.
• The fate of farm animals is not an ethical side issue. It concerns the majority of Earth's large creatures: tens of billions of sentient beings, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, but who live and die as cogs in an industrial production line.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016)

• As human soldiers and workers give way to algorithms, at least some elites may conclude that there is no point in providing improved or even standard levels of health for masses of useless poor people, and it is far more sensible to focus on upgrading a handful of superhumans beyond the norm.
• The coming technological bonanza will probably make it feasible to feed and support these useless masses even without any effort from their side. What will they do all day? One answer might be drugs and computer games. Unnecessary people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D-virtual-reality worlds, that would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the drab reality outside. Yet such a development would deal a mortal blow to the liberal belief in the sacredness of human life and of human experiences. What's so sacred about useless bums who pass their time devouring artificial experiences in La-La Land ?
• In the twenty-first century, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction.
• In the twenty-first century we will create more powerful fictions and more totalitarian religions than in any previous era. With the help of biotechnology and computer algorithms these religions will not only control our minute-by-minute existence, but will be able to shape our bodies, brains and minds, and to create entire virtual worlds complete with hells and heavens.
• Doubts about the existence of free will and individuals are nothing new, of course. More than 2,000 years ago thinkers in India, China and Greece argued that ‘the individual self is an illusion’. Yet such doubts don’t really change history much unless they have a practical impact on economics, politics and day-to-day life. Humans are masters of cognitive dissonance, and we allow ourselves to believe one thing in the laboratory and an altogether different thing in the courthouse or in parliament. Just as Christianity didn’t disappear the day Darwin published On the Origin of Species , so liberalism won’t vanish just because scientists have reached the conclusion that there are no free individuals.
• In the past there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up, and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. True, computers function very differently from humans, and it seems unlikely that computers will become humanlike any time soon. In particular, it doesn’t seem that computers are about to gain consciousness and start experiencing emotions and sensations. Over the past half century there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. As far as we know, computers in 2016 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their economic value because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.
• Of course, by 2033 many new professions are likely to appear, for example, virtual-world designers. But such professions will probably require much more creativity and flexibility than current run-of-the-mill jobs, and it is unclear whether forty-year-old cashiers or insurance agents will be able to reinvent themselves as virtual-world designers (try to imagine a virtual world created by an insurance agent!). And even if they do so, the pace of progress is such that within another decade they might have to reinvent themselves yet again. After all, algorithms might well outperform humans in designing virtual worlds too. The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.
• ...Suppose you have two free hours a week, and are uncertain whether to use them playing chess or tennis. A good friend might ask: ‘What does your heart tell you?’ ‘Well,’ you answer, ‘as far as my heart is concerned, it’s obvious tennis is better. It’s also better for my cholesterol level and blood pressure. But my fMRI scans indicate I should strengthen my left pre-frontal cortex. In my family dementia is quite common, and my uncle had it at a very early age. The latest studies indicate that a weekly game of chess can help delay its onset.’
• Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change. The central committee of the Communist Party just could not deal with the rapidly changing world of the late twentieth century. When all data is accumulated in one secret bunker, and all important decisions are taken by a group of elderly apparatchiks, they can produce nuclear bombs by the cartload, but not an Apple or a Wikipedia.
• ...Meanwhile in the USA paranoid Republicans have accused Barack Obama of being a ruthless despot hatching conspiracies to destroy the foundations of American society – yet in eight years of his presidency he barely managed to pass a minor health-care reform.
• From a Dataist perspective, we may interpret the entire human species as a single data-processing system, with individual humans serving as its chips. If so, we can also understand the whole of history as a process of improving the efficiency of this system through four basic methods: 1: Increasing the number of processors. 2: Increasing the variety of processors. 3: Increasing the number of connections between processors. 4: Increasing the freedom of movement along existing connections.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)

• Without criticising the liberal model, we cannot repair its faults or go beyond it. But please note that this book could have been written only when people are still relatively free to think what they like and to express themselves as they wish. If you value this book, you should also value the freedom of expression.
• In the beginning, the liberal story cared mainly about the liberties and privileges of middle-class European men, and seemed blind to the plight of working-class people, women, minorities and non-Westerners. When in 1918 victorious Britain and France talked excitedly about liberty, they were not thinking about the subjects of their worldwide empires.
• But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption. Liberalism traditionally relied on economic growth to magically solve difficult social and political conflicts.
• The loss of many traditional jobs in everything from art to healthcare will partly be offset by the creation of new human jobs. GPs who focus on diagnosing known diseases and administering familiar treatments will probably be replaced by AI doctors. But precisely because of that, there will be much more money to pay human doctors and lab assistants to do groundbreaking research and develop new medicines or surgical procedures.
• As algorithms come to know us so well, authoritarian governments could gain absolute control over their citizens, even more so than in Nazi Germany, and resistance to such regimes might be utterly impossible. Not only will the regime know exactly how you feel – it could make you feel whatever it wants. The dictator might not be able to provide citizens with healthcare or equality, but he could make them love him and hate his opponents. Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech. Either democracy will successfully reinvent itself in a radically new form, or humans will come to live in ‘digital dictatorships’.
• But in reality, there is no reason to assume that artificial intelligence will gain consciousness, because intelligence and consciousness are very different things. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love and anger. We tend to confuse the two because in humans and other mammals intelligence goes hand in hand with consciousness. Mammals solve most problems by feeling things. Computers, however, solve problems in a very different way.
• The race to obtain the data is already on, headed by data-giants such as Google, Facebook, Baidu and Tencent. So far, many of these giants seem to have adopted the business model of ‘attention merchants’. They capture our attention by providing us with free information, services and entertainment, and they then resell our attention to advertisers. Yet the data-giants probably aim far higher than any previous attention merchant. Their true business isn’t to sell advertisements at all. Rather, by capturing our attention they manage to accumulate immense amounts of data about us, which is worth more than any advertising revenue. We aren’t their customers – we are their product.
• What will happen once we can ask Google, ‘Hi Google, based on everything you know about cars, and based on everything you know about me (including my needs, my habits, my views on global warming, and even my opinions about Middle Eastern politics) – what is the best car for me?’ If Google can give us a good answer to that, and if we learn by experience to trust Google’s wisdom instead of our own easily manipulated feelings, what could possibly be the use of car advertisements?
• The so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Arab world started in hopeful online communities, but once they emerged into the messy offline world, they were commandeered by religious fanatics and military juntas.
• In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel?
• I cannot name the 8 million people who share my Israeli citizenship, I have never met most of them, and I am very unlikely ever to meet them in the future. My ability to nevertheless feel loyal to this nebulous mass is not a legacy from my hunter-gatherer ancestors, but a miracle of recent history.
• If Greeks and Germans cannot agree on a common destiny, and if 500 million affluent Europeans cannot absorb a few million impoverished refugees, what chances do humans have of overcoming the far deeper conflicts that beset our global civilisation?
• Diabetes and high sugar levels kill up to 3.5 million people annually, while air pollution kills about 7 million people. So why do we fear terrorism more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terror attacks but not because of chronic air pollution?
• In the 1930s Japanese generals, admirals, economists and journalists concurred that without control of Korea, Manchuria and the Chinese coast, Japan was doomed to economic stagnation. They were all wrong. In fact, the famed Japanese economic miracle began only after Japan lost all its mainland conquests.
• When I think of the mystery of existence, I prefer to use other words, so as to avoid confusion. And unlike the God of the Islamic State and the Crusades – who cares a lot about names and above all about His most holy name – the mystery of existence doesn’t care an iota what names we apes give it.
• Not visiting any temples and not believing in any god is also a viable option. As the last few centuries have proved, we don’t need to invoke God’s name in order to live a moral life. Secularism can provide us with all the values we need.
• The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Seculars strive not to confuse truth with belief.

• I have participated in numerous private and public debates about gay marriage, and all too often some wise guy asks ‘If marriage between two men is OK, why not allow marriage between a man and a goat?’ From a secular perspective the answer is obvious. Healthy relationships require emotional, intellectual and even spiritual depth. A marriage lacking such depth will make you frustrated, lonely and psychologically stunted. Whereas two men can certainly satisfy the emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs of one another, a relationship with a goat cannot. Hence if you see marriage as an institution aimed at promoting human well-being – as secular people do – you would not dream of even raising such a bizarre question. Only people who see marriage as some kind of miraculous ritual might do so.
• One would have thought that conservatives would care far more about the conservation of the old ecological order, and about protecting their ancestral lands, forests and rivers. In contrast, progressives could be expected to be far more open to radical changes to the countryside, especially if the aim is to speed up progress and increase the human standard of living. However, once the party line has been set on these issues by various historical quirks, it has become second nature for conservatives to dismiss concerns about polluted rivers and disappearing birds, while left-wing progressives tend to fear any disruption to the old ecological order.
• Leaders are thus trapped in a double bind. If they stay in the centre of power, they will have an extremely distorted vision of the world. If they venture to the margins, they will waste too much of their precious time. And the problem will only get worse. In the coming decades, the world will become even more complex than it is today. Individual humans – whether pawns or kings – will consequently know even less about the technological gadgets, the economic currents, and the political dynamics that shape the world. As Socrates observed more than 2,000 years ago, the best we can do under such conditions is to acknowledge our own individual ignorance.
• Drinking lots of Coca-Cola will not make you young, will not make you healthy, and will not make you athletic – rather, it increases your chances of suffering from obesity and diabetes. Yet for decades Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in linking itself to youth, health and sports – and billions of humans subconsciously believe in this linkage.
• In the early twenty-first century, perhaps the most important artistic genre is science fiction. Very few people read the latest articles in the fields of machine learning or genetic engineering. Instead, movies such as The Matrix and Her and TV series such as Westworld and Black Mirror shape how people understand the most important technological, social and economic developments of our time.
• In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.
• Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching ‘the four Cs’ – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.3 More broadly, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasise general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, to learn new things, and to preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations.
• So at twenty-five you introduce yourself on a dating site as ‘a twenty-five-year-old heterosexual woman who lives in London and works in a fashion shop’. At thirty-five you say you are ‘a gender-non-specific person undergoing age-adjustment, whose neocortical activity takes place mainly in the NewCosmos virtual world, and whose life mission is to go where no fashion designer has gone before’.
• For years I lived under the impression that I was the master of my life, and the CEO of my own personal brand. But a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO – I was barely the gatekeeper. I was asked to stand at the gateway of my body – the nostrils – and just observe whatever comes in or goes out. Yet after a few moments I lost my focus and abandoned my post.
• The typical scientist doesn’t actually practise meditation herself. Rather, she invites experienced meditators to her laboratory, covers their heads with electrodes, asks them to meditate, and observes the resulting brain activities. That can teach us many interesting things about the brain, but if the aim is to understand the mind, we are missing some of the most important insights.
• If we are willing to make such efforts in order to understand foreign cultures, unknown species and distant planets, it might be worth working just as hard in order to understand our own minds. And we had better understand our minds before the algorithms make our minds up for us.

Can you name a great work of art inspired by the Old Testament ? Oh, that's easy: Michelangelo 's David , Verdi 's Nabucco , Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments . Do you know of any famous work inspired by the New Testament ? Piece of cake: Leonardo 's Last Supper , Bach 's St. Matthew Passion , Monty Python's Life of Brian . Now for the real test: can you list a few masterpieces inspired by the Talmud ?

Though Jewish communities that studied the Talmud spread over large parts of the world, they did not play an important role in the building of the Chinese empires, in the European voyages of discovery, in the establishment of the democratic system, or in the Industrial Revolution. The coin , the university , parliament , the bank , the compass , the printing press , and the steam engine were all invented by Gentiles .

The TED Interview with Chris Anderson (2022)

• "Yuval Noah Harari Reveals the Real Dangers Ahead" (13:59). The TED Audio Collective , 2022.

Chris Anderson : Because?

Yuval Noah Harari : Because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like, again, artificial intelligence, bioengineering. Most people don't contribute anything to that, except perhaps their data. And whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant, and will make it possible to replace the people.

• "Yuval Noah Harari Reveals the Real Dangers Ahead" (16:32). The TED Audio Collective , 2022.

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Has AI hacked the operating system of human civilisation? Yuval Noah Harari sounds a warning

Professor of History, Australian Catholic University

Disclosure statement

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Australian Catholic University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Just as artificial intelligence (AI) models are trained on vast data sets to learn and predict, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow have trained us to expect disruptive ideas from bestselling historian Yuval Noah Harari.

His latest book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI , is a sweeping exploration of the history and future of human networks. Harari draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary examples to illustrate how information has shaped, and continues to shape, human societies.

Review: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI – Yuval Noah Harari (Fern Press)

Building on the foundation laid in Sapiens, where Harari explored the cognitive revolution that gave humans the unique ability to create shared myths and narratives, Nexus shifts the focus to how these narratives are transmitted, maintained and transformed through networks of information.

Central to this new book is Harari’s argument that AI represents a radical new force in the development of human civilisation, a theme he also explored in a 2023 article on AI’s capacity to manipulate language, culture and society. The article, which warned that AI has “hacked the operating system of human civilisation”, provides a critical lens through which to examine Nexus.

The book covers an immense span of history, from the emergence of Homo sapiens and their interaction with Neanderthals to the advent of Neuralink (an implant that allows users to communicate with computers by thought alone) and the possible implications of AI for the future of human civilisation.

Harari takes readers on a journey across millennia, and his ability to sustain a coherent argument about the centrality of information networks is one of the book’s greatest strengths. The connections he draws between ancient history and modern technology challenge readers to rethink how they understand both past and present.

The narrative at times verges on arrogance, as Harari asserts links between seemingly disparate events and phenomena under the broad umbrella of “networks”. But this boldness is what I suspect will make Nexus compelling to some readers. Indeed, whether you agree or disagree with Harari, he provides another argument why the teaching and learning of history is essential to humanity’s survival.

History – Harari reminds us forcefully – offers valuable lessons in ethics and morality by highlighting the consequences of human actions. It challenges us to consider the moral implications of decisions made by leaders and ordinary people alike. It challenges us to reflect on our own choices.

The bedrock of human cooperation

At the heart of Nexus is the idea that networks – whether social, political, economic or technological – are the bedrock of human cooperation and power. Harari argues that the strength of human societies has always come from their ability to create and sustain networks of information. These, in turn, allow large-scale collaboration and the distribution of resources, knowledge and authority.

The argument extends beyond the physical networks of roads, trade routes and institutions. It includes intangible networks of shared beliefs, cultural narratives and laws. Harari highlights the role of storytelling, a key theme in Sapiens, in the creation of these networks. He shows how the ability to communicate and reinforce abstract ideas like government, religion and money has been fundamental to human progress.

But Nexus is not just a history of networks. It is also a cautionary tale about the dangers posed by the most advanced and rapidly evolving networks in today’s world: AI and other forms of digital technology. Harari’s critique of AI is particularly forceful. He sees it as a new kind of intelligence – what he provocatively calls “alien intelligence” – that could potentially operate beyond human control.

This is where the book’s central theme becomes most urgent. The networks that have served humanity so well in the past, enabling unprecedented levels of cooperation and progress, are now at risk of becoming too complex and opaque for humans to fully manage. AI, Harari warns, is not simply a tool that we use; it can make decisions and generate new knowledge independently. Its rise could fundamentally alter the structure of human society. This is why Harari argues for its regulation and control.

The analysis of AI in Nexus is built on historical lessons. Harari draws on examples ranging from ancient myth to recent technological advancements. He uses the case of AlphaGo , which in 2016 became the first AI capable of defeating Lee Sedol , the world champion of Go , a strategic board game that for millennia had been seen as a domain where human intuition and creativity would always reign supreme.

The example illustrates how AI has already begun to outstrip human understanding. Even the creators of AlphaGo could not fully explain the reasoning behind some of its moves.

This “alien” nature of AI, which Harari contrasts with previous human inventions like the steam engine or the computer, presents a new kind of challenge. It is not clear whether humans will be able to maintain control over the systems they have created.

AI, power and the future of human networks

In his signature style, Harari connects this theme to broader political and social concerns, particularly the rise of authoritarianism and populism. He argues that as AI becomes more integrated into decision-making processes – from determining who gets a loan to who is targeted in a military strike – the transparency and accountability of these processes will erode. This poses a fundamental threat to democracy, as citizens may no longer be able to understand or challenge the forces shaping their lives.

Harari also touches on the possible extinction of humanity. But before this could happen, he envisions a future where AI-driven networks entrench existing inequalities, with powerful tech companies and governments using AI to consolidate control over information and resources.

In drawing connections between the ancient world and the digital age, Harari revisits some of the key arguments from his earlier works, particularly Sapiens. Like Sapiens, Nexus explores the role of shared myths and collective fictions in human history, but it places greater emphasis on the mechanisms that maintain and transmit these stories. This focus on the material and information networks that underpin human societies allows Harari to offer a fresh perspective on familiar themes.

Harari considers the future of these networks. He envisions a world where AI-driven systems could reshape not only human societies, but the entire biosphere, potentially creating new forms of life and intelligence. He warns that the rise of AI could mark a turning point in human history, one where humans lose control over the networks that have been their greatest source of power.

This futuristic perspective aligns Nexus with Harari’s other speculative work, Homo Deus, which similarly examines the potential consequences of technological advances for the future of humanity.

Homo Deus often ventured into gloomy territory, but Nexus remains grounded in historical analysis. Harari’s use of concrete historical examples, from the invention of the printing press to the rise of global empires, anchors his arguments, making Nexus feel more balanced and less alarmist than some of his previous works – though its warnings are no less urgent.

Read more: Taming the machine: should the technological revolution be regulated – and can it be?

A call to action

One of the few criticisms that can be made of Nexus is its tendency to oversimplify complex historical processes in the service of its central thesis. Harari’s attempt to fit all of human history into a framework of information networks, while intellectually stimulating, can sometimes feel reductive.

For example, his analysis of religious texts as mere tools of social control overlooks the rich diversity of interpretations and the deeply personal spiritual experiences that have shaped religious traditions. Similarly, his portrayal of bureaucratic systems as purely instrumental in maintaining power glosses over the ways in which these systems have enabled social mobility and the protection of individual rights.

Despite these occasional oversimplifications, Nexus remains a thought-provoking call to action. It provides a sweeping overview of the history of information networks, while delivering a powerful warning about the future. Harari’s linking of ancient history with the most pressing technological and political challenges of the 21st century provides a framework for understanding the risks and opportunities posed by rapidly advancing technology.

One unsettling thought arises. Harari, an atheist who argues that religions are collective human fictions, appears to suggest something evident to many: AI created by humans can never possess a soul, in the sense of a uniquely human drive for creativity. The consequence of this argument is that AI, no matter how advanced, would lack the intrinsic human qualities that drive creativity, emotion, ethical and moral reasoning.

Nexus is ambitious, bold and at times, unsettling. It does not offer solutions that are easily within our grasp. But it challenges readers to think critically about what governs our lives and the ways AI could transform them. For anyone interested in the intersection of history, technology and power, Harari once again provokes deep thought.

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Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari ( Hebrew : יובלנחהררי [ juˈval ˈnoaχ haˈʁaʁi ] ;born 1976) [1] is an Israeli medievalist,military historian, public intellectual , [2] [3] [4] and writer. He currently serves as professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . [1] He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind (2011), Homo Deus:A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016),and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). His writings examine free will , consciousness , intelligence ,happiness,and suffering.

Early life and education

Literary career, personal life, awards and recognition, critical reception, published works, external links.

Harari writes about a " cognitive revolution " that supposedly occurred roughly 70,000 years ago when Homo sapiens supplanted the rival Neanderthals and other species of the genus Homo ,developed language skills and structured societies,and ascended as apex predators ,aided by the agricultural revolution and accelerated by the Scientific Revolution ,which have allowed humans to approach near mastery over their environment. His books also examine the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations;he has said," Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so". [5]

In Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind ,Harari surveys human history from the evolutionary emergence of Homo sapiens to 21st-century political and technological revolutions. The book is based on his lectures to an undergraduate world history class,although outside of popular discourse his work has been met with a generally negative or mixed scholarly reception.

Yuval Noah Harari was born and raised in the Kiryat Ata ,Israel as one of three children born to Shlomo and Pnina Harari and raised in a secular Jewish family of Lebanese Jewish and Ashkenazi Jewish origin. [ citation needed ] His father was a state-employed armaments engineer and his mother was an office administrator. [2] [6] [7] Harari taught himself to read at age three. [2] He studied in a class for intellectually gifted children at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa from the age of eight. He deferred mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces to pursue university studies as part of the Atuda program but was later exempted from completing his military service following his studies due to health issues. [2] He began studying history and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at age 17. [8]

Harari studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1993 to 1998,where he received a B.A. degree and specialized in medieval history and military history. He completed his D.Phil. degree at Jesus College,Oxford ,in 2002,under the supervision of Steven J. Gunn . From 2003 to 2005,he pursued postdoctoral studies in history as a Yad Hanadiv Fellow. [9] While at Oxford,Harari first encountered the writings of Jared Diamond ,whom he has acknowledged as an influence on his own writing. At a Berggruen Institute salon,Harari said that Diamond's Guns,Germs,and Steel "was kind of an epiphany in my academic career. I realized that I could actually write such books." [2] [10]

Harari has published multiple books and articles,including Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry,1100–1550 ; [11] The Ultimate Experience:Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture,1450–2000 ; [12] The Concept of 'Decisive Battles' in World History ; [13] and Armchairs,Coffee and Authority:Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak about War,1100–2000 . [14]

His book Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind was originally published in Hebrew in 2011 based on the 20 lectures of an undergraduate world history class he was teaching. It was then released in English in 2014 and has since been translated into some 45 additional languages. [15] The book surveys the entire length of human history ,starting from the evolution of Homo sapiens in the Stone Age . Harari compares indigenous peoples to apes [16] in his fall of man narrative, [17] leading up to the political and technological revolutions of the 21st century. The Hebrew edition became a bestseller in Israel,and generated much interest among the general public,turning Harari into a celebrity. [18] [ failed verification ] Joseph Drew wrote that " Sapiens provides a wide-ranging and thought-provoking introduction for students of comparative civilization," considering it as a work that "highlights the importance and wide expanse of the social sciences." [19]

Harari's follow-up book, Homo Deus:A Brief History of Tomorrow ,was published in 2016 and examines the possibilities for the future of Homo sapiens . [20] The book's premise outlines that,in the future,humanity is likely to make a significant attempt to gain happiness,immortality and God-like powers. [21] The book goes on to openly speculate various ways this ambition might be realised for Homo sapiens in the future based on the past and present. Among several possibilities for the future,Harari develops the term dataism for a philosophy or mindset that worships big data . [22] [23] Writing in The New York Times Book Review , Siddhartha Mukherjee stated that although the book "fails to convince me entirely," he considers it "essential reading for those who think about the future." [24]

Harari's book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century , published on 30 August 2018,focused more on present-day concerns. [25] [26] [27] [28] A review in the New Statesman commented on what it called "risible moral dictums littered throughout the text",criticised Harari's writing style and stated that he was "trafficking in pointless asides and excruciating banalities." [29] Kirkus Reviews praised the book as a "tour de force" and described it as a "highly instructive exploration of current affairs and the immediate future of human societies." [30]

In July 2019,Harari was criticised for allowing several omissions and amendments in the Russian edition of his third book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century ,using a softer tone when speaking about Russian authorities. [31] [32] Leonid Bershidsky in The Moscow Times called it "caution—or,to call it by its proper name,cowardice", [33] and Nettanel Slyomovics in Haaretz claimed that "he is sacrificing those same liberal ideas that he presumes to represent". [34] In a response,Harari stated that he "was warned that due to these few examples Russian censorship will not allow distribution of a Russian translation of the book" and that he "therefore faced a dilemma," namely to "replace these few examples with other examples,and publish the book in Russia," or "change nothing,and publish nothing," and that he "preferred publishing,because Russia is a leading global power and it seemed important that the book's ideas should reach readers in Russia,especially as the book is still very critical of the Putin regime—just without naming names." [35]

In November 2020 the first volume of his graphic adaptation of Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind , Sapiens:A Graphic History –The Birth of Humankind, co-authored with David Vandermeulen and Daniel Casanave , was published and launched at a livestream event organised by How to Academy and Penguin Books . [36]

In 2022,Harari's book, Unstoppable Us:How Humans Took Over the World ,illustrated by Ricard Zaplana Ruiz,was published and is a "Story of Human History —for Kids." [37] In fewer than 200 pages of child-friendly language,Harari covers the same content as his best-selling book Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind ,but "he has simplified the presentation for this younger audience without dumbing it down." [37] This book is "the first of four planned volumes." [37]

Harari is gay [38] and in 2002 met his husband Itzik Yahav,. [39] [40] Yahav has also been Harari's personal manager. [41] They married in a civil ceremony in Toronto ,Canada. [42] He lives in Karmei Yosef ,a moshav in central Israel . [43]

Though he is an atheist , [44] Harari has practiced Vipassana meditation since 2000 [45] and said that it "transformed" his life. [46] As of 2017 he practiced for two hours every day (one hour each at the start and end of his work day [47] );every year undertook a meditation retreat of 30 days or longer,in silence and with no books or social media; [48] [49] [50] and is an assistant meditation teacher. [51] He dedicated Homo Deus to "my teacher, S. N. Goenka ,who lovingly taught me important things",and said "I could not have written this book without the focus,peace and insight gained from practising Vipassana for fifteen years." [52] He also regards meditation as a way to research. [50]

Harari is a vegan and says this resulted from his research,including his view that the foundation of the dairy industry is breaking the bond between mother cow and calf. [7] [53] As of May 2021,Harari did not have a smartphone , [54] [55] but in an interview in October 2023,he explained that he owned a smartphone only for use in travel and emergencies. [56]

During the COVID-19 pandemic ,following former United States President Donald Trump 's cut to WHO funding,Harari announced that he and his husband would donate $1   million to the WHO through Sapienship,their social impact company. [57] [58]

Harari is among the critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ,and is specifically opposed to the judicial reform plans of the thirty-seventh government of Israel . In a conversation with Lex Fridman in 2023 he said:"... And now the Netanyahu government is trying to neutralize,or take over,the supreme court ,and they've already prepared a long list of laws –they already talk about it –that will be passed the moment that this last check on the power is gone,they are openly trying to gain unlimited power". [59]

Harari twice won the Polonsky Prize for "Creativity and Originality",in 2009 and 2012. In 2011,he won the Society for Military History 's Moncado Award for outstanding articles in military history. In 2012,he was elected to the Young Israeli Academy of Sciences. [60]

Sapiens was in the top 3 of The New York Times Best Seller list for 96 consecutive weeks. In 2018,Harari gave the first TED Talk as a digital avatar . [61]

In 2017, Homo Deus won Handelsblatt's German Economic Book Award for the most thoughtful and influential economic book of the year. [62]

In 2018 and 2020,Harari spoke at the World Economic Forum annual conference in Davos . [2]

Harari's popular writings are considered to belong to the Big History genre,with Ian Parker writing in 2020 in The New Yorker that "Harari did not invent Big History,but updated it with hints of self-help and futurology,as well as a high-altitude,almost nihilistic composure about human suffering." [2]

His work has been more negatively received in academic circles,with Christopher Robert Hallpike stating 2020 in a review of Sapiens that:"one has often had to point out how surprisingly little he seems to have read on quite a number of essential topics. It would be fair to say that whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new,and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong,sometimes seriously." Hallpike further states that:"we should not judge Sapiens as a serious contribution to knowledge but as ' infotainment ',a publishing event to titillate its readers by a wild intellectual ride across the landscape of history,dotted with sensational displays of speculation,and ending with blood-curdling predictions about human destiny. By these criteria,it is a most successful book." [63]

In 2020,philosopher Mike W. Martin,criticized Harari's view in a journal article,stating that "[Harari] misunderstands human rights,inflates the role of science in moral matters,and fails to reconcile his moral passion with his moral skepticism." [64]

In July 2022,the American magazine Current Affairs published an article titled "The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari" by Neuroscientist Darshana Narayanan,pointing to the lack of scientific rigor in his books. "The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker," she wrote. "But he sacrifices science for sensationalism,and his work is riddled with errors." [65]

In November 2022,the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called Harari a historian and a brand . They pointed out that the Yahav Harari Group,built by his partner Yahav,was a "booming product cosmos" selling comics and children's books,but soon films and documentaries. They observed an "icy deterministic touch" in his books which made them so popular in Silicon Valley. They stated that his listeners celebrated him like a pop star,although he only had the sad message that people are "bad algorithms",soon to be redundant,to be replaced because machines could do it better. [66]

Russian ideologue Aleksandr Dugin has singled out Harari's "inclination towards a post-human existence" as evidence that the modern Western world is "the civilization of the Antichrist",which he argues that Russia and the Islamic world are justified in opposing. [67]

• Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100–1550 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), ISBN   978-184-383-292-8
• The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008), ISBN   978-023-058-388-7
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Harvill Secker, 2014) ISBN   978-006-231-609-7
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), ISBN   978-1-910701-88-1
• Money: Vintage Minis (select excerpts from Sapiens and Homo Deus (London: Penguin Random House, 2018) ISBN   978-1-78487-402-5
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 2018) , ISBN   1-78733-067-2
• Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 1 – The Birth of Humankind (London: Jonathan Cape, 2020)
• Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 2 − The Pillars of Civilization (London: Jonathan Cape, 2021)
• Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 3 − The Masters of History (London: Jonathan Cape, 2024)
• Unstoppable Us, Volume 1 − How Humans Took Over the World (Bright Matter Books, 2022) , ISBN   0-593-64346-1
• Unstoppable Us, Volume 2 − Why the World Isn't Fair (Bright Matter Books, 2024) , ISBN   9780593711521
• Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, (Fern Press, 2024), ISBN   978-1911717089
• "The Military Role of the Frankish Turcopoles – a Reassessment", Mediterranean Historical Review 12 (1) (June 1997), pp.   75–116.
• "Inter-Frontal Cooperation in the Fourteenth Century and Edward III's 1346 Campaign", War in History 6 (4) (September 1999), pp.   379–395
• "Strategy and Supply in Fourteenth-Century Western European Invasion Campaigns", The Journal of Military History 64 (2) (April 2000), pp.   297–334.
• "Eyewitnessing in Accounts of the First Crusade: The Gesta Francorum and Other Contemporary Narratives", Crusades 3 (August 2004), pp.   77–99
• "Martial Illusions: War and Disillusionment in Twentieth-Century and Renaissance Military Memoirs", The Journal of Military History 69 (1) (January 2005), pp.   43–72
• "Military Memoirs: A Historical Overview of the Genre from the Middle Ages to the Late Modern Era", War in History 14:3 (2007), pp.   289–309
• "The Concept of 'Decisive Battles' in World History", The Journal of World History 18 (3) (2007), 251–266
• "Knowledge, Power and the Medieval Soldier, 1096–1550", in In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar , ed. Iris Shagrir , Ronnie Ellenblum and Jonathan Riley-Smith , (Ashgate, 2007)
• "Combat Flow: Military, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being in War", Review of General Psychology (September 2008)
• Introduction to Peter Singer 's Animal Liberation , The Bodley Head , 2015.
• "Armchairs, Coffee and Authority: Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak about War, 1100–2000", Journal of Military History 74:1 (gennaio, 2010), pp.   53–78.
• "Yuval Noah Harari on big data, Google and the end of free will" , Financial Times (August 2016).
• "Why It's No Longer Possible for Any Country to Win a War" , Time (23 June 2017).
• "Why Technology Favors Tyranny" , The Atlantic (October 2018).
• "Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus" , Financial Times (20 March 2020).
• "Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war" , The Guardian (28 February 2022)
• "The End of the New Peace" , The Atlantic (December 2022)
• "Will Zionism survive the war?" , The Washington Post (May 2024)

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2011 in philosophy

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2014. The book, focusing on Homo sapiens , surveys the history of humankind, starting from the Stone Age and going up to the twenty-first century. The account is situated within a framework that intersects the natural sciences with the social sciences.

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• 1 2 Yuval Harari official website
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Parker, Ian (10 February 2020). "Yuval Noah Harari's History of Everyone, Ever" . The New Yorker . Archived from the original on 11 February 2020 . Retrieved 24 October 2023 .
• ↑ Anthony, Andrew (5 August 2018). "Yuval Noah Harari: 'The idea of free information is extremely dangerous' " . The Observer . ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved 16 February 2023 .
• ↑ Lawton, Graham (17 August 2018). "Yuval Noah Harari: Why the reluctant guru is upsetting scientists" . New Scientist . Retrieved 11 May 2023 .
• ↑ "Yuval Noah Harari: Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so" . The Observer . 19 March 2017 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ Par Salomon Malka (28 September 2017) Les prédictions de Yuval Noah Harrari , L'arche magazine
• 1 2 Cadwalladr, Carole (5 July 2015). "Yuval Noah Harari: The age of the cyborg has begun – and the consequences cannot be known" . The Guardian . Retrieved 2 November 2016 .
• ↑ "Harari" .
• ↑ "CV at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem" . 2008.
• ↑ "Historian Yuval Harari on the Books That Shaped Him – Activities" . Berggruen Institute . 28 February 2017 . Retrieved 24 July 2020 .
• ↑ Yuval Noah Harari, Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100–1550 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007).
• ↑ Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008)
• ↑ Yuval Noah Harari, The Concept of 'Decisive Battles' in World History , in Journal of World History 18:3 (2007), 251–266.
• ↑ Yuval Noah Harari, "Armchairs, Coffee and Authority: Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak about War, 1100–2000", The Journal of Military History 74:1 (January 2010), pp. 53–78.
• ↑ Payne, Tom (26 September 2014). "Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, review: 'urgent questions' " . The Telegraph . Retrieved 29 October 2014 .
• ↑ Graeber, David; Wengrow, David (2021). "In which we dispose of lingering assumptions that 'primitive' folk were somehow incapable of conscious reflection, and draw attention to the historical importance of eccentricity". The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0-374-72110-7 . OCLC   1284998482 .
• ↑ Graeber, David; Wengrow, David (2021). "On slow wheat, and pop theories of how we became farmers". The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0-374-72110-7 . OCLC   1284998482 .
• ↑ Drew, Joseph (Spring 2019). "Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015 [ review ] " (PDF) . Comparative Civilizations Review . 80 : 142–148. Archived from the original on 2 December 2021.
• ↑ Runciman, David (24 August 2016). "Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari review – how data will destroy human freedom" . The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 20 October 2017 .
• ↑ Harari, Yuval Noah (2016). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow . London: Vintage. p.   75. ISBN   978-1-78470-393-6 . OCLC   953597984 .
• ↑ Harari, Yuval Noah (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow . London: Vintage. p.   429. ISBN   978-1-78470-393-6 . OCLC   953597984 .
• ↑ Harari, Yuval Noah (26 August 2016). "Yuval Noah Harari on big data, Google and the end of free will" . Financial Times . Retrieved 20 October 2017 .
• ↑ Mukherjee, Siddhartha (13 March 2017). "The Future of Humans? One Forecaster Calls for Obsolescence" . The New York Times . Retrieved 30 July 2021 .
• ↑ Snell, James (25 August 2018). "Book review: Is '21 Lessons for the 21st Century' another hit for Yuval Noah Harari" . The National . Retrieved 25 August 2018 .
• ↑ Lewis, Helen (15 August 2018). "21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari review – a guru for our times?" . The Guardian . Retrieved 25 August 2018 .
• ↑ Russell, Jenni (19 August 2018). "Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari — chilling predictions from the author of Sapiens" . The Times . ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 25 August 2018 .
• ↑ Sexton, David (23 August 2018). "Can mindfulness save us from the menace of artificial intelligence?" . Evening Standard . Retrieved 25 August 2018 .
• ↑ Jacobson, Gavin (22 August 2018). "Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a banal and risible self-help book" . New Statesman . Retrieved 30 July 2021 .
• ↑ "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" . Kirkus . 27 June 2018 . Retrieved 30 July 2021 .
• ↑ Brennan, David (23 July 2019). "Author Yuval Noah Harari Under Fire for Removing Putin Criticism From Russian Translation of New Book" . Newsweek . Retrieved 24 July 2019 .
• ↑ "Yuval Noah Harari Lets Russians Delete Putin's Lies From Translation of His Book" . Haaretz . 23 July 2019 . Retrieved 24 July 2019 .
• ↑ Bershidsky, Leonid (24 July 2019). "Putin Gets Stronger When Creators Censor Themselves" . The Moscow Times . Retrieved 28 July 2019 .
• ↑ Slyomovics, Nettanel (24 July 2019). "Yuval Noah Harari's Problem Is Much More Serious Than Self-censorship" . Haaretz . Retrieved 28 July 2019 .
• ↑ Harari, Yuval Noah (26 July 2019). "Prof. Yuval Noah Harari Responds to Censoring Russian Translation of His Book" . Haaretz . Retrieved 30 July 2021 .
• ↑ "Livestream Event | An Evening With Yuval Noah Harari" . How To Academy . 12 November 2020 . Retrieved 13 November 2020 .
• 1 2 3 Schwartz, John (6 November 2022). "Yuval Noah Harari Unspools the Story of Human History — for Kids" . The New York Times . Retrieved 18 November 2022 .
• ↑ Anthony, Andrew (9 March 2017). "Yuval Noah Harari: 'Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so' " . The Guardian . Retrieved 5 March 2019 .
• ↑ Adams, Tim (27 August 2016). "Yuval Noah Harari: 'We are acquiring powers thought to be divine' " . The Guardian . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ "Fast Talk / The Road to Happiness" . Haaretz . 25 April 2012 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ "זה ייגמר בבכי: סוף העולם לפי יובל נח הררי" . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ Nevatia, Shreevatsa (14 October 2015). "Sadly, superhumans in the end are not going to be us" . Mumbai Mirror . The Times Group. Archived from the original on 1 July 2018 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ Ferriss, Tim (30 October 2020). "Yuval Noah Harari on The Story of Sapiens, Forging the Skill of Awareness, and The Power of Disguised Books" . The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss . The Tim Ferriss Show . Retrieved 30 June 2022 . Oh, that's actually a mistake on Wikipedia. It's a moshav . It somehow got around that I live on a moshav, which is some kind of socialist, collective community, less radical than the kibbutz , but one of the experiments of socialists in Israel like decades ago. And it's just not true. I live in a kind of middle-class suburb of Tel Aviv.
• ↑ Parker, Ian (10 February 2020). "Yuval Noah Harari's History of Everyone, Ever" . The New Yorker . Retrieved 28 August 2023 .
• ↑ "Yuval Harari, author of "Sapiens", on AI, religion, and 60-day meditation retreats" . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ Adams, Tim (27 August 2016). "Yuval Noah Harari: 'We are quickly acquiring powers that were always thought to be divine' " . The Guardian .
• ↑ "How Humankind Could Become Totally Useless" . Time . 16 February 2017 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ "Interview – Yuval Harari" (PDF) . The World Today . Chatham House . October–November 2015. pp.   30–32. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 December 2017 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ "Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens and the age of the algorithm" . The Australian . Josh Glancy. 3 September 2016. Archived from the original on 10 November 2016.
• 1 2 "Fast Talk The Road to Happiness" . Haaretz . 25 April 2017.
• ↑ "The messenger of inner peace: Satya Narayan Goenka; New Appointments" . Vipassana Newsletter 23 (12) . Vipassana Research Institute. 17 December 2013 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ Homo Deus , Dedication and Acknowledgements p. 426
• ↑ "Interview With Yuval Noah Harari: Masters in Business (Audio)" . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ "# 68 – Reality and the Imagination" . Waking Up podcast . Sam Harris . 19 March 2017 . Retrieved 17 March 2018 .
• ↑ Mayim Bialik and Yuval Noah Harari in conversation , SXSW Online 2021, 27 May 2021 , retrieved 2 July 2021
• ↑ HARARI: Change The Story! - Man on the Moon: Yuval Noah Harari x İlker Canikligil - B68 . Flu TV. 2 October 2023.
• ↑ Sterkl, Maria (25 April 2020). "Yuval Harari: Pandemic policy will influence world politics, economy for decades" . The Times of Israel . Retrieved 28 April 2020 .
• ↑ Harari, Yuval Noah (20 March 2020). "Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus" . Financial Times . Retrieved 28 April 2020 .
• ↑ "#390 - Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies" . Spotify . 17 July 2023.
• ↑ "פרופ' יובל נח הררי" [ Prof. Yuval Noah Harari ] . האקדמיה הצעירה הישראלית (in Hebrew).
• ↑ "Yuval Noah Harari" . Rothberg International School . 20 February 2020 . Retrieved 28 April 2020 .
• ↑ Minds, Brand (18 October 2018). "Brand Minds 2019 — Come and see Yuval Noah Harari live!" . Medium . Retrieved 28 April 2020 .
• ↑ Hallpike, C. R. (December 2017). "A Response to Yuval Harari's 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' " . New English Review . Archived from the original on 3 December 2021 . Retrieved 31 August 2020 .
• ↑ Martin, Mike W. (2020). "Compassion with Justice: Harari's Assault on Human Rights" . The Southern Journal of Philosophy . 58 (2): 264–278. doi : 10.1111/sjp.12367 . S2CID   225862630 .
• ↑ Narayanan, Darshana (6 July 2022). "The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari" . Current Affairs . No.   March/April 2022. ISSN   2471-2647 . Retrieved 12 July 2022 .
• ↑ Thiel, Thomas (21 November 2022). "Bestellerautor Yuval Noah Harari: Der Hausprophet des Silicon Valley" . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). ISSN   0174-4909 . Retrieved 21 November 2022 .
• ↑ "Aleksandr Dugin: My vision for the new world order and Gaza war" .
• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries
• Official website
• Meet the author – Yuval Harari video interview – BBC News
• Why fascism is so tempting – and how your data could power it on YouTube

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Yuval Noah Harari

About the author.

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) is a historian, philosopher and the bestselling author of 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' (2014); 'Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow' (2016); '21 Lessons for the 21st Century' (2018); the children's series 'Unstoppable Us' (launched in 2022); and 'Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI' (2024). He is also the creator and co-writer of 'Sapiens: A Graphic History': a radical adaptation of 'Sapiens' into a graphic novel series (launched in 2020), which he published together with comics artists David Vandermeulen (co-writer) and Daniel Casanave (illustrator). These books have been translated into 65 languages, with 45 million copies sold, and have been recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Natalie Portman, Janelle Monáe, Chris Evans and many others. Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford, is a Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's History department, and is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Together with his husband, Itzik Yahav, Yuval Noah Harari is the co-founder of Sapienship: a social impact company that advocates for global collaboration, with projects in the realm of education and storytelling.

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The information wars are about to get worse, Yuval Noah Harari argues

The author of “sapiens” is back with a timely new book about ai, fact and fiction.

Nexus . By Yuval Noah Harari. Random House; 528 pages; $35. Fern Press; £28

“L et Truth and falsehood grapple,” argued John Milton in “Areopagitica”, a pamphlet published in 1644 defending the freedom of the press. Such freedom would, he admitted, allow incorrect or misleading works to be published, but bad ideas would spread anyway, even without printing—so better to allow everything to be published and let rival views compete on the battlefield of ideas. Good information, Milton confidently believed, would drive out bad: the “dust and cinders” of falsehood “may yet serve to polish and brighten the armory of truth”.

Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian, lambasts this position as the “naive view” of information in a timely new book. It is mistaken, he argues, to suggest that more information is always better and likely to lead to the truth; the internet did not end totalitarianism, and racism cannot be fact-checked away. But he also argues against a “populist view” that objective truth does not exist and that information should be wielded as a weapon. (It is ironic, he notes, that the notion of truth as illusory, which has been embraced by right-wing politicians, originated with left-wing thinkers such as Karl Marx and Michel Foucault.)

Few historians have achieved the global fame of Mr Harari, who has sold more than 45m copies of his megahistories, including “Sapiens”. He counts Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg among his fans. A techno-futurist who contemplates doomsday scenarios, Mr Harari has warned about technology’s ill effects in his books and speeches, yet he captivates Silicon Valley bosses, whose innovations he criticises.

In “Nexus”, a sweeping narrative ranging from the Stone Age to the era of artificial intelligence ( AI ), Mr Harari sets out to provide “a better understanding of what information is, how it helps to build human networks, and how it relates to truth and power”. Lessons from history can, he suggests, provide guidance in dealing with big information-related challenges in the present, chief among them the political impact of AI and the risks to democracy posed by disinformation.

In an impressive feat of temporal sharpshooting, a historian whose arguments operate on the scale of millennia has managed to capture the zeitgeist perfectly. With 70 nations, accounting for around half the world’s population, heading to the polls this year, questions of truth and disinformation are top of mind for both voters—and readers.

Mr Harari’s starting-point is a novel definition of information itself. Most information, he says, does not represent anything, and has no essential link to truth. Information’s defining feature is not representation but connection; it is not a way of capturing reality but a way of linking and organising ideas and, crucially, people. (It is a “social nexus”, he writes.) Early information technologies , such as stories, clay tablets or religious texts, and later newspapers and radio, are ways of orchestrating social order.

Here Mr Harari is building on an argument from his previous books, such as “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus” : that humans prevailed over other species because of their ability to co-operate flexibly in large numbers, and that shared stories and myths allowed such interactions to be scaled up, beyond direct person-to-person contact. Laws, gods, currencies and nationalities are all intangible things that are conjured into existence through shared narratives. These stories do not have to be entirely accurate; fiction has the advantage that it can be simplified and can ignore inconvenient or painful truths.

The opposite of myth, which is engaging but may not be accurate, is the list, which boringly tries to capture reality, and gives rise to bureaucracy. Societies need both mythology and bureaucracy to maintain order. He considers the creation and interpretation of holy texts and the emergence of the scientific method as contrasting approaches to the questions of trust and fallibility, and to maintaining order versus finding truth.

He also applies this framing to politics, treating democracy and totalitarianism as “contrasting types of information networks”. Starting in the 19th century, mass media made democracy possible at a national level, but also “opened the door for large-scale totalitarian regimes”. In a democracy, information flows are decentralised and rulers are assumed to be fallible; under totalitarianism, the opposite is true. Now digital media, in various forms, are having political effects of their own. New information technologies are catalysts for major historical shifts.

As in his previous works, Mr Harari’s writing is confident, wide-ranging and spiced with humour. He draws upon history, religion, epidemiology, mythology, literature, evolutionary biology and his own family biography, often leaping across millennia and back again within a few paragraphs. Some readers will find this invigorating; others may experience whiplash.

And many may wonder why, for a book about information that promises new perspectives on AI , he spends so much time on religious history, and in particular the history of the Bible. The reason is that holy books and AI are both attempts, he argues, to create an “infallible superhuman authority”. Just as decisions made in the fourth century AD about which books to include in the Bible turned out to have far-reaching consequences centuries later, the same, he worries, is true today about AI : the decisions made about it now will shape humanity’s future.

Mr Harari posits that AI should really stand for “alien intelligence” and worries that AI s are potentially “new kinds of gods”. Unlike stories, lists or newspapers, AI s can be active agents in information networks, like people. Existing computer-related perils such as algorithmic bias, online radicalisation, cyber-attacks and ubiquitous surveillance will all be made worse by AI , he fears. He predicts AI s could create dangerous new myths, cults, political movements and new financial products that crash the economy.

Some of his nightmare scenarios seem implausible. He imagines an autocrat becoming beholden to his AI surveillance system, and another who, distrusting his defence minister, hands control of his nuclear arsenal to an AI instead. Some of his concerns seem quixotic: he rails against TripAdvisor, a website where tourists rate restaurants and hotels, as a terrifying “peer-to-peer surveillance system”. He has a habit of conflating all forms of computing with AI . And his definition of “information network” is so flexible that it encompasses everything from large language models like Chat GPT to witch-hunting groups in early modern Europe.

But Mr Harari’s narrative is engaging, and his framing is strikingly original. He is, by his own admission, an outsider when it comes to writing about computing and AI , which grants him a refreshingly different perspective. Tech enthusiasts will find themselves reading about unexpected aspects of history, while history buffs will gain an understanding of the AI debate. Using storytelling to connect groups of people? That sounds familiar. Mr Harari’s book is an embodiment of the very theory it expounds. ■

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