AI can create a 'new Bible,' influential author declares: 'In a few years, there might be religions that are actually correct'

Yuval Noah Harari — an influential author, professor, and renowned public intellectual — said recently that artificial intelligence can create a "new Bible."

What are the details?

Harari — who has written "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow," and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" — spoke last month about the future of AI and said it may soon greatly influence spirituality:

"It's the first technology ever that can create new ideas. You know, the printing press, radio, television, they broadcast, they spread the ideas created by the human brain, by the human mind. They cannot create a new idea. You know, [Johannes] Gutenberg printed the Bible in the middle of the 15th century; the printing press printed as many copies of the Bible as Gutenberg instructed it, but it did not create a single new page. It had no ideas of its own about the Bible: Is it good? Is it bad? How to interpret this? How to interpret that?"

Harari then dropped a bomb: "AI can create new ideas; [it] can even write a new Bible."

He added that "throughout history, religions dreamt about having a book written by a superhuman intelligence, by a non-human entity" and that "in a few years there might be religions that are actually correct ... just think about a religion whose holy book is written by an AI. That could be a reality in a few years."

Humanity is not that simple | Yuval Noah Harari & Pedro Pintoyoutu.be

Anything else?

Harari noted in another recent gathering that software like ChatGPT has mastered human languages and can harness that function to influence culture, the Times of Israel said.

“For thousands of years, prophets and poets and politicians have used language and storytelling in order to manipulate and to control people and to reshape society,” he said, according to the paper. “Now AI is likely to be able to do it. And once it can… it doesn’t need to send killer robots to shoot us. It can get humans to pull the trigger.”

Harari also said that “contrary to what some conspiracy theories assume, you don’t really need to implant chips in people’s brains in order to control them or to manipulate them,” the paper noted.

He also warned that "we need to act quickly before AI gets out of our control" and that "governments must immediately ban the release into the public domain of any more revolutionary AI tools before they are made safe," the paper added.

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