“Yuval Noah Harari, author of the ‘Sapiens’ series: In the age of AI, speed alone is not progress.”
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On September 11th, at the 2025 Inclusion·Bund Conference, historian, philosopher, and author of the “Sapiens” series Yuval Noah Harari pointed out that progress should not be measured solely by the speed of technological advancement, but rather by whether humanity can establish cooperation, trust, and empathy.
“I am not opposed to technological change. Technology has given us healthier bodies and greater knowledge, the light to dispel darkness, and unprecedented ways to connect with each other. But as a historian, I am concerned about the pace and manner of change.”
Harari said that in history, the greatest problem with change is often not the ultimate goal, but the process to reach it.
He believes that humans are highly adaptable beings, but we need time to adapt, and also need reliable mechanisms. Every time powerful new technologies have emerged in history, societies have taken a long time to invent matching institutions and habits. For example, industrialization wasn't just the story of the steam engine, but also required complementary mechanisms such as corporate law, labor unions, environmental regulations, and social safety nets.
“What makes AI different from all previous technologies is that it touches society’s central nervous system.” In Harari’s view, the danger we face from AI “is not a bad person pressing a bad button”; instead, the danger lies in the invisible processes quietly happening around us. Science fiction has conditioned us to worry about “robot uprisings,” but the real danger is quieter and more terrifying—the transfer of decision-making power from humans we can question to invisible algorithms.
“Speed alone is not progress.”
Harari believes that to achieve true progress, the first thing is cooperation. Humanity’s strength never comes from isolation; it comes from cooperating with strangers and the outside world. “If you cut off all ties with others and rely only on yourself, it doesn’t make you stronger; in the end, it will suffocate you. Bringing this lesson into the age of AI means building verifiable global commitments, not just looking at ‘who runs faster.’”
Secondly, what is truly worrisome is not the technology itself, but the deployment of technology for competitive advantage without regard for safety boundaries. He stated that any system that truly reshapes human society should not “go online first and govern later.” “History has repeatedly shown that speed and safety can coexist, but only if we build self-correcting feedback loops. A developed technological society must have ways to promptly detect and correct its own mistakes and biases, so that it can operate quickly and safely.”
He believes that if we let AI “run” before we have learned how to recognize and correct the inevitable errors of the system, then the cost of speed will be borne by the most powerless groups.
Finally, he believes that humanity should proceed with memory. Harari said that as AI begins to take over decision-making and narrative creation, we must protect human memory and the ability to tell our own stories. “If we entrust our memories to non-human intelligence, we will have nothing.”
At the end of his speech, Harari called for, in the AI era, giving humanity enough time to preserve memory and build trust and feelings among each other. “Progress is measured not by the speed of technology, but by the strength of our cooperation and the depth of our empathy.”
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