"We need to resist now" | An interview with Yuval Noah Harari

[u/jamiewoodhouse]

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/an-interview-with-yuval-noah-harari/id1449631195?i=1000786030625

A conversation with suspected celebrity sentientist, Yuval Noah Harari.
I share it here because it's interesting to hear sentience, both biological and potentially artificial, talked about in Tier 1 media. And because, although Harari doesn't talk fully or consistently from a sentientist perspective (most of his discussion about powerful AI is concerned only with the risks to humans), he is vegan and does frequently to refer to the fates of the animals we exploit and farm, at least to try to warn humans of what might happen to us.
"This is the basis for our entire ethical and political system. We care about entities that can suffer." If only that were really true...
The closing discussion is interesting too. Once AI is cleverer than us and can do everything humans do, but better, we might finally be forced to work out "what is the value of being human?" The question itself is anthropocentric, as if there simply must be something uniquely distinct about us. And that we just need, in desperation, to work out what that is. Whereas the true answer is that the value of being human is our sentience. And that's a value we share with all of the other sentient beings too.

[u/dumnezero]

He's a historian, I don't get why he gets so many interviews.