Yuval Noah Harari

“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.”

“Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon, this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.”

“What's more valuable - intelligence or consciousness?”

“People have long feared that mechanization might cause mass unemployment. This never happened because, as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, and there was always something humans could do better than machines. Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future.”

“The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens' is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities. Of course, not all fictions are shared by all humans, but at least one has become universal in our world, and this is money.”

“Since the beginning of the computer age, there has been immense development in computer intelligence but exactly zero development in computer consciousness.”

“In Judaism or Christianity and so forth, you invent rules that don't exist anywhere except in your imagination. You spend your life trying to gain points and to avoid all kinds of things that detract from your points. And if by the time you die you gather enough points, then you pass on to the next level, in Heaven.”

“I met my husband Itzik when I got back home to Israel from Oxford in 2002. He is my Internet-of-all-Things.”

“Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and consciousness is the ability to feel things and have subjective experiences.”

“The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.”

“In order to survive in a very small tribe, you needed to know how to do lots of things for yourself: how to make your tools, how to get food, and how to make your clothes - things most of us today don't need to know. The only thing I need to survive is to know history.”

“I was taught that if you're going to study something, you must understand it deeply and be familiar with primary sources. But if you write a history of the whole world, you can't do this. That's the trade-off.”