Like all other books by Yuval Noah Harari, this was informative, insightful and deliberately written to invoke thought and reflection. Truly enjoyed it.

Always thought provoking

My spouse and I both really like the work of this author. He tends to read the books first, but he cannot read them without sharing what he is reading with me and many of our friends. By the time I read the books, it feels like I am re-reading.

This is no exception. There is some really interesting stuff about AI. I highly recommend you read this (and his other books) for yourself.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari provides a broad view of how information systems have evolved and influenced society across time. Harari emphasizes the architecture of communication networks—ranging from early oral traditions to today's AI-driven digital systems—and how the flow of data has impacted decision-making, governance, and power dynamics.

The book explores the historical development of information control mechanisms, drawing parallels between ancient systems like religious manuscripts and modern tools such as algorithms and AI-based systems that manage data in real-time. The author argues that information networks have been necessary for the rise of complex societies facilitating innovation and controls.

Harari's reflections on AI are very relevant and at times thought provoking, though some might find his thoughts more theoretical than based on experience. He warns about the disruptive potential of AI-derived information networks, suggesting that left unchecked data flows could lead to risks such as misinformation and loss of privacy. While this perspective offers a critical view of the future, I would suggest that it is missing many details on the technical specifics of AI systems and their real-world safeguards.

The author's summarization of macro-trends in information network development related to AI are very repetitive and at times feels like a way to make the book longer without really adding anything to the discussion.

Given the above, Nexus remains an acceptable reference on how data systems have historically influenced human behavior and governance, providing food for thought on future risks tied to evolving AI. Harari's work also needs to be looked at as a comprehensive point-in-time reference given how quickly the world of AI is evolving!

Another good book from the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. This is really groundbreraking, you should read it.

This book explores how the flow of information throughout history has shaped our societies, leading us to the rise of AI and the brink of ecological collapse. From the Stone Age to the age of misinformation, the author analyzes the complex relationship between information, truth, and power, urging us to confront the critical choices we face in a world increasingly dominated by non-human intelligence.

At times reassuring, at times terrifying, this book helps provide a clear understanding of the challenges faced by humanity at this moment in history. The brilliant, cogent analysis is accessible to a lay audience. It’s the kind of book I’d normally binge my way through, but it’s full of hard truths, and I needed frequent breaks. Nevertheless, it’s a must-read that shows us the path forward.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

I loved Sapiens, so I was very excited to read Nexus. However, I found it pretty disappointing. After reading it, I am honestly not sure if Yuval Noah Harari knows very much about artificial intelligence. I found the historical parts somewhat interesting, but so much of this book seemed to be based on speculation and confusing leaps in logic. I wasn’t even sure if I could make myself finish it at times, though I ended up doing so. Overall, I found this book to be very disappointing.

Who can forget Harari’s Sapiens bursting on our consciousness with its virtuoso bluntness about humanity as an myth-making species, our ability to create complex systems held together by ethereal narrative threads? Nothing escaped Harari’s scrutiny and certainly nothing was sacred: Sapiens questioned our dearly held illusions; no matter how essential to our sense of identity, it brought them into the creative human capacity. And it is from this point Harari picks up the narrative thread, a more compassionate, but more urgent voice Harari conveys in Nexus, looking at the technological phenomenon of AI and the narrative it weaves, self-contained, self-generated, devoid of human intervention. Harari asks: this narrative thread, will it save us from the Minotaur, or devour us?

To set us up further, the publisher’s blurb:

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.

Harari opens with the same question Western philosophy has tried to answer for thousands of years: what makes a good life and how can we attain it? But he’s not interested in didactically answering us; instead, this is his critique of what is our definition as “sapiens”, “the wise human”…and yet, “wise” is not what we are. We’re smart and yet, no matter how smart, the wisdom of the good life eludes us. Harari is more interested in thinking about what makes us self-destructive. But he’s also not prescriptive, at least only loosely. While Harari is a humanist, he defines the essential human activity not as individualism, but as our ability to “cooperate”. This is what makes for human complexity, not that we can act alone and for ourselves as individuals, but in our ability for complex, extensive collectivity. This, Harari suggests, is both our gift and Achilles’ heel.

This “gift” has led us to develop vast information technologies, says Harari, because “information” is a source of our complexity, but it is not, as the technologies we’ve built suggest, an inherent “good”, that is, says Harari, a good that cannot lead us to truth. To wisdom. Nope, says Harari, our excess of information leads only to confusion and feelings of helplessness. AI compounds the problem a hundredfold; more importantly, it leaves us with a creation threatening our agency. Because AI, asserts Harari, is the technology that can act independent of human control and intervention; algorithmic domination can act outside of the human narrative; it can make its own narrative; because it is pure “logos”, it can act in a madness of pure logic (think that old paperclip production scenario). Potentially. Possibly. Unless we do something about it.

Harari isn’t a determinist, but he doesn’t hold much for our ability to act wisely. We are smart, but not wise, foolish, but still capable of acting “rightly” for the benefit of ourselves and others. Our Achilles’ heel is also our gift: our narrative-making ability to create fictions to live by sometimes results in myths without the ability to “self-correct”, which Harari defines as the ability to admit and correct mistakes. Harari identifies institutions such as the Catholic Church as lacking in self-correction and science as one who does. Our chances of surviving and thriving lies in exercising this self-correcting capacity. Politically, democracy is self-correcting; dictatorship is not. Democracy is not perfect, but totalitarianism is worse.

AI-dominance is doom. Our survival depends, says Harari, on our ability not just to think, not just to act, but to do so by taking others’ perspectives into consideration and by virtue of human consciousness, our ability to experience “subjective feelings like pain, pleasure, love, and hate”. The key is exchange, not solipsism, which Harari calls “conversation”. Algorithms may be able to think and act, but can they feel? It is this consciousness, our sophisticated subjectivity that may hold us in better stead than our big ole brains. Harari even suggests these are the skills we should cultivate in the young, which seems like our Western educational project needs to change. Algorithms are not a viable partner of conversation, says Harari, for the human project, but it’s adversary.

Harari is a humanist. He wants to warn us and maybe even scare us to take on our agency: while we still can. Exercising our free will means taking on the responsibility of putting controls on AI. It’s as simple and difficult as that. This connects to Harari’s definition of history not as the study of the past, but of change. And change can be for the better; cynicism, like Orwell’s donkey, Benjamin, in Animal Farm, means never committing, never risking, but also never making things better.

Harari’s Nexus is a page-turner: driven by clear-eyed urgency and written with a voice that seeks to speak directly to the reader. It doesn’t possess Sapiens’ virtuosity, but it exercises its consciousness to seek our betterment, a better world, a more human, more compassionate, caring one. Reading a book of such complexity as the new school year launched may not have been the wisest choice, but it actually helped me rethink what it means to be a teacher, what our priorities should be, and how we can bring Harari’s message of exercising our freedom via the heart, of conversation as the key to collective action for our betterment, to the classroom. It’s good I started the year with Orwell’s Animal Farm. If you haven’t read Sapiens, though it’s Harari’s most original book, that’s all right, but you must read Nexus.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus is published by Random House. It released on September 10th. I received an e-galley from Random House, via Netgalley. The above is my honest and Generative-AI-free expression.

In his book, Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari examines the implications of AI through a historical perspective.

He first discusses the fundamentals of what information is, as well as the human networks that have historically been used to gather and disseminate (or suppress) it. Next, he looks at the impact of computers on information, and finally, AI’s use within democratic and autocratic forms of government. I particularly found interesting his treatment of how AI may impact (for good or ill) both democratic and totalitarian states, and the concept of a “silicon curtain”.

A good read for those who are interested in how AI is shaping our present and future.

I requested this book because I work in the world of Data & AI, so I have some well-articulated thoughts about AI and how it can/should impact our world. That said, I believe it’s an extremely important discussion and also a topic that everyone should have an opinion on. Personally, I disagreed with a lot of what the author shared. While I think AI has the potential for massive disruption, I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. For example, I work specifically with healthcare providers and I’ve seen first hand how technology can positively change the industry. We can often diagnose faster, leading to better outcomes. We can help the doctors do admin work (charting patient notes, for example) more efficiently, allowing them to focus more on actually taking care of the patient.

I could go on and on but my point is this: AI is not inherently bad. I do think we need to use it responsibly, but the major players in the tech world are taking major steps to do that. Ultimately, I liked the book for opening the discussion, but I don’t think it needed such a negative spin.

Yuval Noah Harari is so good at making books that make you reconsider the things you already thought you knew. Incredible book, that in particular works as a bit of a sequel to Homo Deus.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus takes readers on a sweeping journey through the history of human civilization, examining how information networks—from oral traditions to modern AI—have shaped societies, politics, and power. Harari’s ability to connect seemingly disparate moments in history, like early religious texts and the rise of modern populism, provides fresh insight into how information has been both a tool for human progress and a weapon for control. With his characteristic blend of historical analysis and philosophical questioning, Harari asks readers to consider the precarious moment we now find ourselves in, where misinformation, ecological collapse, and artificial intelligence intersect.

What makes Nexus particularly compelling is Harari’s focus on the relationship between information and truth, and how societies have used myths, bureaucracy, and technology to wield power. His analysis of how different political systems have controlled information—from witch-hunts to totalitarian regimes—feels eerily relevant in today’s digital age. As AI threatens to fundamentally reshape our world, Harari encourages us to rediscover our shared humanity and make informed, conscious choices. Nexus is both a historical exploration and a cautionary tale, offering readers hope in the search for truth amidst an overwhelming tide of data.

In his latest book, Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari takes the reader through an academic review of information networks—their development in the past, their role in the present day, and the risks of the future. Harari offers depth and breadth of a complex subject. He sets the stage by defining the difference between truth and reality and the role information plays in creating them. The theme of fallibility runs throughout, and Harari masterfully draws readers into questioning why they believe the information they do. He demonstrates the way information has influenced our systems and world from when sharing information first began. Harari begins with the evolution of religious texts as an example of fallible humans creating supposedly infallible god-given guidelines, takes the reader through the computer age—again with fallible humans creating supposedly infallible networks, and prompts readers to consider the risks of fallible humans creating supposedly infallible AI.
This is a book to be studied and discussed as we consider the future of our world.

With the insights of a studied historian and the questions of a cautious philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari argues that we are at a critical moment as a species: Will we develop and unleash alien intelligence (AI) with limited regulation absent of critical self-correcting mechanisms within our societies, or will we collaborate to leverage AI's most promising and beneficial powers?

Harari brings expert insights on the history of information creation and curation to this discussion, dispelling the myth that more information leads to more accurate descriptions of reality. Rather, he explains that the quality of information is paramount, and crucially, often hinges on political, mythological, and ideological interpretations. While this statement may seem obvious, it’s worthy of considerable discussion (and many pages) in Harari’s work.

The leaders in the AI race are currently large U.S. companies such as Google, Meta, and OpenAI. (There are, of course, others creating capable products, but these corporations stand apart.) The models developed by each of these companies depend on vast amounts of data gathered into neural networks with algorithms capable of making connections and predictions with limited human understanding. Mustafa Suleyman, current CEO of Microsoft AI and former co-founder of DeepMind, writes in The Coming Wave, “[T]he neural networks moving toward autonomy are, at present, not explainable…[they] are black boxes, their outputs and decisions based on opaque and impossibly intricate chains of minute signals.” In other words, our most educated and talented humans can’t explain exactly how these models generate responses. This means that the data set cannot easily be audited for bias, inaccuracies, or alignment with values aimed at human flourishing.

We’ve already seen how this can lead to both ridiculous and potentially harmful outcomes. In May of 2024, Google’s Gemini suggested that nontoxic glue could be used to thicken pizza sauce and that geologists recommend eating one rock per day. This is troubling but not civilization-ending. But what if such AI tools are used to determine who gets a loan, who is admitted into colleges, your insurance rates, or your health care services? We quickly enter scenarios with much graver consequences.

Once Harari exposes the myth that more information results in increased truth, he explores the role of self-correcting mechanisms on a spectrum of political governance. In democracies, the media, courts, whistleblowers, bureaucracies, laws, non-governmental organizations, and other entities create a system of checks and balances. Over time, inaccuracies and propaganda can be dispelled. In totalitarian regimes, information flows to a single party and often to a single individual. While previously this led to devastating oppression, it was still incomplete, because no dictator has ever had the ability to completely surveil a population and process the data efficiently. AI is already being used in unprecedented ways to identify, track, and penalize political dissidents. Of course, similar technologies can also be used to prevent terrorist attacks and disrupt cyber criminals. The questions are: Who will control these AI agents, and will their efforts even be controllable? Will their increasingly-autonomous decisions be aligned with human interests?

Ultimately, it’s unclear whether Harari is optimistic regarding our future. Perhaps this is by design, or perhaps it’s because he’s more historian than policymaker. This leads me to two criticisms of the book.

First, historical examples are abundant, arguably too numerous to make the book accessible to more readers. If the goal of the work is to influence action by citizens, policymakers, and corporate leaders, I fear that the numerous historical anecdotes, however well-connected and researched, will result in fewer people grappling with Harari’s ideas.

Second, recommendations are only hinted at. Yes, we need more collaboration. Yes, we need rich conversation across ideological divides. And yes, we need to make every effort to steer the use of AI to enrich human life and the wellbeing of our planet. But how? Problems are detailed but prescriptions are not. At this crucial time, someone with Harari’s insights would add more to the conversation by pointing toward a possible future with a balance of historically-informed concerns and equally-powerful (possible) solutions.

Nexus deserves a spot on your reading list, and it underscores the tension between technological progress and what it means to be fully human. But it seems somehow insufficient. If how we treat AI is urgent, we need texts willing to propose ways we can realize its benefits while minimizing its harms.

The mark of a great “big idea” book is that it shifts the way you see the world. Nexus does just that. This book gives me a new lens into both world history and the current AI revolution.

The first part reframes world history as a story of information networks. This is a fascinating and useful way of looking at the world, both past and present—one I find myself applying as I read the headlines.

The second part of the book examines how artificial intelligence (by which Harari means machines making decisions for us) fits into this model. Should we be concerned? Indeed yes, and not only for the obvious “Robocop” dystopian plot lines. We urgently need to have thoughtful and productive discussions about how we manage and understand AI.

It’s definitely worth the time reading this one; it will help you better understand our past, and the perils and potentials of our human future.

Yuval Noah Harari’s latest work, Nexus, delves deeply into the history of information, tracing the evolution of how humans have shared, processed, and stored data from ancient times to the arrival of artificial intelligence. As expected from Harari, the book is masterfully researched, engaging, and highly accessible, offering readers a sweeping view of how the fabric of human society is interwoven with the systems of information exchange.

The hallmark of Nexus lies in Harari’s ability to tackle complex ideas and translate them into language that is both clear and compelling. Much like his previous books, such as Sapiens and Homo Deus, Harari draws connections across vast swaths of history, piecing together a narrative that highlights how communication and the exchange of information have always been at the core of humanity’s greatest advancements. He begins with the earliest forms of communication—such as oral storytelling, cave paintings, and early writing systems—and follows this thread through the development of the printing press, telecommunication networks, and the internet. Each chapter builds on the idea that the democratization of information, whether through the invention of writing or the more recent advent of the internet, has had profound consequences for society. Showing how information is not just a passive record of human activity but an active force in shaping history. Harari argues that AI represents the next great leap in the history of information processing, one that could surpass human capabilities in ways we are only beginning to understand. A particularly striking aspect of the book is how Harari introduces lesser-known facts about historical information systems that are still incredibly relevant today.

Nexus is a fascinating and illuminating read, offering both a sweeping historical perspective and a forward-looking analysis of artificial intelligence. Harari’s ability to weave together historical facts, philosophical insights, and contemporary concerns makes the book an essential read for anyone interested in understanding how information has shaped human history and how AI may define our future. Harari has once again succeeded in making challenging concepts accessible and engaging, making Nexus a highly recommended book.

I requested this book because Yuval is a big voice in the heavy books (more than 400 pages) community, but found it to be a hard read to slough through. The text felt more appropriate for a classroom than leisure reading, which is not a bad thing, but I was hoping to learn while not worrying, "will this be on the test?!"

Yuval Noah Harari’s The Nexus is a compelling exploration of the intersection between humanity and technology, set in a near-future world where the boundaries between human cognition and artificial intelligence are increasingly blurred. Harari, known for his thought-provoking works like Sapiens and Homo Deus, delves into speculative territory with a blend of scientific insight and philosophical inquiry.

The narrative centers around a groundbreaking technology called the Nexus, which allows for direct neural connections between human brains and digital networks. This innovation promises to revolutionize communication, enhance human capabilities, and solve complex problems. However, it also introduces new dilemmas and ethical concerns about identity, privacy, and the nature of consciousness.

Harari’s trademark style of blending historical analysis with speculative fiction is evident throughout The Nexus. He raises profound questions about what it means to be human in an age where technology can augment or even alter our fundamental experiences. The book is structured around a series of vignettes and character studies that illustrate the diverse impacts of the Nexus on individuals and society.

The strength of The Nexus lies in its ability to provoke deep reflection. Harari’s insights into the potential consequences of advanced technologies are both intriguing and unsettling. His characters are well-drawn, each grappling with the implications of the Nexus in their own way, which adds a personal dimension to the broader philosophical questions.

However, some readers might find the book's speculative elements challenging, especially if they are not familiar with Harari’s previous works. The narrative can be dense, and the philosophical explorations sometimes overshadow the plot’s development.

Overall, The Nexus is a thought-provoking read for those interested in the future of technology and its impact on human nature. Harari’s skillful blending of fiction and philosophy offers a rich tapestry of ideas that will linger long after the final page is turned.

I received an uncorrected proof review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley back in July, along with two other ARCS at the same time so I'm finally finishing this just after it was published... no longer "advance". I'd read Sapiens in 2020 and was a little underwhelmed - there may have been 135 notes, many with multiple references, but there was also a lot of opinion, even some hyperbole (I noted that when he compared "Code of Hammurabi with the Declaration of Independence, the latter’s known composition year being 1776 CE - he uses AD, and BC- and the former tagged as 1776 BC(E). One could dismiss his creative license if he didn’t include a picture of a stele that only a few keystrokes later revealed to be dated to a different, less convenient year.")

This book has a whopping 687 notes, a majority also comprised of multiple references. This makes it challenging to dig deeper, but he did note a lot more of his text (687? that should be obvious). I did wish the notes were hyperlinked (maybe they are in the final version). This would probably be better as a hard copy so I could use two bookmarks to make it easier to jump back and forth. He does say,
"I have not visited all the relevant archives myself, nor have I read all the relevant primary sources. In fact, I am incapable of reading many of these sources directly, because I do not know all the necessary languages, nor am I skilled in deciphering medieval and early modern handwriting. Instead, I have relied on books and articles published by other scholars, such as..."
An important admission, and I still wonder if he cites from those texts, or just cites those texts. And did he actually read all of the many many hundreds of references?

Anyway, with respect to Nexus following Sapiens (I have not read Homo Deus), I am not more whelmed as I am not convinced he achieved the subtitle, even as I took a lot of notes. We do get four chapters of Mr Harari's brief, if sometimes not brief long-winded and not without side tracks, explaining his perspective on what is information and the evolution of networks, starting with stories. Stories get told around the fire and passed along to a small network. When written as documents, the information gets more permanent, and naturally can have a wider reach. The printing press amplified that. More than a chunk of time spent on the Judeo-Christian stories/documents, but that lays the groundwork for his exploration of the believed infallibility of those documents even as the stories change and the non-canon versions are expunged, "As far as we can tell, the real Jesus was a typical Jewish preacher who built a small following by giving sermons and healing the sick. After his death, however, Jesus became the subject of one of the most remarkable branding campaigns in history. This little-known provincial guru, who during his short career gathered just a handful of disciples and who was executed as a common criminal, was rebranded after death as the incarnation of the cosmic god who created the universe." And then we get a loooong history of democracy and totalitarianism (the chapter title says "Brief", but it wasn't brief enough.)

Enter computers and the growth of information storage, faster processing, filtering and the planned and unplanned uses. The algorithms have until AI been written, monitored, evaluated, and adjusted by humans, so there was a degree of correction. "... the problem with computers isn’t that they are particularly evil but that they are particularly powerful. And the more powerful the computer, the more careful we need to be about defining its goal in a way that precisely aligns with our ultimate goals." And algorithms have been responsible for some pretty bad things because the goal assigned was simple: get more people involved: "The algorithms were responsible, however, for incentivizing humans to behave in such ways and for pushing the resulting content in order to maximize user engagement."

And, "Unfortunately, research has shown how outrage and misinformation are more likely to be viral.”

He gets way off into religion again, and I didn't think his musing philosophical really added to the discussion (he did, of course, so I'm wrong on that): "Alternatively, being inorganic entities, computers may have no qualms about dying. As far as we can tell, death is an organic phenomenon and may be inapplicable to inorganic entities. When ancient Assyrians talked about “killing” documents, that was just a metaphor. If computers are more like documents than like organisms, and don’t care about “being killed,” would we like a Kantian computer to conclude that killing humans is therefore fine? Is there a way to define whom computers should care about?"

A problem with AI is that is that it can generate its own content, and humans will have no idea how it came to that. Bots are bad - why aren't they banned? He uses counterfeiting money as an example... that's illegal, so why isn't counterfeiting humans?

I felt by the end that I'd overstayed my welcome. Or he did. Huge amount of information (of which he says "Contrary to what the naive view of information says, information has no essential link to truth, and its role in history isn’t to represent a preexisting reality. Rather, what information does is to create new realities by tying together disparate things—whether couples or empires. Its defining feature is connection rather than representation, and information is whatever connects different points into a network.") It is worth a read, but a lot could have been left on the cutting room floor.


As with Sapiens, he makes good points if you can sift them.

A few more from my dozens of notes:
"While not everyone can become an AI expert, we should all keep in mind that AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions and create new ideas by itself. All previous human inventions have empowered humans, because no matter how powerful the new tool was, the decisions about its usage always remained in our hands."

"In a nutshell, populism views information as a weapon."
I could have highlighted his whole section on populism.

"It takes a minute to tweet allegations of bias, fraud, or corruption, and many weeks of arduous work to prove or disprove them."
This is a real problem. Consumers are more apt to absorb something instantly than to check the veracity, because checking is work. Some serial liars are skilled deceivers. Some (if DJT has any expertise, it is in this) just spew anything and everything without a care as to whether any of it is true or even contradicts other things said by the same. And then it is the Gish Gallop (DJT is quite good at that Gallop) … intelligent people are pressed to know where to even begin to start refuting. People with more intelligence than intelligent people know it is useless to try, but the damage is done; the lack of critical thinking and herd/cult mentality make a prime audience for the abusers.

"When Christianity emerged in the first century CE, it was not a unified religion, but rather a variety of Jewish movements that didn’t agree on much, except that they all regarded Jesus Christ—rather than the rabbinical institution—as the ultimate authority on Jehovah’s words.
[...]
Just as most Jews forgot that rabbis curated the Old Testament, so most Christians forgot that church councils curated the New Testament, and came to view it simply as the infallible word of God."

This. And this:
"But while the holy book was seen as the ultimate source of authority, the process of curating the book placed real power in the hands of the curating institution. In Judaism the canonization of the Old Testament and Mishnah went hand in hand with creating the institution of the rabbinate. In Christianity the canonization of the New Testament went hand in hand with the creation of a unified Christian church."

"Witch hunts were a catastrophe caused by the spread of toxic information. They are a prime example of a problem that was created by information, and was made worse by more information."

To break reliance on government/Big Brother feeding the information, he says, "To discover the truth, it is better to rely on two other methods. First, academic institutions, the media, and the judiciary have their own internal self-correcting mechanisms for fighting corruption, correcting bias, and exposing error." Mr. Harari must not be aware of Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito (or Aileen Cannon)

-----------
My uncorrected proof had an error I caught. Mr Harari says of a 1987–88, a seventy-eight-episode version [of the Ramayana] "(running to about 2,730 hours)". As there were 78 episodes, that would make the average episode 35 hours! What he most likely meant was 2,730 minutes because each episode was about 30 minutes.

He also said "The list of biological dramas that press our emotional buttons includes several additional classics, such as “Who will be alpha?” “Us versus them,” and “Good versus evil.” These dramas, too, feature prominently in the Ramayana, and all of them are well known to wolf packs and chimpanzee bands as well as to human societies."

That's rather odd for a researcher to add. “Alpha” wolves are a myth. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...

"History isn't the study of the past; it is the study of change." With his latest book Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari sets out to study AI's possibilities and implications as an information network, and to prevent the worst outcomes of the AI revolution. It's ominous in parts, hopeful in others, and thought-provoking throughout. I was especially riveted by its third of three parts, "examining how different kinds of societies might deal with the threats and promises of the inorganic information network." I'll never look at a cat meme in the same way.

[Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

Nexus, the latest book by renowned historian Yuval Harari, offers a thought-provoking exploration of the history of information networks and their impact on human society. While Harari's insights are often illuminating, the book falls short of his previous works, lacking the same rigor and depth of analysis.

One of the book's strengths is its ability to draw connections between seemingly disparate historical events and trends, highlighting the role that information networks have played in shaping human history. However, the book's ambitious scope sometimes leads to oversimplification and a lack of nuance.

Additionally, while Harari raises important questions about the challenges posed by AI and the potential for misinformation to undermine democratic institutions, his analysis often feels overly pessimistic and lacks practical solutions.

Overall, Nexus is a worthwhile read for those interested in the history of information networks and their impact on society, but it falls short of Harari's previous works and may leave readers wanting more in terms of depth and analysis.