How not to treat Yuval Noah Harari

If human beings are so smart why are we so dumbrdquoItrsquos a simple enough question but when author and thinker Yuval Noah Harari poses it it stops you in your tracks He continues digging deeper Why do we kill our own kind Why are we destroying the planet that sustains us Why are only a handful of people making worldchanging decisions about AI the very technology that can make all of us extinctYuval was speaking at an event organised by a noted bookshop that serves as the cityrsquos premier cultural hub a vibrant venue for book lovers of all stripes The topic was AI which he calls alien intelligence It is a major subject in his latest book Nexus about the history of information networksHis interlocutor had come well prepared His questions were to the point barely more than a sentence or two allowing Yuval all the time he needed to answerYuval spoke in spontaneous memesldquoTruth is only a small subset of realityrdquoldquoIt is impossible for truth to be an exact replica of realityrdquoldquoMost people today need an information diet just as our bodies need food diets We should decide what we put into our headsrdquoldquoSocial mediarsquos algorithms have hacked our brainsrsquo codes We are at the end of the age of individualism Algorithms know your life better than you dordquoDonrsquot even try to guess the name of the bookshop behind this illuminating event yoursquod lose miserablyIt was not Crossword though itrsquos true that they hosted Yuval at the back lawn of The LaLiT last Saturday I went It was an expensive affair that had been promoted as an opportunity to hear Aamir Khan the reflective manrsquos actor in conversation with one of the most luminous minds of our timeI gladly paid Rs 6000 for the privilege Aamir and Yuval are on my short list of exceptional humans Aamirrsquos incisive heartfelt conversations in his TV show Satyamev Jayate about Indiarsquos pervasive social predicaments have always moved meI keenly looked forward to his exchanges with YuvalInstead the organisers pulled a sloppy rabbit out of their hat introducing an unknown third person who had not even been listed on the ticket He was elaborately introduced as a neurophysicist researcher and polymath poet painter author quizzer Indiarsquos leading psychiatrist and master of six languages now learning Sanskrit and Greek all while setting up the department of AI and medicine at a city hospital No one can be all that and also humbleAll Yuval got was an abbreviated welcome with the caveat that he ldquoneeded no introduction anywayrdquoShortly afterward Aamir recused himself confessing that although he had received Nexus some time back he had not yet read it because ldquomy schedule in the last couple of months has been crazyrdquoThe neurophysicist who had read the book and seemed to believe he was part of a double billing thought that asking Yuval why books were important would be a stunning start Like me you know in your bones that Crossword planted that question Most people seated there did not need to hear why books were importantWe had paid to listen to Yuval not an unknown Gujarati polymath But the neurophysicist sure that he was fascinating delivered rambling entreacutees leading to inchdeep questions and regularly hogged the mic through the eveningWhen Yuval talking about the confluence of biology neurology and AI said that biology moved slower than technology the neurophysicist could not resist piping in to correct him Yuval could not have felt goodTowards the end with the organisers frantically signalling him to wrap up he cutely started a pointless chat to ask Copilot Microsoftrsquos chatbot what it thought about Yuval That was the wrong chatbot anyway Also if AIs were plotting the demise of humanity theyrsquod hardly be likely to announce it at a public meetingA literary evening should not feel like an evening at a disco but this one did Libraries and literary events are reverent places where minds commune through the printed word Muted voices subtle music born of reverie or ecstasy and unobtrusive arrangements should be the norm The author is the star the moment and the mic belong to themI felt cheated and others must have too Crosswordrsquos event was irreverence insensitivity and cacophony on a plate Our ears were hammered by the bass boomboomboom of technopop music at earshattering volume in direct competition with an endless loop of ads for The LaLiT and Crossword also at full blastI thought the two stars on stage Yuval and Aamir were treated shabbily Rather than being discreetly spirited out when the show ended they were squeezed through a narrow passage packed with men waiting to urinate towards the open lobby where armed paparazzi lay in waitWalk with me if you want to see how a professional bookshop would have conducted the same event On September 16 Washington DCrsquos Politics and Prose Bookshop hosted Yuval in conversation about Nexus with Nicholas Thompson CEO of The Atlantic It was Yuval unfettered questioned intelligently and allowed to reveal his amazing mind without interruptions You can see it here httpswwwyoutubecomwatchvK5oodNOqgUgIf someone convened Aamir and Yuval again but without the michappy neurophysicist I might still pay money to hear them We would hope of course that this time Aamir would have read the bookYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper