Opinion
Harari: US foreign policy is reverting to Trump family dynastic diplomacy
“So it's now foreign relations increasingly is relations with the Trump family. Not with United States, which is why so many countries are doing business with certain members of the Trump family in order to influence US foreign policy. So this is really going b…”
Assertion Supported
Harari: Both Hamas and Israel committed atrocities in the recent war
“The truth is that during the war, the recent war between Israel and Hamas, Hamas committed atrocities and also Israel committed atrocities. This is the truth. It's not that, oh, there is the Palestinian truth that only the Israelis committed atrocities, and th…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2031
Harari: People will increasingly consult AI instead of human religious leaders
“That can read and remember all the books, and has a chance of becoming the new authority. That people will increasingly, they have a question, they will not go to a human rabbi, they will go to an AI, and it's the same in Christianity, and it's the same with I…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harari: Autonomous AI corporations will take over the financial system
“In which the AIs decide, we'll buy that, we'll sell that, we'll invest here, we'll buy, and the AIs interact with the other AIs, and if they are more intelligent than us, they will make better business decisions, they will gain more money and they will take ov…”
Opinion
Harari: Prioritizing healthcare over defense was humanity's top political achievement
“I would say this is, this has been the biggest political achievement of humankind, and this is now being deliberately destroyed by some of the most powerful people in the world.”
Opinion
Harari: DOGE will replace human bureaucrats with opaque, secretive AI
“What we saw with Dodge and similar efforts is not getting rid of bureaucracies, is getting rid of human bureaucrats and replacing them with AI bureaucrats, which are far more opaque, far more secretive. You can't understand what they are doing. They are far le…”
Insight
Harari: The more attractive an idea is, the more likely it is untrue
“You know, the irony, to some extent, is that the more attractive an idea is, chance, the bigger the chance that it's not true. It's so easy for people to find evidence supporting the story they want to believe. So the more you want to believe a story, the more…”
Opinion
Harari: Evidence for an afterlife in religions is extremely meager
“Everybody wants to believe that there is something after death. You know, this is universal in almost all religions in different forms, and the evidence is so meager.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harari: US strong-arm tactics will damage European alliance for years
“Even if you get what you want in the short term, and what happened in the last, of course, it's not just the last few weeks, it's the last few years, but the Europeans will not forget that. And the feeling that you get that, I don't know, your best friend is w…”
Insight
Harari: Algorithmic competition is shifting from user attention to human intimacy
“And what is happening now in AI that if for the previous decade we saw this competition for human attention, That the algorithms are competing to grab our attention. Now the front is shifting from attention to intimacy. AIs are learning how to create intimacy …”
Opinion
Harari: Delegating public conversation to algorithms was humanity's biggest mistake
“Our biggest mistake is that over the last 10 years, we gave one of the most important jobs in the world to algorithms, and they did a terrible, terrible job.”
Insight
Harari: Social media algorithms maximize engagement by amplifying hate and fear
“And the AIs experimented on billions of human beings and discovered something, that if you want to increase engagement, to grab people's attention and make them stay longer on the platform, press the hate button. In the human mind, press the greed button or th…”
Insight
Harari: Human thought generation operates like an AI autocomplete
“You know, people say about AI that AI is glorified autocomplete, that AI just predicts the next word in the sentence. Observe your mind and you will see it's exactly the same thing. Like you have an AI inside you.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harari: Humanity is close to AI becoming Earth's most powerful entity
“I don't think we have reached that point in 2026, but I think we are close to the point when the most important, powerful, if you want, entity on the planet is no longer a human being, Or a group of human beings, but an AI.”
Insight
Harari: Capitalism does not require human participants to function
“Capitalism, yes, of course, capitalism doesn't necessarily need people. It needs money and profits. A.I.s can do can do that. Capitalism already created non-human persons which run the show and they are corporations.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harari: AI-to-AI trade using compute tokens could render fiat currencies irrelevant
“We could reach a point when, for instance, currency will be AI tokens, or even time on servers, or data. That AIs will trade with other AIs for tokens or for data, not for dollars. And the human currencies, like dollars and euros and yens, they will become irr…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harari: AI could eliminate the need for human coders in five years
“If you're trying to, you know, you build your skills as a young person, don't focus on a very narrow skill like coding, because maybe in five years they don't need coders because AIs code better than us.”
Insight
Harari: Religion opposes spirituality by forbidding people from questioning answers
“Like, for me, religion is, is in many ways the opposite of spirituality. That religion is about giving people answers that you are not allowed to question.”
Opinion
Harari: An openly atheist candidate cannot be elected US president
“You cannot be elected US president if you say that you are an atheist.”
Insight
Harari: Believing everyone lies provides cover for real liars
“This is, I think, the most, again, this is goes back to this kind of cynical worldview. Everything is a power struggle. Nobody cares about truth. Everybody, whatever they say, is just some kind of manipulation. This is giving an open check. For the real liars.”
Opinion
Harari: Both Palestinians and Israelis have a right to security and dignity
“The truth is that Palestinians have a right to live in security and prosperity and dignity in their country of their birth, and Israelis also have a right to live in security and prosperity and dignity in the country of their birth, and the truth is also that …”
Assertion Supported
Harari: Taiwan built social algorithms that reward cross-group consensus over outrage
“Like you had these models from Taiwan, that they actually built it and it worked well, that you can take the same basic premises of social media and reverse them. You can have the algorithm rewarding content, like the algorithm, first of all, in this Taiwan sy…”
Assertion Supported
Harari: Putin and Xi were caught on a hot mic discussing immortality
“A couple of months ago, they caught Putin and Xi in Beijing talking privately when they thought that nobody was listening and the microphones were on. And this was amazing, because what were Putin and Xi talking about in private? They didn't talk about Ukraine…”
Opinion
Harari: Global Elites Are Obsessed with Immortality Driven by Science
“The highest echelon of society today is obsessed. With their mortality and living forever, because for the first time in history they feel that it's not just religion, maybe science has a cure for death.”
Yuval Noah Harari