Yuval Noah Harari on AI: “We are the cows of the future”
The historian says AI won’t send robots into the streets. It will take over the financial system, and we won’t understand the rules.
Humans are "the cows of the future," historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari says, using the image to describe, and warn about, humanity's future in the age of AI. In an interview with Czech public television, Harari compared that future to the position of cows, which live under human control within financial systems they cannot see or understand.
"Cows know that humans exist. They can see us. But cows don't know that money exists," he said. "How do you explain the bond market to cows, even though it controls their lives?"
Just as cows are shaped by stock and bond markets without understanding money or the structures behind it, Harari argued, humans could become increasingly dependent on AI systems. The decisions these systems make, and the logic behind them, could lie beyond human understanding. "We are the cows of the future," he said.
The comparison is meant to show that the main danger of AI is not that machines will physically attack or kill people. Harari warns instead that the technology could gradually take control of critical systems, specifically financial and bureaucratic ones, and so reduce people's ability to understand and influence the decisions that shape society. "It's not that AIs will be robots that will come in the street and shoot us," he said. "The AIs are taking over the financial system. They are taking over all the bureaucracies."
He explained that AI has a natural advantage in administrative and financial environments, because it can process and retain vast amounts of information. "No human banker can remember all the transactions of the bank. An AI banker can."
AI could use that ability to build more sophisticated financial and legal systems that humans cannot understand. In such a future, Harari said, humans would remain part of the system that governs their lives but would have no meaningful control over how it operates.
"[AIs] will take over the bureaucracies like the financial system, create much more sophisticated financial systems and legal systems that we can't understand," he said. "So just as cows can't understand the financial system that controls their lives today, we will not be able to understand the AI financial system that will control our lives in 10 or 20 years."
