Jared Diamond & Yuval Harari talk about big history and tormorrow

Diamond “Finite Resources and Human Inequality will weigh human life down”
Harari “Whether could handle the body and brain or not affects the destiny of a country”
Diamond will give keynote speech at 'the Seoul Forum 2016' on May 11 in Korea

lt;BRgt;Many new kinds of jobs will probably appear, but that won‘t necessarily solve the problem. Humans have basically just two types of skills - physical skills and cognitive skills - and if computers and robots outperform us in both, they might outperform us in the new jobs just like in the old ones. So what will be the use of humans in such a world? What will we do with billions of economically useless humans? We don’t know. We don‘t have any economic model for such a situation. This may well be the greatest economic and political question of the twenty-first century.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ffffffgt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_89.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#800080gt;lt;stronggt;Dr. Diamond:lt;/stronggt; Robots and artificial intelligence will affect practical aspects of human life, just as they have for the last 60,000 years, but with increasingly rapid change. Just consider: we have had telephones and automobiles for a little more than a century, commercial television for only about 70 years, and e-mail for only a few decades. Robots and artificial intelligence will cause changes, just as telephones and cars and television and e-mail that already caused changes. But, despite telephones and cars and television and e-mail, people still face the same basic human concerns: how to bring up our children, how to deal with old age, how to resolve disputes, how to stay healthy, how to assess dangers, and other such concerns. We already faced those concerns for tens of thousands of years before we had telephones and cars, and we shall continue to have those concerns after we have more robots and artificial intelligence.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ffffffgt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_90.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ff0000gt;lt;stronggt;Prof. Harari:lt;/stronggt; Many of the basic concerns facing humanity will indeed remain with us, such as how to bring up our children, how to deal with old age, how to resolve disputes, and how to stay healthy. For in truth, these concerns are not tens of thousands of years old - they are tens of millions of years old. We share them with all other mammals, and with many other animals too. As long as humans retain their present-day bodies and minds, this will not change. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;AI is nevertheless different from telephones and cars, because unlike them, it has the power to redesign our bodies and minds, or to replace us altogether. If AI replaces humans as the dominant force on the planet, then for the first time in many millions of years earth will be dominated by beings who have no children, who do not grow old, and who don’t need emotions in order to resolve disputes. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;stronggt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;4. In terms of the development of bio-health care technology, what influence do you think life extension and organ transplant will have on the change and form of human societies?lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/stronggt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_91.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;FONT color=#ff0000gt;lt;stronggt;Prof. Harari:lt;/stronggt; In the coming decades, we may well see new technologies that could radically extend human lifespans. This will have enormous influence on human society. I‘ll give just a few random examples. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;Since people will live much longer in a world undergoing ever more rapid upheavals, they will have to reinvent themselves again and again. By the time you are 50, whatever you learned as a teenager would be completely irrelevant, but the new knowledge acquired in your fifties will again become obsolete by the time you are 80 or 100. This may result in enormous levels of stress. Longevity itself may become an additional source of stress. The longer you expect to live - the fewer risks you would be willing to take. People will become ever more obsessed with health and security.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;Family structure, marriages and child-parent relationships would also be transformed. Today, people still expect to be married ’till death us do part‘, and much of life revolves around having and raising children. Now try to imagine a person with a lifespan of 150 years. Getting married at forty, she still has 110 years to go. Will it be realistic to expect her marriage to last 110 years? Even Catholic fundamentalists might baulk at that. So the current trend of serial marriages is likely to intensify. Bearing two children in her forties, by the time she is 120, the years she spent raising them are a distant memory - and a rather minor episode in her life. It’s hard to tell what kind of new parent-child relationship might develop under such conditions. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;At the same time, since people will not retire at 65, they will not make way for the new generation with its novel ideas and aspirations. The physicist Max Planck famously said that science advances one funeral at a time. He meant that only when one generation passes away do new theories have a chance to root out old ones. This is true not only of science. Think for a moment about the political sphere. Would you mind having Putin stick around for another ninety years? On second thoughts, if people lived to 150, then in 2016 Stalin would still be ruling in Moscow, going strong at 138, and Mao would be a middle-aged 123-year-old.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;One last point to bear in mind is that the new life-extending treatments might be expensive, and will not be freely available for all 8 billion humans. Hence human society in the 21st century may be the most unequal in history. For the first time in history, there might appear real biological gaps between classes and countries. Throughout history, the rich and powerful always argued that they were superior to everyone else. That they were more clever, more courageous, more creative, more moral than everyone else. This was not true. As far as we know, there were no real differences in abilities between, say, Hindu Brahmans and Untouchables. However, in the coming generations humankind might split into biological castes, with upper-class humans transformed into godlike beings. These upper-class humans may really be more clever, more courageous, and more creative than everybody else.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ffffffgt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_92.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#800080gt;lt;stronggt;Dr. Diamond:lt;/stronggt; Life extension and modern medicine, including organ transplants, have already caused an increase in the proportion and longevity of old people, and a decrease in the proportion of young people. Already, your neighbor Japan has the second highest life extension in the world, and the lowest birth rate. If those trends are extrapolated lineally, one calculates that there won‘t be any more babies born in Japan after 17 years from now! Obviously, that won’t be the outcome, and the extrapolation won‘t be linear, but - it remains clear that fewer and fewer young people will be supporting more and more older people.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;stronggt;5. There are worries that money could decide the quality of human life in the future with the development of robots, bio-health, and especially artificial intelligence. Is it possible to expect bright future for our society?lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/stronggt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_93.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;FONT color=#ff0000gt;lt;stronggt;Prof. Harari:lt;/stronggt; The future is not deterministic. We face many dangers, but when faced by collective danger, humankind can rise to the challenge. The most obvious and optimistic model is our reaction to the threat of nuclear war, and our success in curbing international violence over the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, many people believed that a nuclear holocaust was inevitable. But in the following decades, humankind not only managed to avoid nuclear war, but also reduced international violence to its lowest level ever. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;There are still wars in some parts of the world - I come from the Middle East, so I know that very well. But for the first time in history, large parts of the world are completely free from war. In ancient agricultural societies, about 15% of all deaths were caused by human violence. Today, in the world as a whole, less than 1.5% of deaths are caused by human violence. In fact, the number of suicides is today higher than the number of violent deaths! You have a greater chance of killing yourself than of being killed by some enemy soldier, criminal or terrorist. People today are terrified of terrorism. But in fact, for every human killed by terrorism, a thousand die of eating too much. For the average American, McDonalds poses a much greater threat than Al Qaeda. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;Now we are facing new threats, such as global warming and the rise of AI. The danger is very big, but nothing is determined. Humankind can still rise to the challenge.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ffffffgt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_94.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#800080gt;lt;stronggt;Dr. Diamond:lt;/stronggt;Of course money will affect the quality of human life in the future with the development of robots and bio-health, just as money has affected the quality of human life ever since money was invented about 3,000 years ago! Is it possible to expect a bright future of our society? Yes, but only if we make better choices than we are making now.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;stronggt;lt;/FONTgt;6. Do you think that East Asia including Korea is able to be the leader of human society?lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/stronggt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_95.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;FONT color=#ff0000gt;lt;stronggt;Prof. Harari:lt;/stronggt; We are in an analogous situation to the nineteenth century. Back then, the world underwent the Industrial Revolution. This revolution was led by very few countries such as Britain, the USA and Japan. These few countries conquered the world. Most other countries failed to understand what was happening, and they therefore missed the train of progress, and were occupied and exploited by the industrial nations. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;In the early twenty-first century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station. Whereas in the nineteenth century industrialization was fueled by steam power, chemistry and electricity, now progress is fueled mostly by biotechnology and computer science. And whereas nineteenth-century industry produced mainly food, textiles, vehicles and weapons, the new biotech and cybernetic industries will produce bodies, brains and minds. The gap between those who will know how to engineer bodies and brains and those who will not, will be far bigger than the gap between nineteenth-century Britain and India. Those who will lead the next revolution will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind might face extinction. lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;Which nations and areas are likely to lead the revolution? At present it is led by East Asia and the North Atlantic region. Other areas, such as Africa, the Middle East and South America are being left behind. This may change, of course. But I think that all countries in the world face today an existential question: will they be part of the next revolution, or will they be left behind?lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ffffffgt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 width=80 align=CENTER bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot; bgColor=e6e6e6gt;lt;TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 bgColor=ffffff border=0gt;lt;TRgt;lt;TDgt;lt;IMG src=quot;https://newsimg.sedaily.com/2016/04/25/1KV6BDN9US_96.jpgquot; border=0gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;TD style=quot;PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 돋움,돋움체; COLOR: 595959; FONT-SIZE: 9pt; PADDING-TOP: 2px;quot;gt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/TDgt;lt;/TRgt;lt;/TABLEgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#800080gt;lt;stronggt;Dr. Diamond:lt;/stronggt; Let’s distinguish between “able to be THE leader” and “able to be A leader”. For the last century, the leaders of human society have been East Asia, Europe, and North America, with North America currently the most powerful. Two hundred years ago, the leaders were East Asia and Europe, with Europe the most powerful. Five thousand years ago, the leader was Southwest Asia (the so-called Fertile Crescent), with East Asia and Europe and North America still backwaters.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;I expect that the world leaders will continue to be East Asia, Europe, and North America for the foreseeable future, at least for the next several decades. For each of these areas, it‘s easy to point out advantages, and to point out disadvantages of the other areas. But all three areas will continue to dominate the rest of the world because of unchanging facts of geography. Which of those regions dominates the other two will depend upon changing facts of human society.lt;BRgt;lt;BRgt;lt;/FONTgt;lt;FONT color=#ffffffgt;lt;iframe width=quot;540quot; height=quot;315quot; src=quot;1287qRqw-Ts" layout="responsive" width="355" height="218">

▲Dr. Jared Diamond sent a message to Korean Readers before his visit. He‘s invited as a key-note speaker at Seoul Forum 2016 which is one of the biggest Business Forum in Korea, and held by the Seoul Economic Daily. He’s going to make speech about the future of human society.

※Seoul Economic Daily will broadcast the Seoul Forum live in real time, especially Keynote Speech by Professor Jared Diamond, A Conversation with Professor Jared Diamond. You can see the specific information on the official website(▶http://seoulforum.kr/eng)And you can watch the live-cast through our facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/sedailythumb/Follow and watch! we‘ll notice the broadcast schedule by Push-Up message!