When Artificial Intelligence Knows Too Much (or Too Little) About You

Those were the words of advice offered up by philosopher, historian, and best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari during an on-stage conversation at Stanford University last week. The prolific writer (and agitator) has long been a critic of artificial intelligence applications that track, aggregate, and learn from our every move, gleaning insights about us that we are sometimes oblivious to ourselves.

“Get to know yourself better,” Harari said again in more modern English, “because now, you’ve got competition.”

Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, which aims to develop technologies to benefit humanity, co-sponsored the event. The conversation also featured computer science professor Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer in AI research and co-director of the multidisciplinary institute. Both speakers focused on what the future holds for AI, and how it can be utilized to “support rather than subvert” human interests. Not surprisingly, Harari and Li did not always see eye to eye on the best path forward or on the scope and severity of the harm AI can unleash.

One of Li’s suggestions, for examples, was to develop AI systems that can explain their processes and decisions. But Harari argued that these technologies have become too complex to be explainable, and that this level of complexity can undermine our autonomy and authority.

While the conversation was mostly fruitful and productive, there were a few friendly jabs.

“I’m very envious of philosophers, because they can propose questions and crises, but they don’t have to answer them,” said Li. (Even Harari chuckled at that one.)

Perhaps, Harari’s laughter came from knowing that he was about to offer some solutions, though even his very simplest takeaway—“know thyself”—is easier said than done. The challenge of knowing ourselves better than AI systems can is best illustrated with an anecdote shared by the philosopher himself. Harari told the audience that he didn’t realize he was gay until he was 21 years old. “I’m with myself 24 hours a day,” he said, yet an AI system could have concluded his sexual identity faster than he could.

“What does it mean to live in a world where you can learn something so important about yourself from an algorithm?” he asked the audience. “And what if that algorithm doesn’t share [this information] with you but with others—advertisers or an authoritarian regime?”

The risks of AI knowing too much about us are real and are starting to be addressed—both by outside critics like Harari and increasingly, by engineers, educators, and other insiders like Li.