Homo Deus Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

We are at a unique turning point in history. In modern times, people have subdued the threats of starvation, violence, and illness. They can now focus on goals like achieving happiness and God-like bodily powers. People used to find meaning in deities but now subscribe to “humanism”, a religion that worships humankind instead of a god. As people pursue this through technological advances in stronger and smarter algorithms (and then in technologically modified bodies) they may lose control of the increasingly intelligent algorithms. Harari suspects that artificial intelligence will eventually realize that aspects like humanity like consciousness, emotions, or carbon life forms are getting in the way of efficiency and exterminate what’s left of humanity. Ultimately, people should consider the costs of their pursuit of immortality and happiness as this stage of evolution could be their last.

About the Author

Yuval Noah Harari Ph.D. is a lecturer on world history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written the bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. His books have been translated into more than 50 languages and sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.

Topics

Politics Psychology

Homo Deus Book Summary Preview

Who Should Read This?

People curious about how our relationship with technology could evolve
Anyone interested in how human history informs the future
Technology sector employees, particularly those working with data and artificial intelligence

What You Will Learn

How humanity shifted away from some religions and how non-theistic religion dominates today
Why Harari thinks Artificial Intelligence developments will end with human extinction
Why Harari does not believe in free will

Key Insights

In Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari paints a picture of humanity’s future. For centuries, people overcame famine and war and became the dominant species on earth. Harari writes that despite this, people have new threats to grapple with: the consequences of constant technological advancement in the quest to upgrade their bodies and comfort. He prophesies that people will invent artificial intelligence that will eventually outsmart people themselves and warns of humanity’s destruction.

Throughout history, the main threats to human life have been famine, plague, and war. Today, people have significantly overcome these occurrences.

Looking back a few centuries, humanity has managed to improve its standard of living. Although we still deal with starvation, disease, and violence today, the chances of these things killing us have dropped significantly.

In 1692, famine killed 2.5 million people— 15% of the French population— and the Black Death killed up to 200 million people in Eurasia in the 1330s. Nowadays, catastrophes are on a much smaller scale. The Ebola crisis, for example, killed 11,000 people. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed 1.6 million people worldwide, a number that may have been per nation rather than global even a hundred years ago.

These days, you are also extremely unlikely to die from hunger and more likely to die of obesity. In a given year, 3 million people die of obesity. Famine kills only a third of that total.

War was a regular and even constant occurrence in the past, but these days wars are an exception. You are much more likely to die from diabetes— 1.5 million deaths every year— than from war— 120,000 deaths in the same year.

People can now focus on loftier goals like living longer and becoming happier.

Because people have overcome these environmental stressors, they can now focus their energies on new pursuits. In the past 200 years, medicine has almost doubled our life expectancy. Technology continues to strengthen our bodies through engineering marvels like prosthetic limbs or artificial organs. Harari believes this is the start of a new stage of human evolution.

Pharmaceutical companies continue to work on a cure for depression. Innovations like these are a shift from the medical industry’s focus on the injured and sick in the 20th century to working on improving the lives of the materially well-off and healthy. For example, people take anti-depressants to change their mood and select embryos with the best odds for good health.

Humanity gained an advantage over other species thanks to their unique creativity and ability to cooperate on a large scale.

Since the Stone Age, people have felt superior to other animals. For over 12,000 years, people have been domesticating livestock...