“We focus our anxieties on the wrong target. . . It is too soon to worry about computer chips implanted in our brains. People should instead worry about the smartphones on which they read these conspiracy theories.”
– Yuval Noah Harari
How Polite Are You to AI?
Do you ever follow up with a “Thank you” to AI? I often feel compelled to do it out of habit—and then realize it’s a little silly to be polite to a computer.
Plus, it’s expensive. Every time we ask AI to respond, it uses costly resources (I don’t quite understand it, but that’s what I read). Yet a 2024 survey found that 67% of AI users are courteous when interacting with AI either because they feel it’s morally imperative or to “hedge their bets in case of a future AI uprising.”
But the bigger question isn’t whether or not we should thank AI, but whether or not we should trust it.
What Nexus Reveals About Our Digital Lives
I just finished a fascinating book about artificial intelligence by Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. In the book, Harari asks us to question any digital system that is increasingly shaping every aspect of our lives.
Nexus is the kind of book that challenges you to pause and reflect on how deeply embedded computers have become in our lives—not just as tools, but as active participants in our social, political, and emotional networks.
As we’ve all likely noticed, algorithms now:
- Determine which news stories are available to us
- Choose which friends we see online
- Nudge us toward certain products
- Amplify or silence certain opinions
The book’s premise is clear:
“The computer network has become the nexus [important connecting link] of most human activities. In the middle of almost every financial, social, or political transaction, we now find a computer. Consequently, like Adam and Eve in paradise, we cannot hide from the eye in the clouds.”
From Controlling Attention to Controlling Intimacy
Unlike previous revolutions in communication—writing, printing, radio—AI is not just another medium. It has its own intelligence; it has agency.
One of the most striking concepts Harari explores is the idea that we now live in a world where computers can create, manipulate, and impersonate intimacy.
In the 2010s, social media fought to control our attention. But now, Harari argues, the 2020s are about controlling our intimacy. What happens when bots begin making emotional connections—albeit fake ones—that influence how we vote, shop, or even understand ourselves?
Harari isn’t an alarmist about it, but he does tell us we need to get morally clear about this while we still have the ability to shape the future. He writes:
“We humans are still in control. We don’t know for how long, but we still have the power to shape these new realities.”
Rewriting Democracy’s Operating System
But that power comes with a cost: we need to deeply understand politics, society, and culture—not just technology. When we write code, we are, in effect, rewriting the operating system of democracy and human relationships.
As I read Nexus, I kept returning to my own questions that are both personal and political:
- How much information do I put online?
- And does it even matter anymore, if the system already knows everything about me anyway?
I didn’t get comforting reassurances from Harari. Instead, he reminded me we’ve already transitioned from a world where privacy was the default to one where surveillance is constant and often invisible.
Even more chilling is the idea that we are no longer just being observed—we are being reshaped. He says that algorithms, like children, learn from their environments. But unlike children, they never sleep, never forget, and may soon outperform us in areas we once believed were uniquely human—like recognizing emotion.
Harari writes,
“We yearn to be understood, but other humans often fail . . . because they are too preoccupied with their own feelings.”
But computers, devoid of their own emotional baggage, aren’t as easily distracted from giving us their full attention. They have the potential to become better at understanding us than we are at understanding each other.
Connection, Not Control
Yet this isn’t a book that dismisses humanity. Rather, it’s a powerful reminder that our shared humanity is something we must actively defend—especially through democratic principles.
Harari calls for systems that are:
- Benevolent
- Decentralized
- Based on mutual surveillance—where governments and corporations are watched just as closely as individuals.
In a world where trust in institutions is fading, Harari insists that self-correcting mechanisms—like independent media, academia, and the judiciary—are essential not just for truth but for the survival of democracy itself.
A line I keep returning to is:
“Information sometimes represents reality, and sometimes doesn’t. But it always connects.”
In the end, Nexus isn’t just about data or devices. It’s about connection—real and fake, healthy and manipulative, human and machine. It left me reflecting on how much of what I “know” comes from systems I didn’t build and can’t fully explain. We say “do your own research,” but Harari reminds us: we can’t survive alone. Trust is a collective act. And building trustworthy systems—ones that admit their flaws and evolve—may be our greatest challenge.
So yes, maybe I’ll keep saying thank you to AI. But more importantly, I’ll keep asking who’s behind the answer—and what they want me to believe.
—
Now, what if I told you that AI wrote this blog post you just read, up to this point anyway?
Well, it’s partially true. I fed AI my main takeaways from the book and key quotes I marked, then asked AI to turn it into prose. I took what it gave me, then did some major tweaking to make it my own.
But still . . . who now is the true author of this post? It was a collaboration between human and computer.
I don’t know if I should be excited about it. Or terrified.
Either way, it’s not a practice that feels authentic to me, so while I’ll continue asking AI for help on many tasks—including editing, I don’t want it to do my writing for me. Even if it can do it better.
Some tasks I’m just not ready to hand over yet to AI, thank you very much.
What do you use AI for? Share your thoughts in the comments.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random
House for the review copy of Nexus
