Episode 154 · 2022-09-23 · 22:20 · Original in Finnish
Harari, Work and Artificial Intelligence | Sami Miettinen | Negotiator 154
Originally published as “Harari työ vs tekoäly | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 154”
Yuval Noah Harari spoke at Nordic Business Forum about what work people will be doing in 2050 and what a six-year-old ought to be taught now. Sami Miettinen works through Harari's output from Sapiens to Homo Deus and marks where the forecasting holds and where it does not. The episode asks why intelligence and creativity turn out to be automatable exactly in so far as they are pattern recognition, why the priest and the athlete survive, and why politicians should not be replaced by AI even though the totalitarian temptation is considerable. It also criticises the details of Harari's monetary theory and his failure to localise, and considers the risks of gene technology. It closes on the resolution of the Fortum–Uniper affair and why a change-of-control clause was probably the decisive lever.
Core theses
- Whatever in intelligence and creativity reduces to pattern recognition is automatable, which is a sharper criterion than 'creative work is safe'.
- The priest and the athlete survive because what is being bought from them is a human performing it, not the output.
- The argument against governing by AI is not that it would work badly — it is that it would work, and for whoever holds it.
- In the Fortum–Uniper resolution the change-of-control clause is the lever that decided the outcome, which is a negotiation lesson rather than an energy one.
Watch and listen
Summary
Yuval Noah Harari spoke at Nordic Business Forum about what work people will be doing in 2050 and what a six-year-old ought to be taught now. Sami Miettinen works through Harari’s output from Sapiens to Homo Deus and marks where the forecasting holds and where it does not. The episode asks why intelligence and creativity turn out to be automatable exactly in so far as they are pattern recognition, why the priest and the athlete survive, and why politicians should not be replaced by AI even though the totalitarian temptation is considerable. It also criticises the details of Harari’s monetary theory and his failure to localise, and considers the risks of gene technology. It closes on the resolution of the Fortum–Uniper affair and why a change-of-control clause was probably the decisive lever.
A criterion, not a reassurance
The useful move here is to replace the comforting claim that creative work is safe with a test: whatever part of a task is pattern recognition is automatable, whoever performs it. That cuts across the usual manual-versus-knowledge division and puts some prestigious work on the wrong side of the line.
Why the priest and the athlete survive
Because the thing being purchased is a human doing it. No improvement in the output changes that, which makes these the clean cases — and the test for every other occupation is how much of its value has the same property.
The clause that decided Uniper
The closing section leaves Harari entirely. In the Fortum–Uniper resolution the change-of-control provision is identified as the lever that set the terms, which is a point about contract drafting rather than about energy policy — and the more portable lesson of the two.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Harari työ vs tekoäly | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 154. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
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