World Economic Forum adviser claims the planet no longer needs the ‘vast majority’ of the population by Emily Mangiaracina for Life Site News
As a potential remedy to economically ‘obsolete’ people, Yuval Noah Harari proposed government redistribution of wealth, not just nationally, but globally.
Top World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser Yuval Noah Harari recently declared that the world does not “need the vast majority” of the current population due to technological advances.
Harari made the bold declaration in an interview with Chris Anderson, head of the popular TED media group, echoing past predictions of a “useless class” of “unemployable” humans.
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Harai suggested that, in a departure from the 20th century, when the “big heroes” of political systems’ prevailing narratives were always “the common people,” now in the 21st century, people “are no longer part of the story of the future.” Instead, according to Harari, they have been replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) and displaced by a high-tech economy.
The author and lecturer presented to Anderson the “hypothesis” that anxiety about being displaced in the future economy by AI and a highly educated “tech” class is partly at the root of the world’s “disillusionment and backlash against the liberal order.”
“Part of what might be going [on] is people realize — and they’re correct in thinking that, ‘The future doesn’t need me. … Maybe if they are nice, they will throw some crumbs my way, like universal basic income.’ But it’s much worse psychologically to feel that you are useless than to feel that you are exploited,” Harari said.
“Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” Harari continued, “because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering.”
Harari added that “these technologies increasingly will make redundant” “whatever people are still doing which is useful,” and will thus “make it possible to replace the people.”
While he conceded to Anderson that technologies such as AI will open up new and “more interesting jobs,” Harari argued that “it’s not clear that many humans will be able to do them, because they will require high skills and a lot of education.”
Anderson doggedly proposed ways in which human beings could — and he suggested, should — continue to play a valuable part in the world economy, or at least society.
“So again, trying to desperately apply some sort of more hopeful spin on this … a lot of the jobs that are being displaced are actually kind of boring jobs that don’t really tap into the core of what the human is,” Anderson said.
He went on to point out that “When you step back, there’s no shortage of things that need to be done,” including addressing the world’s “millions of lonely people.”
