Self-driving vehicles have none of these flaws and eventually, we could see the displacement of 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States alone, amongst other driving professions.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that in 2012, 31% of fatal crashes involved alcohol abuse, 30% speeding and 20% distracted drivers. Harari says that the better we understand the biochemical mechanisms that underpin human emotions, desires and choices the better computers can get at analysing human behaviour, predicting human decisions and replacing human professions such as bankers and lawyers.Īt least in some lines of work, it might make sense to replace all humans with computers even if individually some humans still do a better job than machines. “People may give the system and angry kick in the stomach but having nowhere else to go they will eventually come back.” Chapter 2 - Work While there’s a lot of pushback against the liberal story today, Harari says that at the end of the day humankind won’t abandon the liberal story because it doesn’t have any viable alternatives. As Elon Musk pointed out on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, we’ve already been augmented, there’s just a disconnect and the data rate is too slow. Artificial IntelligenceĪs AI gets more sophisticated it will create classes of humans superhumans who are augmented by technology. While the 20th Century was all about three political systems, the 21st century introduces new stories and classes, that of humans, superhumans and artificial intelligence. It’s imperative that you make your stories simple. A lesson not only for those of you declaring political war, which is fair to say few of you are, but also for those of you in the business and entrepreneurship game. The simpler the story, he says, the better. On the topic of information overwhelm, Harari makes the point that ‘humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers or equations which is why the communist, fascist and liberal stories of the 20th Century were so powerful. Harari confronts today’s 21 big questions throughout the book’s 21 chapters and after having read and highlighted the book, distilled its 300 pages down to 16,000 words of notes, and then further distilled those notes down to 5,000 words of key lessons and take-aways, I decided to bring you my third book summary, kicking things off with: Chapter One - Disillusionment Stories I was excited when I received my copy of the book in the mail, courtesy of Penguin Books, and couldn’t wait to get my head buried in it.
And that is coming WITH the stronger Dollar, which hit 90.50 this morning and is keeping a lid on rates, as well as commodity inflation – for the moment.Get this book summary in audio on the Future Squared podcast, available on Apple Podcasts + everywhere elseįresh off the back of the success of Sapiens and Homo Deus, Professor Yuval Noah Harari has returned with another book, not quite for the ages, but for the 21st Century.Ģ1 Lessons for the 21st Century cuts through the information overwhelm and muddy waters of the online world and confronts the most urgent questions on today’s global agenda. The German 10-year is still 0.6% indicating that yes, people have lost that much faith in the US economy and our ability to pay back debt during Trump's first year in office. A spike in interest rates would test the ability of borrowers to refinance all that debt.Īll these concerns, of course, are reflected in this year's 25% jump in 10-year note yields and we may pop over 3% this week for the first time since Jan, 2014. The fund warned that global public and private debt has reached a record $164 trillion. A surge in inflation might force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates faster than expected, a move that might cause turbulence in emerging market.
In particular, according to Bloomberg, the IMF is worried that markets might be underestimating the threat of an inflation shock in the U.S., where the Trump administration is increasing fiscal stimulus with the economy at or near full employment. Colombia’s central bank president said a trade war would be " catastrophic," his Paraguayan peer said it would be " bad for everyone," while Japan’s chief described protectionism as " very undesirable." Across the board, 2019 growth forecasts are moving lower while debt is getting quickly out of control. Central bankers sounded the alert that a trade war would leave them worrying more about the economic fallout than any boost tariffs would give to inflation.