Benjamin Netanyahu: prediction

Transcript context

…Well, first of all, I have a high regard for the people I talked to. And I understand that they understand things I don’t understand, and I don’t pretend to understand everything. But I do understand one thing. I understand that AI is developing at a geometric rate and mostly in political life and in life in general people don’t have an intuitive grasp of geometric growth. You understand things basically in linear increments. And the idea that you’re coming up a ski slope is very foreign to people. So they don’t understand it, and they’re naturally also sort of taken aback by it. Because what do you do? So I think there’s several conclusions from my conversations with them and from my other observations that I’ve been talking about for many years. I’m talking about the need- … observations that I’ve been talking about for many years. I’m talking about the need to do this. Well, the first thing is this. There is no possibility of not entering AI with full force. Secondly, there is a need for regulation. Third, it’s not clear there will be global regulation. Fourth, it’s not clear where it ends up. I certainly cannot say that. Now, you might say, “Does it come to control us?” Okay, that’s a question. Does it come to control us? I don’t know the answer to that. I think that, as one observation that I had from these conversations is if it does come to control us, that’s probably the only chance of having universal regulation, because I don’t see anyone deciding to avoid the race and cooperate unless you have that threat. Doesn’t mean you can’t regulate AI within countries even without that understanding, but it does mean that there’s a limit to regulation because every country will want to make sure that it doesn’t give up competitive advantage if there is no universal regulation. I think that right now, just as 10 years ago, I read a novel. I don’t read novels, but I was forced to read one by a scientific advisor. I read history, I read about economics, I read about technology. I just don’t read novels. In this, I follow Churchill. He said, “Fact is better than fiction.” Well, this fiction would become fact. It was a book, it was a novel about a Chinese/American future cyber war. I read the book in one sitting, called in a team of experts, and I said, “All right, let’s turn Israel into one of the world’s five cyber powers and let’s do it very quickly.” And we did actually. We did exactly that. I think AI is bigger than that and related to that, because it’ll affect … Well, cyber affects everything, but AI will affect it even more fundamentally. And the joining of the two could be very powerful. ink AI is bigger than that and related to that, because it’ll affect … Well, cyber affects everything, but AI will affect it even more fundamentally. And the joining of the two could be very powerful. So I think in Israel, we have to do it anyway for security reasons and we’re doing it. But I think, what about our databases that are already very robust on the medical records of 98% of our population? Why don’t we stick a genetic database on that? Why don’t we do other things that could bring what are seemingly magical cures and drugs and medical instruments for that? That’s one possibility. We have it, as I said, in every single field. The conclusion is this. We have to move on AI. We are moving on AI, just as we moved on cyber, and I think Israel will be one of the leading AI powers in the world. The questions I don’t have an answer to is, where does it go? How much does it chew up on jobs? There’s an assumption that I’m not sure is true, that the two big previous revolutions in the human condition, namely the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, definitely produced more jobs than they consumed. That is not obvious to me at all. I mean, I could see new jobs creating, and yes, I have that comforting statement, but it’s not quite true, because I think on balance, they’ll probably consume more jobs, many more jobs than they’ll create. At least in the short term. And we don’t know about the long term.…

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