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The Yomiuri Shimbun Historian Yuval Noah Harari, left, and The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings President Toshikazu Yamaguchi hold a discussion in Tokyo on Sunday.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
17:53 JST, March 17, 2025
Humanity could someday become unable to control advanced artificial intelligence, Yuval Noah Harari, a renowned Israeli historian, and The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings President Toshikazu Yamaguchi recently agreed during discussions in Tokyo.
Harari, who is also an internationally bestselling author, and Yamaguchi met on Sunday at the Tokyo headquarters of The Yomiuri Shimbun. Their discussion focused primarily on the threat of AI and the role of newspapers in this age.
Harari and Yamaguchi agreed that advanced AI might become uncontrollable by human beings, and Harari emphasized that newspapers, which provide reliable information, could become a pillar against AI.
“People tend to think that AI is a tool, like other tools we have invented previously … but this is completely different,” Harari said. He described AI as the first “nonorganic agents” to appear on Earth. “It can make decisions by itself. It can create new ideas … by itself. It can … learn by itself.”
He spoke about the threats it posed, saying, “Lots of humans are being dismissed from work … They are just replaced by AI bureaucrats” in administrative bodies and companies.
Harari cited examples such as AI making decisions on whether to grant bank loans and suggesting targets for Israeli attacks in the Palestinian territory of Gaza. Yamaguchi responded, “The danger lies in the fact that it is difficult for human beings to predict the risks posed by AI.”
Harari also referred to the fact that AI now manages the financial system.
“What happens if the financial system becomes so complicated that human beings are no longer able to understand … how the financial system functions, and only AIs understand it?” Harari asked, saying this was extremely dangerous for democracy.
In response, Yamaguchi said the “Trump administration in the United States dislikes regulations on technology competition and security.” He cited the fact that the AI law introduced by the European Union respects human dignity when dealing with risks.
Harari said, “One key regulation that is still missing is a ban on AI masquerading as a human being [on social media].”
In response to the age of AI, which also creates fiction and illusions, Yamaguchi said; “What is reliable information and what is not? It is important to make that distinction. The Yomiuri Shimbun corrects all erroneous reports. I think that will earn the trust of our readers.”
Based on the history of newspapers since the 17th century, Harari said, “There were no large-scale democracies in the world anywhere until the rise of the new information technology in the late modern era and, first of all, the newspaper titles.”
He also said it is important for newspapers to discern “what is reliable information and what is unreliable information,” to disseminate reliable information and “to keep the conversation going between human beings.” The two agreed on the importance of newspapers.
Need for international body
Harari and Yamaguchi also agreed on the need to hold social media companies accountable for their algorithms as a measure to mitigate the threat of AI, and to create an international organization to monitor AI and disclose what is actually happening with the technology.
Yamaguchi said conspiracy theories spread on social media were one of the factors behind the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar in 2017. “Social media is taking over newspapers’ role as the gatekeepers of information.”
Concerns have been raised about the problem of algorithms creating bias in information on social media. It is algorithms that edit the news on social media, Harari said, and newspapers edited by human beings are important in this respect. The tech giants in the United States “only care about engagement” and are “taking over the role [of gatekeeper] without the responsibility.”
Yamaguchi said; “Entities — mainly The Yomiuri Shimbun, Keio University and advertising company Dentsu Inc. — are jointly developing the ‘Originator Profile (OP)’ technology, which distinguishes between reliable and unreliable information on every information on the internet. We aim to make this an international standard.”
Harari visited Japan to promote his new book, “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI,” which discusses the threat of AI.
Yuval Noah Harari
Harari, a 49-year-old historian and philosopher, is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. The 2014 English version of his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” which vividly depicts human history from his own unique perspective, sold over 25 million copies worldwide and catapulted him to fame. His other books include “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.”
