Interview: Future of humanity depends on how people choose to use AI, biotechnology: bestseller historian - Xinhua

JERUSALEM/BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- What will happen if Artificial Intelligence (AI) knows us better than we do about ourselves? Yuval Noah Harari, author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, shared his insight on how trends in science and technology may progress and influence human kind in a written interview with Xinhua. Harari is recently making quite a splash in China with the launch of the Chinese version of his equally compelling new book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, in which he turns his focus on humanity's future and the quest to upgrade humans, as science, especially AI, advance rapidly nowadays. According to Harari, people have already taken the first steps on the path of integration of humans and smart machines. People are already merging with their smartphones, and in the case of China, their Wechat accounts -- the intelligent devices and apps that constantly study us, adapt to our unique personality, and shape our worldview and innermost desires.