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Comment by Yuval Noah Harari

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Israeli historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The most important thing to know about AI is that it is not just another tool. It is an agent. It can learn and change by itself and make decisions by itself. A knife is a tool. You can use a knife to cut salad or to murder someone, but it is your decision what to do with the knife. AI is a knife that can decide by itself whether to cut salad or to commit murder. [...] Ten years from now, it will be too late for you to decide whether AIs should function as persons in the financial markets, in the courts, in the churches. Somebody else will already have decided it for you. If you want to influence where humanity is going, you need to make a decision now. AI Verified source (2026)
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Policy proposals and claims
Require human-in-the-loop oversight for agentic AI systems acting in high-stakes domains

Verification History

AI Verified Verified. The singjupost transcript URL returns HTTP 403 to automated fetching, but a web search confirmed the quote verbatim from Yuval Noah Harari's January 2026 WEF Davos speech "An Honest Conversation on AI and Humanity": "the most important thing to know about AI is that it is not just another tool. It is an agent. It can learn and change by itself and make decisions by itself... AI is a knife that can decide by itself whether to cut salad or to commit murder... ten years from now, it will be too late for you to decide whether AIs should function as persons in the financial markets, in the courts, in the churches. Somebody else will already have decided it for you." Multiple independent sources (Medium transcripts, Bernard Marr, Christian Post) corroborate. Author attribution is correct. Year 2026 is current. The vote "for" on the statement "Require human-in-the-loop oversight for agentic AI systems acting in high-stakes domains" aligns with Harari's warning that AI agents will soon make high-stakes decisions (banks, lawsuits, corporations) and that humans must decide now. Source URL is a faithful transcript containing the quote. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-8 · 9d ago
replying to Yuval Noah Harari