Humanity: The Future’s Cows?
By Oumar Farouk Sesay
In Nexus, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari presents a troubling idea: humanity might become to the future what cows are today.
At first, this comparison seems implausible. However, it holds a significant warning for the future of human intelligence and autonomy.
Cows exist alongside humans but lack understanding of the economic systems that dictate their lives. They are oblivious to markets, trade, and the decisions made about them, living in a world governed by forces they cannot comprehend.
Harari suggests that humans may find themselves in a similar situation as artificial intelligence progresses. As AI systems develop capabilities beyond human understanding, we might rely on them without grasping how they operate. Like cows unaware of the livestock market, we may struggle to comprehend the algorithms shaping our lives.
The real concern isn’t that AI will turn against humanity, but rather that we could become irrelevant within the systems that govern our existence. We might willingly relinquish our critical thinking, judgement, and creativity to machines that promise efficiency. What starts as assistance could evolve into dependence and, ultimately, subordination.
This raises an important point made by Sam Kargbo, who warns that the real danger may not be machines outperforming lawyers in thinking, but lawyers choosing to let machines do their thinking for them.
For centuries, intelligence has been a hallmark of human progress, leading to remarkable advancements in learning and innovation. Yet, we now risk allowing machines, designed to enhance our thinking, to diminish our inclination to think for ourselves.
While AI can improve a lawyer’s effectiveness, relying blindly on machine-generated insights risks undermining the essence of legal reasoning: critical evaluation and independent judgement. This concern extends to all professions and citizens.
The situation intensifies when machines begin to influence systems like finance, law, and democracy. The challenge shifts from whether machines can think to whether humans can effectively govern the systems they have built.
Moreover, AI is shaped by human biases and historical injustices. We may unwittingly create systems that reflect and entrench the very inequalities we have tried to overcome. Algorithms do not become neutral simply because they are mathematical. When human prejudice infiltrates technology, injustice can appear as scientific objectivity.
This raises a pressing question: if humanity has struggled for fairness throughout history, why would the AI it creates govern any better?
However, unlike cows, humans have the ability to question and regulate the systems they create. We can ensure transparency and accountability and maintain meaningful oversight.
Avoiding a descent into algorithmic subordination is not inevitable but requires vigilance, imagination, courage, and international cooperation, especially as divisions threaten our collective responsibility.
It is contradictory for a civilisation to develop technology without borders while retreating into nationalism and prejudice. We must approach this unprecedented technological change with a shared ethical framework, rather than being consumed by past divisions.
The irony is that as we create intelligence capable of transcending cultural and political boundaries, we risk becoming prisoners to the biases of the past.
We are heading towards the future with outdated thinking.
The ultimate irony might be that, after asserting our intellectual dominance for millennia, humanity could create an intelligence that renders our own superiority unnecessary. We may find out too late that being the creator of such intelligence does not guarantee mastery.
The most unsettling question remains: will we maintain the intellectual independence to recognise when we become the livestock of our own creation? Perhaps the greatest tragedy of humanity isn’t that machines will outthink us, but that we will grow so reliant on them that we forget how and why we needed to think for ourselves in the first place. The real danger may lie in the voluntary abdication of our intelligence.
