At the 2026 Vision Summit, Yuval Noah Harari delivered a video keynote on AI and the future of humanity. He warned that AI could become smarter than humans within a few years or at most a decade, causing humans to gradually lose the ability to understand the world and make decisions. He advocated a more responsible and gradual approach to AI development, leaving room for errors, and noted that the AI arms race is hard to stop due to mutual distrust among competitors, describing the development as nearly crazy.
In an interview with The Economist's editor-in-chief, Yuval Noah Harari called AI 'the biggest psychological and social experiment in human history,' saying AI could surpass humans in many areas within a decade but that this is not inevitable. He warned that the biggest risk is humans voluntarily giving up control, and discussed AI's role in financial decisions, trust shifting to algorithms, the difference between intelligence and consciousness, and questions of responsibility and rights.