- Welcome to this year's
German Newspaper Congress, which is actually hosted by the Federation of the
German Newspaper Publishers. And this non-profit
organization is at its top level represented by its president, Dr. Mathias Dopfner, who is in his main job CEO of the media and digital
company Axel Springer. And he is as well, he is a educated journalist, a former editor in chief, and a book author himself. And he has today a really, really special guest on stage. And we feel honored to have him here. Professor Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the historian in our time. Professor Harari writes about humankind. He tells us as sapiens what we have done so far on our earth. But he tells us also what
we have done to the earth. And he's very clear on that point. His books have been
translated into 50 languages. So he's well-known around the globe. And I would say it is really something that we have these two
gentlemen now on stage. Gentlemen, the floor is yours. Ladies and gentlemen Yuval Noah Harari and Mathias Dopfner. (audience clapping) - Welcome, hello everybody. First of all, when you explained that you are moderating and I'm also moderating this event today, you did not tell the real reason. It's we have to save costs. It's very simple, yeah so. In that spirit, we try to have a conversation. Yuval, you are at the
moment a kind of pop star of historians and basically everywhere on the relevant panels, and in TV. And on various occasions and interviews, you are constantly asked about the future about all the big questions
that people are discussing. Are you sometimes a bit
annoyed to be always used as a kind of oracle? - Well as a historian, I actually like to talk
more about the past. But most people want to hear
far more about the future. I am a bit annoyed when people put me up as a kind of guru prophet as if I know what will happen in 50 years or what should we do. And it should be very obvious, nobody has any idea how the
world would look like in 2050. It's really maybe the
first time in history when we have really, absolutely no idea, even about the most basic stuff. I mean it's obvious that
nobody could ever predict our political developments. If you lived a thousand years ago, you couldn't tell if there'll
be a war, an invasion, a revolution, whatever. But what's happening now
is that we have no idea even about the basic structure
of the job market in 2050, or the basic structure of family, or about our own bodies. We don't know what life
expectancy will be. Things like that. And so what I try to do is just present a map of different possibilities emphasizing that we still
have a lot of agency to prevent the worst-case scenarios and to make the best-case
scenarios happen. - Is that actually a topic that you would like to speak about and nobody ever asked you? (Yuval laughing) - Not in particular. I mean, there are many
things that interests me. - [Mathias] Could you
imagine to write a book about the past. I mean a real history book only about a certain period of history? Or is that basically you
have found your U-S-B and that's based on the experiences in history talking about the future? - I wrote a couple of books
that almost nobody read about the past. You know, just about the middle ages, or just about, you know, the events in the 15th and 16th century. And maybe one day I'll again
write something like this. But it seems unlikely at the moment. - So what is your most
underestimated book so far? - No, I think it's a
good thing that people, most people didn't read these books. I mean they're interesting
for a couple of professors. But I don't think that, you know, there are so many important things that people should be
reading about and discussing. If you have a choice between reading a new research on climate change, and reading my book about special operations in the middle ages, go for the book on climate change. - You described a little
bit also your motivation. You're dealing with a lot of topics that are very political. Could you, I mean do you have a
political ambition in a way? Not in a party political sense, but in a broader sense? And how would that look like? - In the broadest sense, yes. In the sense of trying to
shape the public conversation. I don't think I have the
answers to give people. So in that sense, I have no political
ambitions to tell people do this, or don't do that. But I do think that we need to change the public conversation and to focus it on other things than what get most of
the attention at present. I think humankind is now
facing three major problems which should be the three
top items on the agenda of any country, of any election campaign. They are nuclear war, climate change, and technological disruption, especially the rise of
AI and biotechnology. And when I see an election
anywhere in the world, or a referendum like Brexit, or the elections in the US or whatever. And people just don't
talk about these things. I'm alarmed. And I see my role as a public intellectual to try and steer the
conversation in that direction. - It's very fashionable these days to speak very negatively
about politicians, to badmouth them. Among the leaders that you
observe around the world, which leader impresses you the most? Who do you think is doing the
best job dealing correctly, or in the best possible way with the topics that are so super relevant from your perspective? - I'll have to think about it. I don't really know. I didn't make an assessment of the different political figures. And really I don't have the expertise to make this kind of assessment. - So there's nobody that
potentially impresses you? - No, again, I think that generally, the standard of leadership, of governments that we see
today in much of the world is the best we ever had. And I come, I'm a... - Including Donald Trump? - There are exceptions. (audience laughing) But if you look at the government of the United States, what it is able to do, what it is able to provide the people, it's much, much better
than we saw a century ago, two centuries ago. I think part of the problem of a lot of people in the world, and especially in the West, they don't realize how lucky they are. They have very little
gratitude for what they and past generations have achieved. And this is why they are willing
to risk it so carelessly. They have the feeling that this
system is completely broken, all the politicians are liars, we need to destroy
everything and start again. And this is just terrible. They just don't realize how
much they stand to lose. And they don't realize how
far they can fall down. - Would you be able to put your view into one of their ideological baskets? Are you more leftist, or conservative? Could you describe that? - I think most of the
ideological divisions we have inherited from the 20th century are not really relevant to the big issues of the 21st century. If you think, what is the difference
between right and left, let's say Republicans
and Democrats in the US, with regard to the rise of
artificial intelligence. What's the difference, the basic policy difference
between the Republican party and the Democratic party on AI? There is no difference. They just don't talk about these issues. And similarly when it climbed to something like climate change, you do see one big difference. You do see that, at least in some countries like the US, denial of the very
reality of climate change seems to be a monopoly of
right-wing nationalists. And this is very surprising
from a historical perspective because conservatives
should be far more caring about conserving, conserving the environment. And actually in the first
half of the 20th century, worrying about the environment, and the forests, and the animals, this was much more from
right-wing nationalist concern. I think, my explanation is what's happening now in the world, we are facing such a huge crisis. It's a global crisis. It should be obvious to anybody that there is absolutely
no national solution to climate change. You can't solve climate change by having this national policy, or that national policy. Only global corporation can work. So this is why I think nationalists, because they don't have a solution, they just tend to deny the problem. Because if you recognize the problem, you must also recognize that you can't think in
purely national terms. And you can't just say, my country first. No, if your country first, then we have no solution
to climate change. So they prefer to just deny the problem. - So you are confident that nationalism is going to be solved because
simply it doesn't work? - No, many things that don't work, people still vote for them. People don't always do the wise thing, or the best thing for their own interests. This is true on the personal level. People often make terrible decisions about their own personal lives. And this is from the collective level. - How about free and open societies? How about democracy? Is it going to prevail? - I don't know. I mean, what I do know is that free democratic societies are in the long-term historical perspective, they are a very rare thing. For most of history, most of the world, people did not live in
open democratic societies. It really is mainly a phenomena of the last century or two in a few corners of the world. You have all this talk about
ancient Greek democracy, and you have all these speeches
about European civilization as if for thousands of years, European civilization was
built on the foundations of freedom, and democracy, and human rights. And you know, to say it like briefly, this is nonsense. In ancient times, you had a few tiny spots where for a couple of
decades or a century or two, like ancient Athens, you had a sort of democracy for 10% of the elite male population. And then you had centuries and centuries of authoritarian regimes, and oligarchies, and empires, and dictatorships, and so-forth. And then you have a century or a bit more that you have a few places with free democratic societies. So there is absolutely no guarantee that this model is going to prevail. I hope so. Because when again, looking at the broad spectrum of history, this has been I think
the best political model that humans have ever
created on a large scale. - I agree but at the moment, in a way, best run and most successful
country and system is China. With the help of artificial intelligence, the likelihood that
under their very liberal, or let's say state, not liberal, their very state driven, state focused regulatory system that allows everything, and a lot more than regulation allows in America and Europe. The likelihood that China could be needing in a couple of years AI is pretty high. And I think that who controls
AI, who's needing AI, is indirectly dominating economy and is sort of dominating politically. Do you think that there
is a high likelihood that China is going to be the
dominant player worldwide? And also with that,
implementing their system, their non-democratic system to a number of democracies? - Yeah, there is quite a high likelihood. Not a certainty, but a
likelihood that this will happen. I do think, like many
other scholars today, and also politicians, that those who lead the world in AI are likely to lead the
world in all economic and political terms. It could be a rerun of
the industrial revolution of the 19th century when you had a few countries, like first Britain, and then Germany and France, and the US, and Japan, who led industrialization. And this place we are now in is a testimony to that. And these few countries then went on to conquer, and dominate, and exploit the entire world. And this is very likely to happen again on an even larger scale, with AI and biotechnology
in the 21st century. It may not be the same countries again. It may be different countries
this time, like China. And the gap between those who
master AI and biotechnology and those who are left behind is likely to be far, far bigger than the gap between those
who mastered steam engines and those who didn't in the 19th century. Nevertheless, again, I don't
think it's an inevitability. The research and development of AI can go in all kinds of directions. An also, there is a huge question mark hanging over the Chinese system, which is, they never really had to deal with a major crisis since the beginning of
the reforms in 1978, 1979. If you look at a country
like the United States, then what impresses me as a historian is that you have a system
going for 200 years that managed to survive and to adapt to some very extreme crises. Now the current Chinese system
is just like 30 years old. And they had a very good 30 years in economic and political terms. But they haven't, but what happens when they face the first major crisis, either because the economy slows down, or because there is an ecological crisis that they cannot solve? And then you have a crisis of expectations from a population of 1.4 billion people. And nobody knows, including the Chinese leadership, what happens in such a scenario. - I have a friend who
has a launched a company that is basically dealing
with In Vitro Fertilization and is trying to decouple
sexuality and reproduction. And he has a lot of experience
in different markets. And he says, the best market
for his company is China because in China he can
do whatever he wants. Parents can choose, should be a boy, should be tall, should be blonde, blue eyes, and you can even one day perhaps manipulate EQ and IQ. So with that, the likelihood that, particularly in such a big
society quantitatively speaking, the likelihood that
they are almost creating a kind of superior race seems realistic. - Many of the things that... I visit a lot both Europe, and North America, and China. And one of my main impressions is that many of the things is talk about and people in the West react with apprehension and fear. In China, the reaction to
exactly the same topics is excitement. Wow, we can do that. And this of course also
has both a cultural, but also a historical background or reason that the Chinese have this
trauma of being left behind. This is their number one national trauma is being left behind in
the industrial revolution because of their mistakes. It's not something... Yes, after we were left behind, the British, and the Americans, and the Japanese, and the Russians, everybody conquered us and exploited us, and China had more than
a century of terrible, a terrible century. But what they keep telling themselves is this is our fault in the end because it was our fault
we were left behind. We didn't realize what was happening. We were complacent. And they have like this one-pointed mind. It will not happen again. The next big revolution, we will lead it, whatever it takes. We will lead it. But then there is another
underlying current in China which people tend also to ignore, that they have another national trauma, which is the trauma of
going fast too soon. The trauma of the 1950s and '60s, what happens when you
just try to go too fast, too quickly. And this is a trauma of
course that is hushed up. You can't talk about it. But a lot of people, including the people in power, they remember those years. And you know, when you talk to Americans, their view of technology, I often sense, is very naive. Because they really had no
trouble with technology. They had a wonderful two
centuries with technology. Everything was perfect. But the Chinese experienced
both sides of the coin. They know what it means to be left behind. They know what it means to
rush forward too quickly. - With regards to
democracy, AI, and biotech, do you have any advice for Europe in order to catch up or to even compete with the big players, America, and China? Or is it a lost case? - No I don't think it's a lost case. It's a question of where you invest your resources. The EU is still an economic giant, and a scientific giant. If it puts its mind to it, if the EU tells itself okay, this is what we need to do. We need to be a leader in these fields, you have all the resource. I mean, if we had this now conference in Latin America or in Africa, there the situation is much, much worse. They are really heading towards a repeat of the industrial revolution, of again being left behind. And for many countries, it's probably, they've already missed the train. They don't have what it takes. But Europe is not in this situation. Europe, it has a lot of
problems in this respect. Partly complacency, partly just confusion, not knowing what Europe wants from itself, what is its own identity. But Europe certainly has the resources to compete with the US and with China in these new fronts of
AI and biotechnology. - In your book, you wrote a lot about the role of information, and the role of fake news, manipulation, and indirectly with that
also the role of media. And now you accepted to visit the German Publishers
Association gathering. First of all, why did you accept apart from the promotion for your book? And secondly, what is your advice to publishers in order to succeed in the digital world? - You should have my husband here, not me. He's the publishing genius. I just know how to write books. So if you want good advice about how to succeed in the book business or the publishing business, invite him, and not me. - [Mathias] So did he
write the chapter on? - No, no, no. - [Mathias] It must have been very, very interesting insights that you gave and what it does to society. I mean it has a big impact
and plays a big role and can really change
democracy and everything. - Yes. Well I think the issue of fake news, there was always fake news. I mean fake news is old news. It was throughout history, long before Facebook, and Twitter, and so-forth. - [Mathias] And not everybody
read it at the same time. The distribution's just so
much faster and more global. - Yeah, the distribution is different. And also it's, what happens now, it is united with a
completely new ability. This information and
propaganda was always there. But what we have now which is new is the ability to hack human beings, to get inside your brain, to get to know you better
than you know yourself, to get to know your weaknesses, and then tailor the fake
news to your own weaknesses. The peddlers of fake news, they no longer work, you know like carpet bombing, just the same news to everybody. It's precision guided munition. They can tell, for example, that one person has already a bias against immigrants. So they will show that
person a fake news story about a gang of immigrants
raping local women. And because this person
already have this weakness, it will be very easy for that
person to believe this story. And it will also catch his attention. I mean, the battle is for attention. And then, the neighbor of this person, they know she likes immigration. But she has a different bias. She has a bias against anybody
who opposes immigration. She thinks anybody who opposes immigration must be a Neo-Nazi, or a complete racist. So they show her a
different fake news story about a gang of Neo-Nazis
killing immigrants. And she will click on it and believe it. And then when these two
people meet in the elevator, they can't have a discussion because their minds are poisoned. We now have a society in
which people are spending sometimes hours every day poisoning themselves, just kind of feeding
their hatred, their anger. And it's all because of
the battle for attention. 'Cause what the attention experts realized over the last couple of decades is that if you want to
grab somebody's attention, the best buttons to press are hatred, and fear, and greed. So all you need to do is find out what this person already fears. And then you can feed him or her more. - Isn't a risk recipe against
fake news and its effects quality journalism and responsible independent publishing? If I recall it correctly, you also wrote that the price that consumers are paying by giving away their data to big platforms is in the long run much higher than giving away some money. And I recall it that you
even actively recommended to better pay for the consumption
of news and information with money than paying with data. So are you advocating digital subscription as a kind of model for quality
publishing in the future? - Certainly, but this is a
model that should be adopted by the entire industry. Also, with the help of regulation. Because if you just try
to do it by yourself, you risk losing the battle for attention. The problem, the present model of the news industry is exciting news for free in exchange for your attention. The real deal is excitement for attention. And this is a terrible deal. Because the truth doesn't
play any part in this deal. What the customer gets
is excitement, not truth. And what the peddlers of
the fake news and all that, what they get is your attention, which they then sell for a lot of money. There is still money. A lot of money. They sell it to
corporations, or governments, or political parties to get your attention. Now ideally, we should
switch to a different model of high quality news that don't abuse your attention, but costs you a lot of money. I mean people, you know, we pay a lot of money to get quality food, and high quality cars. Why not pay good money
to get high quality news? This is a very strange
thing that has happened. - You will get applause for that idea. (audience clapping) In your book you referred to another very interesting aspect. And that is the role of Google in the whole advertising industry. And you described how in the first place, they basically took away
advertising from the publishers because they have the
direct and better tracked proposals for advertisers, and they take the content from the publishers without paying. By the way that's something that we are fiercely fighting against at the moment in Brussels and elsewhere. So you described that. But you described it
only as the first step. You said that basically
destroys potentially publishing and gives Google a high
market share in advertising. But the next step is that they're destroying the
whole advertising industry because advertising is not needed. Could you explain that I think very, very interesting theory? - Yeah, it's very simple. I mean, at present, let's say Mercedes Benz
want to sell you a car so they pay for advertising. But ultimately, Google wants to reach a point when they have so much
information about the world, and so much information about you that you can ask Google anything. Now if we reach a point when
I can ask Google anything, then when I want to buy a car, I would just ask Google, hey Google, what car should I buy? And Google will take into account everything it knows, not only about all the
different cars in the world, fuel consumption, and safety, and regulations, and if they used child labor
in a third world country to produce part of the car and so forth. It will also use everything
it knows about me. My preferences, my political opinions, my views on climate change, my views on Middle Eastern politics. Everything will go into that. And they will just tell you, look, the perfect car for you is X. And if they do a good enough job, I will just buy X. The advertisement will not mean anything. Actually, I will know that my judgment is
constantly being manipulated by advertisers. So I don't want to trust my judgment, which is so easily manipulated. I prefer to trust Google. And then there is no need
of advertisement at all. - So in the end, Google, with the help of AI knows ourselves better than we do. And you gave one very
extreme example in your book. You said, I wasted a lot of
time in my life dating girls because I didn't know that I'm gay. - I didn't date many girls, don't worry. - Had I asked Google, they
would have told me earlier. - Yes. - So can you imagine that one day really a search engine and
artificial intelligence is interfering to that degree in our very personal private life? - Yeah, this is actually
technologically, it's quite simple. I mean, you just need, for example, to track eye movements. As you watch like, I don't know, they don't even tell you. Like you watch YouTube. And the computer just follows your eyes. Like how you see an image of a sexy guy and a sexy
girl in swimming suits walking on the beach somewhere. Where do your eyes go and where do they linger? This is something that very
often you don't control that. Let's say the first second, before you even realize what is happening, the computer can very easily tell, if not today, than in
two years or five years, what is happening to
your eyes at that moment. Again, attention. Where does your attention goes? And we are very close to the point, and maybe we're already at the point when somebody like Google, or like the Chinese government, or like the secret police, can know the sexual identity of teenagers long before the teenagers
realize it about themselves. And the consequences can go
in all kinds of directions. If you live in Iran,
there is one consequence. If you live in the United States, then maybe Coca-Cola knows that, let's go back to advertisement. If Coca-Cola wants to sell me Coke, they should use the advertisement
with the shirtless guy and not the advertisement
with the girl in the bikini. Now Coca-Cola knows that, let's say, and Pepsi doesn't know it. So Coke shows me an ad
with a shirtless guy. Pepsi shows me an ad
with a girl in a bikini. Next day, I go to the supermarket,
I buy coke and not Pepsi. I don't even know why. I don't need to know why. Only they need to know why. In your book, you also referred
to the ethical conflicts that AI can create in the
context of self-driving cars. So the decision that an
algorithm has to make if there is a collision. Do I rather go to collide, continue to collide with a wall? Or do I collide with two
people walking on the street? And then you suggested
that Tesla has to launch two different cars. A Tesla egoist and a Tesla altruist. So I could ask you an unfair question. Would you rather by the
altruist or the egoist? - The research on that
has already been done. Almost everybody says that people should buy the Tesla altruist. But when people are
asked about themselves, I would buy the egoist, that's for sure. - [Mathias] You are an honest person. Thank you very much for that. - So this is why we need
government and regulation on that. If you leave it to the free market, the customer is always right, then you will get some very
scary dystopian results. - But given that ethical problem, and various regulatory issues around it, when do you think is
self-driving mobility level five, so fully automized driving realistic? When will it be the new normal? - You should ask an expert about that. But it depends on the country. In North Korea tomorrow, I mean, I think personally that one of the first countries in the world which will just ban human drivers and will have only self-driving cars could be countries like North Korea where you just need the
approval of one person. And I guess there will
be a lot of corporations, or at least one, that will rush and say wonderful, we have the greatest
laboratory in the world. We start in North Korea and then we can move to, after we do all the experiments, and we learn from the mistakes, and 500 North Koreans are dead but okay, that's nothing in North Korea, then we can launch the
safe model in Berlin. - By the way, very interesting, when Elon Musk was asked
that question at a conference when self-driving mobility
would be approved he said, that's not the question. The question is when is human driving. - Going to be forbidden, yeah, I agree. - And he also used a
reference to elevators when nobody could
imagine hundred years ago that elevators could
run without a lift boy. But the real serious question here is a system where both is allowed. Human driving and automized driving. Isn't that creating even more conflicts than a system where you
have only self-driving cars? - There are big potential problems there. But again, the starting
point of the discussion should be to realize that today, every year, 1.25 million people are killed in traffic accidents every year. That's twice the number of people that die from war, crime, and terrorism put together. And so to switch to self-driving vehicles, we will never reach perfect. We just need to be better than humans. And if the switch to
self-driving vehicles means that the number of people being killed in traffic accidents go down to half a million a year, we saved 700,000 lives every year. So it's not going to be perfect, but there is a lot to
be said for switching to self-driving vehicles. - You said that you don't
want to become a politician or that you have no
party political profile. Nevertheless I have to ask
you a political question or raise the new topic because you know that the most
heated topic these days in Germany and I think
in the rest of Europe is the issue of migration. And you wrote an impressive
chapter on that book with a kind of clarity and coolness that nobody would dare to
write about here in Germany. And then basically you
reduced it to three rules, the rules of successful migration. And I translated it myself, so perhaps inappropriately, but I just read it. First, the host country
is hosting immigrants. Full stop, that's a fact. Second, in return, immigrants have to
respect norms and values of the host country, even if it means to give up some of their traditional
norms and values. Third, if migrants
integrate appropriately, they become equal members
of the host country. They become us. So, do you think that these three rules could be implemented in Germany and could solve the heated debate and put calm down political radicalization and strengthen left and right-wing parties? Or does it remain a kind of punchline of a future-oriented historian? - Theoretically, you can do anything. I mean, there is no... All identities that
exist today in the world were formed through a historical process in which people from different backgrounds were amalgamated into a new identity. A thousand years ago, even 200 years ago, there were no Germans in the
sense that we have today. You had Bavarians, and Saxons, and Prussians, and so forth. And quite often the animosity, and the hatred, and violence, let's say between
Catholics and Protestants, if you think about the 30 years war, was far, far worse than anything we see today. And descendens of the people
who butchered each other by the millions, now they don't care you're
a Catholic or a Protestant, you're a Bavarian, you're a Prussian. Maybe there are a few jokes about it. But it's no longer a major issue I think in German politics. Certainly not like in 1618. So, you can integrate people. There is no people often think
about it in biological terms like if different human groups are like different animal species. And this is absolute nonsense. You cannot integrate
chimpanzees and gorillas to form a single specie. Just, you know, biology doesn't allow it. Gorillas and chimpanzees
cannot have children together. But with humans, it's possible. On the other side of the coin, I think it should be very clear, again, from a historical perspective, that if the majority
of the local population is against immigration, it is usually a huge mistake
on the part of the government to try to force large-scale immigration because it just wouldn't work. You need the cooperation of the population in order for immigration to work. So if people refuse, even if you think they're
making an ethical mistake, that they should agree, still this is democracy. I'll say something different. I think maybe the worst thing
about the immigration now, in Germany and in Europe as a whole, is that people are
turning it into a kind of man against struggle
between good and evil, as if anybody who opposes immigration is a racist Nazi. And anybody who is in favor of immigration is a lunatic or a traitor. And I think that in the end, this is a debate between two legitimate views, which should be decided through the normal democratic process. This is what you have democracy for. - But in Germany there are
additional sensitivities driven by the historic guilt and trauma that the Third Reich and
the Holocaust created. So in a way it's understandable that Germany is handling these things with a higher degree of emotions. - Yeah, it's understandable. - [Mathias] But it's wrong. - But it's not necessarily constructive. - Israel integrated a
couple of million Russians very successfully. But the big difference
was that they all shared, first of all, the desire to become a
member of the Israeli society and all its values. And a large part of their people shared the most widespread
religion in Israel. So to which degree does culture, tradition, and religion define certain
limits for integration? - Yeah, it defines a lot of limits. Now in Israel also, immigration, it's a country of immigrants. Almost everybody, or his or her parents, immigrated from someplace. It's really, if you look for an example in history of immigrants violently
conquering a country to which they immigrated, like you know all these
mad scenarios I think that people have around here of Muslim immigrants taking
over Germany or Europe and turning them into a caliphate. So an example you can see is Israel in which immigrants forcefully
took over the country into which they immigrated. And the whole ethos of the
country is built around that. And the Russian Jews were
accepted with open arms generally because Israel is in a
struggle for survival. And they were seen in
the end as more soldiers. Not necessarily literal soldiers. Also literal soldiers in the army. But also more broadly,
soldiers in the struggle for the survival of Israel. Now you have integration
coming from non-Jews, say from Africa. And the reaction of
this Israeli population is completely different. - So the third point, if migrants, immigrants
integrate appropriately, they become equal members
of the host country. They become us. But if not, what should be done? And what is successful integration? So how do you measure
successful integration? What are the criteria? And what happens if these
criteria are not met? - Well, the whole chapter
is really about that. One of the key points is the
difference in timetables, in timescale. Different people judge the
success or failure of immigration on a different timescale. And I think a lot of the
misunderstanding is about that. If I'm a second generation immigrant and I was born here, my parents came from Syria,
or Turkey, or somewhere, but I was born here. If I'm not fully integrated
into German society, is this failure or not? On the timescale of my own personal life, if people tell me you're not
German, go back to Turkey, for my life I was born here. Maybe I don't even speak Turkish. I never visited Turkey. All my friends are here, all my life I was here. So when people tell me go back to Turkey, I was never there. What do you want from me? I'm German. But from a broad historical perspective, 30 years is an extremely short time for a culture to fully absorb people from a different country, from a different religion, from a different culture. So you have this really difficult issue of what is the timescale
we are thinking about. And similarly there is
this issue of accounting of how do you count violations. Let's say you have a million immigrants, and out of these million immigrants, 100 join terrorist organizations and commit attacks
against the host country. Is this success or failure? You have 100 violators and 999,000 something people who didn't. So how do you count that? And the opposite is also true. If you walk down the
street a thousand times and you're not molested, nobody shouts any racial abuse, nothing, and then one time somebody
shouts a racial abuse. So is the conclusion is that the Germans
accept me or reject me? How do you count? What is the accounting measurement? And what you see in most of
the debates about immigration is that just the two sides of the debate, they are using a different timescale. They are using a different
measure of accounting. So referring back to what you said earlier in your speech about the facts, and the importance of facts. So yes, we have a fact
that an immigrant joined a terrorist organization. But what does it mean? Is it a violation of the immigration deal on the whole or not? If you can't agree on
the accounting method and the timescale then two sides looking
at exactly the same fact will reach completely
different conclusions. - We learned that the three
roles that you have defined are not solving all problems immediately, but it's a good start. So we have to come to an end and just one concluding question. Looking forward, let's say for the next hundred years, hundred years ahead, what are, from your perspective today, what is the biggest threat, and what is the biggest
opportunity for our society? - So the biggest threat is the three big problems I
mentioned in the beginning. Nuclear war, climate change, and technological disruption. And of the three, technological disruption is the most complicated to deal with because we don't know what to do with it. With nuclear war and climate
change, it's very easy. At least we know what we need to do. Stop them, prevent them. But with the rise of AI and biotechnology, there are immense
beneficial opportunities. And we are not going to stop
researching AI and biotech. So the best-case scenario is that we will have much better healthcare, we will have much more leisure time, we will have the ability to explore ourselves and
develop ourselves as humans in ways which were never
possible before in history. The flip side, the worst-case scenario
is that we might have digital dictatorships in which all power is
concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite that monitors everybody all the time. Really, humanity might split into a cast of super humans and underclass of useless people, people who have no economic value, and no political power. And it's the same technologies. I think one of the big lessons of the 20th century, and of the industrial revolution, and again of this industrial plant we are now having the conference in, which began its life as
an electricity plant, is that technology is not deterministic. The same electricity served the Third Reich and communist East Germany, and liberal, democratic, united Germany. So the electricity doesn't
care what you do with it. And you can do with it
many different things. And it's the same with AI and biotech. We can use them to build paradise or hell. It's really up to us. - Do you believe in singularity, that one day machines will
take over human intelligence? - Human intelligence, yes. Human consciousness, I'm
far less certain about that. - Okay, that's reassuring. Thank you very much for this. Great talking to you.
- Thank you, thank you. (audience clapping)
