Harari and Hacking of Minds

Y N Harari sees the vulnerability of the human mind to being hacked by AI-enabled tools. as these tools may have a better understanding of the targetted person than the concerned person's understanding of self. Perhaps, Harari misses the point that the same information technology also makes the human mind in general far smarter than it was earlier. It would be quite difficult to control some people's minds for any considerable period. The internet is not a highway; it is a network fed from multiple autonomous nodes and a person has access to and is accessible to many sources and players. A person may know from various sources and check its veracity from readily available references. For instance, the much-derided so-called 'WhatsApp University' made people acutely aware of the probability of falsity of the matters which circulate in the public domain. Earlier it was an impossibility. Minds once hacked could remain hacked even for centuries and over vast geographical expanses. The mind hackers, who contrive for usurping people's persons and their possessions for their majesty and gratification, now face more difficult times.

Niraj Kumar Jha