the state might lose at least some of the incentive to invest in their health, education and welfare. Still, at least he doesn’t fall back on the usual panacea of universal basic income, and his warning about what happens if we fail to develop a plan is clear: “as the masses lose their economic importance. It is also a shame that he offers no prescriptions, beyond categorising them: “Potential solutions fall into three main categories: what to do in order to prevent jobs from being lost what to do in order to create enough new jobs and what to do if, despite our best efforts, job losses significantly outstrip job creation.” Fair enough, but this should be the start of the discussion, not the end. Perhaps next year, the World Economic Forum could organise a debate on this question between Harari and a leading sceptic, such as David Autor. Very well said, but this part of the book would be much more powerful if he had offered a fully worked-through argument for this claim, which in the last couple of years has been sneeringly dismissed by a procession of tech giant CEOs, economists, and politicians. The potential social and political disruptions are so alarming that even if the probability of systemic mass unemployment is low, we should take it very seriously.”

The fact that this has happened during previous waves of automation is absolutely no guarantee that it will happen again under the very different conditions of the twenty-first century. He is refreshingly blunt about the possibility of technological unemployment: “It is dangerous just to assume that enough new jobs will appear to compensate for any losses. It is undoubtable, however, that the technological revolutions will gather momentum in the next few decades and will confront humankind with the hardest trials we have ever encountered.” It concerns the coming technological changes, which Harari first explored in “Homo Deus.” “Most people in Birmingham, Istanbul, St Petersburg and Mumbai are only dimly aware, if at all, of the rise of artificial intelligence and its potential impact on their lives.

“21 Lessons” is divided into five parts, of which the first is the most coherent and the best.

Harari 21