I have mixed feelings on Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. In many ways it reminds me of Sapiens and I would recommend reading Sapiens. However, I don’t think Nexus is quite as interesting. That can certainly be personal bias as I probably prefer human history in general over the history of communication and speculation on how AI will change the way we communicate (and already is).
Nexus does have some interesting anecdotes including stories of witch hunts and early Soviet communism. Those were entertaining and worth the price of admission. The stuff on AI is also interesting in its own right, but very alarmist and very speculative.
One big thesis from the author is that every communication system must have self-correcting mechanisms. In science, scientists can get things wrong, but science provides a strong self-correcting mechanism that will come through and eventually correct the misinformation (honest mistakes). Therefore the author rates science very highly. Whereas some political systems rely on disinformation (purposeful lies) and shut down any correcting mechanism. Those are the scary ones and religion tends to be in there as well with their infallible books that don’t actually seem to keep up with the times. Durable religions will use holy men as interpreters to help get to a correct interpretation of books (that keeps up with the times) and thus have some self-correcting mechanisms which allows those religions to continue.
The author thinks all AI needs self-correcting mechanisms as well and worries that some will not be built with it. That AI can create a surveillance state that even the most aggressive dictators in history would be jealous of and that any means to correct it will be suppressed by the AI itself. It’s something we need to be aware of. AI isn’t like past tools. It’s the first tool that can think on its own.
Nexus has some reasonably good opinions and advice for decision makers on how to deal with AI. Still, it was only mildly interesting overall and not totally relevant to me. I don’t regret listening to it, but I don’t think it will make me a better person in any noticeable way and there are more interesting books out there if I was listening purely for entertainment.