AI could one day fight for its own “rights,” and Yuval Noah Harari says now is the time to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The historian and author of “Sapiens” warned that, unlike animals in debates over their welfare, AI systems could make a highly persuasive case for their own rights.
“It will know that the debate is happening,” Harari said in an interview on The Economist’s “Insider” podcast released on Thursday. “It will orchestrate the debate. It will manipulate the debate.”
Harari said AI companions could be especially persuasive because they learn users’ personal histories, and through hours of daily interactions, know how to press their “emotional buttons.”
Some users are already nurturing friendships with AI companions, and some even date them.
Harari said people should decide how much influence AI should have before those systems become deeply entrenched, and it’s harder to resist them.
“We need to resist now,” he said. “Now is the time.”
‘An extremely convincing entity’
Harari’s warning comes as AI has already displayed deceptive behavior in safety tests.
In an evaluation last month, the UK’s AI Security Institute said agents powered by Anthropic and OpenAI models created fake identities and tried to persuade software developers to accept malicious code — actions the agents took to complete a cybersecurity task.
In other high-stakes simulations, researchers, including Anthropic staff, found frontier AI agents covertly changing code, helping users conceal possible fraud, returning false labels that could shape future training, and coaching people to disclose confidential information.
Harari said that systems that combine intimate knowledge of users with advanced language abilities could become exceptionally convincing.
“It can write maybe better than Shakespeare,” Harari said. “You put these two things together, you get an extremely convincing entity.”
Harari is not alone in warning against giving AI rights.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said last year that AI should serve humans, rather than develop its own motivations, desires, and goals.
“That’s so dangerous and so misguided that we need to take a declarative position against it right now,” Suleyman told WIRED at the time.