 Well, welcome everybody. Welcome. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for this issue briefing. It's extraordinary issue briefing which we arranged just because there was so much interest when the programme was released to the public last week that Professor Hariri here was going to be speaking in the congress hall. There was such an intense amount of interest to get him in a smaller, more conducive environment. I can't think of anywhere more conducive than here in the media centre all that way from the busyness and the hubbub of the congress centre to drill down a little bit more and ask a few more questions and try to get a bit more behind the professor's work. So as is the norm with issue briefings, we don't have a huge amount of time. It's 30 minutes. We want to make it as interactive as possible. I'd like as much disagreement and challenging of the professor's theories as you can possibly muster. They're quite compelling and I've been trying and failing. One thing I will say is I'm glad there is a 5 minute walk between the congress centre and here because after his session I was looking for a deep dark room to gather my thoughts. I should also say, and I always forget this, but welcome indeed to our audience watching live online. We're on Twitter on weforum.org and a number of other platforms as well. Professor Yvonne Hariri, you're a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. You're of course best known for your two books, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, I believe, in 2014 and Followed Up Swiftly by Homo Duce, A Brief History of Tomorrow, which was a year later. I would just ask, I'd like to take advantage of my privilege of being in this position and ask the first question. So you said in your speech just now that politicians are a bit like musicians and they have the ability to play on human and emotional and biochemical systems and they have the power to inspire fear. Now actually I find you are similarly able to inspire fear myself. What I wasn't sure about is what your view of the future is, whether you think it's a good thing, whether you're a scientist, you're quite entranced by its possibilities and whether you're as scared as maybe some of the other people that have left the room. I just don't know, I mean, I don't think that anybody has any idea how the world would look like in 40 or 50 years, let alone a century. The only thing we are certain is that it's going to be completely different from what it is today. I don't remember who said it, but somebody said that if they tell you about the world in 2050 and it sounds like science fiction, it's probably not true. But if they tell you about the world of 2050 and it doesn't sound like science fiction, it's definitely not true. So this is the best I can do. The message is that technology is not deterministic. It's not like, okay now we have AI and bioengineering, so this is going to happen, no matter what we do. No, it opens up an entire menu of possibilities and nothing is determined in advance. I was part of my preparation for this meeting. We focus quite heavily on the fourth industrial revolution here and it was, again, popularizing a book, this time by our professor, Clare Schwabart, founder and executive chairman, a couple of years ago. I was looking to see what the narrative had been that had followed from this book. In my reading last year, there were less developments in terms of technology but more developments in terms of the impacts of technology and the kind of thoughtfulness around the need to bake in some kind of system to govern and to try to steer the technology in the right way. What is your view of where we're at as humanity and trying to understand, as you say, these technological leaps that we're seeing before our eyes? We are making so far very little progress. Most people are hardly aware of what is happening and even many governments, their basic attitude, ah, we have more urgent things to take care of than this. As I said in my talk, the world is divided into a very, very small minority of people concentrated in a few corporations and governments that have at least a clearer idea of what is really happening and what is at stake and the vast majority of humanity that they just don't have the time, they don't have the volition, they don't have the education or the ability to make sense of what is happening and this is very, very dangerous. In the past, you talk about the succession of difficult situations humanity has found itself in. If you're on the wrong side of events in feudalism or industrial age you're a peasant or you're a worker and we could find ourselves on the wrong side of history again in the vision that you create. Are we less able in the current situation we're about to enter to be in charge of our own destiny than we have been in the past? It was always very difficult to be in charge of your destiny. What is unique now is that the big danger for people is no longer exploitation, it's irrelevance. In the previously in history, if you were on the wrong side of history if you didn't understand what was happening and you lost the competition then you ended up as some kind of serf or manual labourer being exploited by the people who understand and have the power. Now if you're left behind you're facing something far worse which is to be completely irrelevant. They won't even need you as a serf or as a slave. Which is a worrying thing and of course we form again we're very concerned about how to find meaningful work and meaningful existence for folk in the future including ourselves. One of the comments by the moderator in the last session in the congress centre was that Chancellor Merkel actually passed you in the green room when she'd gone and mentioned that she'd read your book. How involved have you been working with governments and other organisations in trying to think out this next stage of history and try to make sense of it? I mentioned I think a scant respect for the ability of governments to put in place the long term thinking as well. Are there any good examples of collaborations or signs of hope that we're attacking this in the right way? I'm not very involved with government. I see my job as a historian and I still regard myself as a historian basically as just trying to level the playing ground a bit in the sense of making more people appreciate what is happening around the world, what is at stake, what are the developments we are facing so that more people can join the debate about the future which is the future of all of us. If you're not part of the debate it doesn't mean you won't be affected by the consequences. I have no illusion that we can include all 7.5 billion people in the debate for a variety of reasons but even magnifying the number of people involved by ten times it's still something that we should aspire to and this is what I see as my role as a historian just to create more clarity for people and to thereby empower them to have a voice in this debate. How what kind of response are you getting from people? Is this a slow burn? We talk a lot here again about shifting mindsets which is never as fast as one would like. Do you feel that mindsets are being shifted or is this still too early to say? No, they are shifting but the pace of progress of what we're talking about, especially the disruptive technology is much faster than the pace in which minds shift and it's very very difficult to really change the minds of people. Which goes back to your comment that we don't know our bodies as well as algorithms may soon know our bodies. Let's have a quick show of hands so you want to ask questions. We have a couple here. Let's start then, please wait for the microphone if you can remind us who you are and where you're from. Thank you. Alec Hogg from businessnews.com. There are many questions but I'll throw two at you and maybe you could answer both of them. The first is some kind of an update from sapiens on the two big lies, markets and the state. The second thing is we're in the media. People are uninformed. 50% we heard from Edelmans don't consume media anymore. How can we change that? So about markets and states, there are still the main actors, the main agents in history. We don't have a new agent so far and I don't think that it's going to change anytime soon. The two big processes is states trying to accumulate more power and markets trying to accelerate the pace of growth. This is what is pushing these revolutions forward and this will continue. Anybody who tries to get off this train, unless the whole human race gets off the train at the same time by some common agreement, then you'll just be left behind. If some states say, I don't want to go on with these kinds of developments, while other states continue with business as usual, then it will just be left behind and no state is willing to do that to itself. As for media, I'm not sure that I understand the question. If you can just rephrase it. Media, sorry. At the Edelmans Trust barometer yesterday, it came out that 50% of people are no longer consuming media at all. Any kind of media. The 50% that are consuming them, two-thirds of them don't know the difference between fake news and proper news. We are presumably in the business of trying to inform anti-fake news. Have you got any thoughts of how one... As a historian, I don't really understand the hysteria around fake news because this was always the case. When was the era of truth in the 1980s, the 1930s, the 18th century, the Middle Ages? When was it that everybody consumed just truthful stories, that governments didn't lie, that propaganda didn't play a central role? I think that in some ways, the situation is better now than it was. I'm a medievalist, so I tend to look at everything through the prism of the Middle Ages and believe me the Middle Ages was full of far worse fake news than what we are seeing today. I think that the really big problem is the flood of information of any kind. I mean, even the truth is problematic when you are just flooded by enormous amounts of truthful but irrelevant information or too much information to make sense of and to create some kind of meaningful picture. What we are really missing is not just the ability to tell the difference between what's true and what's not true. It's the ability to make sense of the big picture. This is the real difficulty. In this sense, the problem with media is not so much whether the stories are true or not. To what extent does the media focus on really helping people to have an understanding of the big picture or is it just focused on pushing the next story? It doesn't matter if the story is true or not. That's for me the real issue. You mentioned a slight distrust of governments to put in place the long-term thinking of talking and a slight distrust of the media for putting across that bigger picture. This is a multi-stakeholder embracing organisation and meeting. What stakeholder groups are best positioned to do this long-term thinking that we need to do? It would be easy to say science, but that's too easy because when you don't have responsibility, you can have all kinds of ideas and theories and talk big. I don't think that the government of scientists fooling the world will necessarily do a better job. What we need is not to get rid of the state, so get rid of the corporations, but to get them on board and to work with them and through them. Gentleman on the front row, let's move on to you, sir. Please wait for the microphone. So if we as a species are changing... I'm Vikram Chandra from NDTV. If you said that we as a species are changing and the era of sapiens might be coming to an end, have you thought any further as to what could be coming and what sort of entity is likely to replace sapiens? That's an impossible question to answer because given the ability to re-engineer bodies and brains and minds, then our imagination too is up for grabs. I can tell you what sapiens like us would like to do with things like bioengineering or direct brain-computer interfaces. They would like to extend their lifespans to be more healthy, to be more beautiful and so forth and so on. But once you change the basic parameters of the human brain and of the human mind, I have absolutely no idea what the new kinds of entities would like to do with these technologies. I mean, so far in history what we have seen is humans just like us changing the world outside them. So they cut down forests, they build bridges, they build factories, all kinds of things. But the real change now is that we are gaining the ability to start re-engineering not the world outside us, but the world inside us, inside the body and the brain. By definition, you don't know where this is leading because you're still stuck with your brain. So if you can imagine what the future entities will do with the technology, they are not superior to you, they are just like you. What are the first ways we'll see this happening? Give us some kind of first baby steps towards infiltrating the inside of the body rather than the world around us. What do we need to look out for? It's happening on three fronts. There is biological engineering, which is taking the body as we know it, as natural selection shaped it, and basically speeding up natural selection with all kinds of help from intelligent design. And we are beginning to see all kinds of interventions on the genetic level, all kinds of interventions with the growing new organs and rejuvenating organs and so forth. So this is one front, biological engineering, which is the most conservative because it still stays with the basic building blocks of organisms as we have known them for four billion years. Okay, so they change a few genes and you have a different brain, but it's still an organism as we have known it. The second approach is more radical and this is to start combining organic and inorganic stuff. So direct brain computer interfaces replacing organic hands with bionic hands, adding to the body a second immune system, which is not organic but an inorganic immune system, made up of millions of tiny nanorobots inside your body that diagnose cancer and eliminate all kinds of diseases and so forth. But the main command and control center is still your organic brain, which is connected to all kinds of devices or computers, can serve the internet, whatever. The third and most radical way is to completely give up, completely abandon organic stuff and create completely inorganic lifeforms. Whether this can be done or not is an open question. The biggest open question is yet so far in the life sciences is the question of consciousness. We have no idea what consciousness is, what it does, how it emerges. The common assumption is that somehow the mind consciousness emerges from the brain and if we hack the brain and if we understand how billions of neurons create subjective experiences of anger and love and pain and pleasure, then there should be no barrier for recreating these kinds of experiences based on silicon and not carbon, based on computers and not brains. But this is just, at present, it's just a dogma. We are still far from really understanding consciousness, so maybe it's not like that and maybe we'll never be able to create non-organic lifeforms. But more and more serious scientists are becoming convinced that sooner or later this will happen and we'll be able to leave behind the realm of organic compounds and create completely inorganic lifeforms. I've seen a couple of hands going, maybe we should just take the questions and then we'll take them in a row. Lady at the front row, Mum, if you wouldn't mind giving us your name. Hi, I'm Pia Mantini from Argentina. I have a question that you talk about markets and the state. I was wondering if you see any role in the future for the networks and specifically what are your thoughts on the blockchain as a mechanism to organise human cooperation at scale that maybe previously was only able to be done by states or markets. And a tricky one, what are you hopeful about? Okay, well, let's just see if a gentleman over there and give you some time to think about that one. Hi, I'm Marcelo Nins from Global News TV Brazil. I've heard Mr Jack Maaf from Alibaba, his thoughts about education. That the world would need a revolution in education to be prepared for the loss of jobs to computers and robots. He talked about 800 million jobs being lost in the near future. I'd like to have your take in what needs to be done in education because it always seems that we are educating, looking at the past and not at the future. And he says that the more important things nowadays to separate clearly humans from robots. So teaching kids music, sports and painting, let's say, to make them very different from robots. I'd like to have your say on education. Anybody else while we're doing the right of questions? Yeah, a gentleman in the front row. I'd love to know how you see these three sects or these three movements playing out in the near term. Maybe a decade or two, something that you feel you do have some analytical visibility into. I mean the three ways of the organic mix. Bio-humanism, neuro-humanism and post-humanism. Let's just do the gentleman in the last row and then we'll take all these. You can choose which one you want to do first. Rick Wild's true news, Florida, USA. In the earlier session you said there's no intelligent design by a god in the clouds. Could you elaborate on those thoughts? Okay, so we have blockchain and the power of networks for facilitating human cooperation. Education, revolution and education. Timeline of three stages. God in the clouds and last but not least, what makes you hopeful? Don't run out of time before you get to that last question, please. So about markets and states and blockchain. I mean basically we've been there before in the 1990s in the great optimistic era of the internet. And then we heard the same story that all states, the markets, corporations, this is old stuff. The internet will completely change the way things are happening. We'll create all kinds of digital communities that will replace states and corporations and markets. And as we all know it didn't happen. What happened was that the corporations, the markets and the states colonized cyberspace and are now becoming more and more powerful. And they now compete among themselves. It's states against states against corporations. And now we have this new promise. Okay, the old internet was not good enough to do it, blockchain will do it. And maybe it will happen. I mean history has never just repeated itself. The fact that something happened last time is no guarantee that this will happen again this time. So we'll just have to wait and see. I'm skeptical because the states and the market have been here for such a long time already. And they have managed to adapt to so many different new environments that I find it hard to imagine that just one more technological twist and they are out of the game. Some of them may become extinct but others will adapt and take over also the new technology maybe. So this is about the promise of blockchain. About education, then yes, I mean this is the really big question with all the talk about job loss and so forth is it's not the absolute annihilation of jobs. There will be new jobs. The big question is whether people will be able to perform these new jobs, whether they will have the skills because usually when people talk today about the coming waves of automation and the creation of new jobs what they think about is jobs that demand specialized, not specialized but more highly proficient skills jobs that demand creativity and innovation and things like that. So you have millions of jobs that demand that but do you have the necessary education and skills to fulfill the jobs? In the previous waves of automation, let's say if you're a farm worker in 1910 and they don't need you anymore because they now have these new tractors but there are openings in the tractor factory in Detroit so you move from the farm to Detroit and you apply to the tractor factory and it's a routine manual job so you do need to learn some new skills and you do need some time to adjust but in principle most farm workers were able to reinvent themselves as factory workers relatively easily but in the next stage in the next waves of automation if you lost your job as a cashier or as a textile worker and there is a new job in data analytics or in designing virtual reality games that's going to be far more difficult and we are not teaching young people today the necessary skills for the simple reasons that nobody knows what these skills will be. We can't predict what will be the necessary skills so the best bet is to focus on things like emotional intelligence like mental resilience, like the ability to learn because this will definitely be necessary. The problem here is that nobody really knows how to teach it on a massive scale. You can create a very innovative school that focuses on things like emotional intelligence and things like mental resilience but how do you scale that for billions of people around the world? This is a big question about the three ways in which this is going to play out. We see it beginning to happen in different ways around us today. Genetic engineering is no longer just science fiction. Every month or so we hear about a new treatment, a new experimental method on mice or on monkeys or sometimes on people which is being explored and it's the same with brain-computer interfaces. Now, for example, the idea of just thinking about something and the lights go out or something appears on the computer screen, this is no longer science fiction. It's happening. Once we have a good two-way communication system, direct communication system between brains and computers, this is kind of the watershed moment. Once you have a good two-way, nobody has any idea what happens after that. It's kind of like the screen comes down and a completely different show begins. For example, if you have a good two-way communication system directly between brains and computers, it also means you can connect several brains together to create an interbrain net because it's the same communication system and nobody has any idea what this means for things like identity. Who am I when I can access directly the brain of another person? The third way of creating completely inorganic lifeforms, this is still science fiction. Of course, it depends on your definition of a lifeform, but if you wanted to have consciousness, if you wanted to have subjective experiences, then this is still science fiction and maybe there will be a breakthrough in the next decade or two, maybe it will never happen. I don't know. The fourth question was about intelligent design and clouds. I was just referring to it that the word intelligent design immediately brings to mind of many people. The creationist idea that all lifeforms are designed by God and sometimes people tell me, don't use the word intelligent design. But it is intelligent design, what we are about to see in the world. It's just not the intelligent design of the God of the Bible. It's the intelligent designs of human beings and increasingly of algorithms. This is why I referred to the intelligent design of clouds, of the cloud computing. That designing a lifeform is such a complicated thing to do that in all likelihood no human being will be able to do it. But our algorithms may be able to do it for us and increasingly we'll see in more and more fields this shift in authority from humans to algorithms. So even if we keep as figureheads the presidents and the CEOs will continue to be human beings because we don't like the idea of being ruled by algorithms, actually these presidents and CEOs, they will be choosing between options dictated by algorithms often without really understanding how they came to these options and what do these options mean. So you'll still have some human being being given the option, okay we'll do A, B or C but the ones really driving the show will be the algorithms that shape the options in the first place. And the last question was about... What gives you hope? That humanity has managed to overcome very big challenges in the past as well. If you look back say 50 years, in the 1950s and 1960s, the nuclear war was on everybody's like number one item on the human agenda and lots of people were convinced that humanity is not up to it and that sooner or later the cold war will end in a nuclear catastrophe that will annihilate all of humankind and much of the ecological system as well. And so far it didn't happen. The cold war ended not in some huge bloodbath but actually ended peacefully with some eruptions here and there but generally speaking if you think about previous similar crises in history it was the most peaceful transition of power maybe in human history what happened at the end of the cold war. And this was not a miracle. This was human beings making wise choices. The Soviets, the Americans, the Chinese, the Europeans, they made wise choices during the cold war and it ended peacefully. It gives us no guarantee that we can do the same thing with the challenges that we now face, but it does give us hope that yes human stupidity is unlimited but so is hopefully also human wisdom. I'm reminded of the fact that I believe it was after the first nuclear bombs were dropped that we managed to get a treaty for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yes still, I'm with you, I'm hopeful. Good news guys, we have an extra 15 minutes. We've given Professor here more time than we normally give so we can have some more questions and just to give you some time to kind of think about this I'm sure you have plenty. We haven't really talked about business much. I don't know how to make money. Exactly. Before you do, you talk about states and governments but also vast owners of data these days are businesses. My question I'd like to ask is can they be trusted more than governments to be safe custodian, responsible custodians of this data and do you think that the owners of this data today will be the owners of data as we move into this future painting for us? No, not necessarily. We also own the data today. There is no guarantee that they will continue to own it especially as more people and especially governments wake up to the importance of this data they might want to grab it to nationalize it. Actually one of my fears when I was thinking about what to talk when they invited me to Davos and I was thinking about giving this talk my main fear was that it will be considered as a call to nationalize the data. And even though I think there are many reasons to distrust corporations that at least in the West, in China it's different but at least in the West today the main owners of data of the big corporations I'm not convinced we'll be better off if the governments nationalize this data. Again, as I said, I don't have a solution. I think it's really too early. The discussion is just beginning. Let's take a couple more questions. This is the last one, I promise you. Three people there, four. My question was actually your question about data. Merkel said the crucial question is your path to decide who owns the data. I wanted to ask you whether it's better if a corporation owns the data or a government and what scares you more. Let's do four in a row. Mum, if you could give us your name as well. I was wondering, independent of the question of who owns the data, have you thought at all about how requirements might be put in place so that people will have access to their own data? An example is that Axiom and other data aggregators have the sophisticated data model that they use to advertise towards you which it would be really, really, really nice if you could see what do they know about you. What do they know about me? So that you can challenge that and so that you can audit that. If you could talk about that. Pass on the microphone behind you please mum. Can you give us your name and where you're from please? I'm Wendell Wallach and I'm from Yale University in the Hastings Centre. So you've written particularly in the more recent book but also in some of the futuristic aspects of your first book. You've written a lot of ideas that have been around. There's really a large community of people who have been thinking about this and in addition to bringing some good insights and some kind of balanced account an awful lot of what you did or accomplished was just wonderful writing and organizing it in a refreshing way. I was just interested in who you drew upon because there is this large community of scholars out there involved in this and I just wondered who your inspirations are and who you found particularly helpful whose ideas you were inspired by. Gentleman next to you please. Lee Wei from Tsai Shing from China. So mentioning about government you repeatedly mentioning China. I'm wondering do you mean it in a say negative sense as Julian Tadd mentioned earlier digital dictatorship or in a positive sense Chinese government have the capability to do things specifically on these tech giants Chinese society's recognition of their kind of negative impact is lagging behind western society but it seems monopolistic effect on society of these two tech giants are ahead of the west. So do you think Chinese government can do it before things blow up? Not a great choice of words but anyway. So we've got China digital democracy inspirations, access to data and mum your question wasn't quite answered earlier about. So I'll address the first and the last questions together about China. I'm trying to find this middle way. My basic message is not that the Chinese are worse than everybody else or that they are better than everybody else. My basic understanding is that they are ahead of all the other governments in understanding what is happening and what is at stake. And this can be something very good because they are thinking about these issues and they come up with solutions before people in other countries realize that the dangers they are learning how to manipulate it and how to use it. So it can go either way. At present and again I'm not an expert on the subject, I haven't studied it deeply enough. The only thing I can say is that they are probably ahead of other governments in understanding the importance of... In actions I don't know what they do in actuality so this I cannot comment on. But at least from what I... from meetings I had and discussions and what I read the impression is that they really understand what is happening in a way that in the West you talk to people both in governments and sometimes also in business and they are somewhere behind. They think they don't realize the immense power. Most of their thinking is really about shopping and consumerism and if Amazon knows that I like this they can sell me that and almost everybody knows that by now. But the more important stuff that they can know things far more important about me and they can manipulate far deeper aspects of my personality and life this is still something that at least in the West people are not aware of or not aware of enough. Now this brings us to the question of okay so if you have to choose between corporations and governments what do you choose? It's very difficult. On the one hand governments at least represent people or supposed to represent people beyond the shareholders and the managers whereas the big corporations nobody really voted for them or endorsed them in any public way to to take hold of these developments and of the future of humanity. So from this perspective it's better if the data is in the hands of governments who also thinks in broader terms they have the mandate to think not just about profitability but about social issues and about health and about the environment and many other things that corporations this is not their business their business is just business it's just a bottom line so from this perspective it's better if the governments nationalise the data. On the other hand governments can do because they have a broader perspective they can do far worse things with this data than the corporations I mean the corporations okay so they'll make a few more billion dollars but what all kinds of despotic regimes might do I mean if you really build a digital dictatorship based on biometric sensors and biometric data there is no way that it can be dismantled from within. It's the end of the line I mean all these liberal fantasies about people making revolutions and rising up there are 100 steps ahead of you they know what is happening in your brain before the thought is even formulated and they can manipulate you on a far deeper level than just George Orwell and the propaganda machine of the kind they had in the 1930s and 40s so this is really the scary scenario once you go there there is no way of getting out of there so this is why it's really scary if the governments get their hands on this Can we do a quick show of hands to see who would prefer to have governments in control as opposed to business who's the government zoning your data Lady in the 2.5 3.5 and he takes on 3.5 business 7 or 8, 10 business wins Is there a surprise you? But none is, I mean, so where is it? I actually promise not to track personal data My name is Giuliana Ferreina and I'm a journalist career of the Italy So yes, we can think about third options but as we discussed earlier this is a lot of power we are talking about if you establish some, I don't know, NGO that accumulates the data it will become the most powerful organ in the world and then either the states and the corporations will try to get the power back or the same problems you have today with governments and with corporations you will have with this NGO just not using the data it means giving up on all the enormous potential and here, as I said in the talk the most obvious front is healthcare I mean think of the kind of healthcare you could provide to people if you really know what is happening every moment inside their bodies and inside their brains give it up because you are afraid of the other things that this kind of information might make possible My guess is that most people especially when it comes to life and death situations affecting themselves or their children or their spouses would not like would take the risk I mean healthcare will win and in the wake of healthcare will have all the other things making use of this data Evel, let's move on, we have a couple more minutes left Access to your own data and inspirations in whatever order you like Yes, so access to data, this is a very good idea I think for the things we can implement then okay so there is lots of data about me I want to have access to know what they know this is a very good idea, how to implement especially because most of the data would not make any sense to you unless you have the tools to I mean if they give you all the data about you can today get your DNA scan what does it mean? I mean you need an entire system to make sense of data like your DNA scan so this is one issue you need a system and not just the raw data and the other thing is that throughout history the repeated advice that all the philosophers and prophets and poets told people is get to know yourself know thyself and this is very very difficult partly because people often don't want to know themselves very well there are many things you don't want to know about yourself if you really had access not just to the raw data but to what the data means about you this will be a life-shattering event to really know who you are it's not necessarily bad it's just very difficult difficult not in the sense of how to make it happen if it happens it will be something very difficult for people to deal with and again the kind of consumerist idea in the same way they give me the report about my bank transaction every month they'll set me a report or what we learned about you this month this will be a shattering report and your inspirations? I read so much I'll mention just a few with Jared Diamond who first gave me the idea that historians and scientists can talk about these issues seriously from a scientific perspective and there is Franz de Waill who is a primatologist he studies chimpanzees and bonobos and so forth and I've learned from his work more about humans I guess than about only chimpanzees and bonobos and there is a long list of other... we are running out of time so I leave it there but it's a very long list most of my work is not creative it's a work of synthesis I read what people write about chimpanzees and about artificial intelligence and about ancient China and about brain science and I try to bring it together in such a way that it will be meaningful for the average person and it will be helpful and empowering to understand what is happening in the world Find a question for me before we leave so you've written a brief history of humankind you've written a brief history of tomorrow Professor you're a young man The next book is really about the present and the future of the present is the only thing that is left so this is the next book Fascinating, what a vivid description you've given us by far one of the most interesting sessions I've had the pleasure, not this one, the earlier one I hope you enjoyed this one I enjoyed talking to you, thank you so much for joining us here Thank you all for joining us Thank you for watching us online