Yuval Noah Harari: An Internet-Famous Author's 24 Hours in Shanghai | China Through Its Bestsellers

Homo Deus and Sapiens are treated as “tools” for resolving the anxiety people now feel about the big questions.

At 1:30 pm on July 8, the Shanghai International Dance Center, which seats more than 1,000, was full of people who had come for the “Active Evolution: Zaojiu Future Conference.” Two-thirds had bought tickets at 880 or 1,580 yuan; the rest were sponsors or invited guests. Many held copies of Homo Deus and Sapiens, waiting quietly for the Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari to walk out. Outside the hall, more than 5 million people were following the event on livestreaming platforms.

After a four-minute opening video, at 1:42 pm, Yuval — 41 years old, in a black suit — appeared in front of them. He rested one hand on a chair onstage and spoke for 45 minutes, his face almost blank and his voice level, barely moving the whole time.

The point of the conference — according to Tang Weiwei, founder of the organizer, Zaojiu — was to examine the anxieties of modern life.

“We could have six arms, or even more. Some of those arms might be controlled not by our own brains but by artificial intelligence. As AI and robots take over human jobs one by one, 99 percent of humanity could become useless people, and many will lose their economic value. What's worse is that once lower-grade Homo sapiens lose their military and economic value, the elite and governments may lose any reason to invest in education, health and welfare, and those people will end up abandoned by the whole system. That would be the worst news imaginable,” Yuval said in his talk.

I

The author bios in both books call Yuval an “eccentric genius.” By ordinary standards he is indeed a little strange, or at least in the minority. He has a social phobia, yet takes on one speaking engagement after another. He owns no smartphone, yet wrote a book about artificial intelligence. He is also a strict vegan and a dedicated meditator, and he registered his marriage to his partner in Toronto, Canada (Israeli law does not permit same-sex marriage). Had he not written sweeping books like Sapiens and Homo Deus, he would most likely be just another specialist in medieval and military history.

But as a review in The Guardian put it, his books answer a fragmented world's urgent hunger for grand narratives. On the belly band of the simplified-Chinese edition from CITIC Press, Sapiens is sold as a book that will “untangle the major threads of human development, unshackle you from history, and let you see many possible futures,” while Homo Deus “opens a window on how humanity understands the future.”

Each book has sold 1.5 million copies in China.

He is not only a Chinese bestseller, of course, but a global one. Rights to Sapiens have been sold in 43 countries, and the book has been recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jared Diamond, among others. Homo Deus was named a book of the year by The Guardian, The Times and other outlets. More than 100,000 people have taken his online course.

To play up the theme, Zaojiu's WeChat official account gave its event articles headlines like “An Interview With Sapiens Author Yuval Noah Harari: In 300 Years, It Won't Be Humans Ruling the Earth” and “The Author of Sapiens: When Technology Gets So Good That No One Has to Work, What Is the Meaning of Being Alive?”

One of the two passed 100,000 views, the other 60,000. On an ordinary day, most articles on Zaojiu's account draw only a few thousand.

II

At 5:30 pm, four hours into the “Active Evolution: Zaojiu Future Conference,” came the last debate between Yuval and the other guests.

Yuval's opponent was Che Pinjue, an expert partner at Sequoia Capital China. Zhou Tao, a professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, moderated. The topic: “Can humans still control the world and give it meaning?”

Zhou Tao: In our lifetimes there are things computers may do better than we can. Take falling in love — with a sensor, you would know whether the other person felt nothing for you or was head over heels. But maybe you don't want that; maybe you'd rather suffer. So in the future, is there anything a computer could solve for you that you wouldn't want it to? Yuval: The question is what price I'd have to pay for it. But on the whole, no. Che Pinjue: Maybe it's the matter of feelings you just mentioned. Zhou Tao: Suppose you could leave one sentence for the humans of 100 years from now. What would it be? Che Pinjue: I think, therefore I am. Yuval: Do you know the root of suffering? Zhou Tao: If there were one thing the humans of 100 years from now would be sure to obey, without resistance, what would you have them do? Che Pinjue: Do more good. Yuval: Understand the truth.

After that answer Yuval broke into the first grin of his whole day, and the debate ended.

III

Zaojiu spent nearly half a year preparing for this conference. The company is a theater-style speaking platform whose main business is staging talks; the format will sound familiar — “China's TED.” Bringing Yuval over was not the biggest event Zaojiu has ever run, but it still tied up at least 20 employees, and about a hundred people counting outside partners. Around Chinese New Year in 2017, Tang Weiwei read Homo Deus, then newly published in China, and decided that Yuval's “angle of observation, his grasp of this society and his read on what's at the frontier” fit closely with what Zaojiu wanted to do. That is where the idea for the event came from.

“He's actually a pretty big IP by now — one of the highest-priced speakers in the world, many times more expensive than people like KK [Kevin Kelly, author of Out of Control]. What I've heard about KK is that an hour of his time is maybe no more than a few tens of thousands of US dollars,” Tang Weiwei told QDaily.

But Tang Weiwei was not content to have Yuval turn up and speak like a “big star.” Thirteen guests appeared at the July 8 event. Besides Yuval, they included Turing Award winner John Hopcroft, a computer science professor at Cornell University; Wang Jian, chairman of BGI; the artist Zhu Zheqin; Cai Jinqing, chairman of Christie's China; Xu Tian, deputy chair of the genetics department at Yale University; the writer Li Tianfei; Liu Run, chairman of Runmi Consulting; Guangzi, a Columbia University PhD in neurobiology; Gan Jianping, managing partner at Qiming Venture Partners; Che Pinjue, expert partner at Sequoia Capital China; Wang Huai, founding partner of Linear Capital; Wu Sheng, founder of Scenario Lab; and Zhou Tao, professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

Eight of them then gave talks of their own on the future and evolution, approaching it from computing, genetic engineering, music, art and literature, some agreeing with Yuval and some arguing back.

Guangzi said: “In his book Yuval says people are just a pile of algorithms with no free will. I disagree with that 100 percent.” John Hopcroft said: “Individuals, companies and countries that recognize the revolution now coming, and prepare for it, will reap enormous gains.”

The debates, naturally, were arranged in advance. The three guests who took part were Gan Jianping, Wang Jian and Che Pinjue, moderated respectively by Wang Huai, Wu Sheng and Zhou Tao, on the topics “Does the useless class really exist? Will artificial intelligence threaten human safety?”, “Is artificial intelligence really intelligent? What will humans finally evolve into?” and “Can humans still control the world and give it meaning?”

To make sure the debates worked onstage, Zaojiu's staff learned where the actual participants stood and then ran mock debates, and put Yuval through a rehearsal so punishing that even his agent complained it was “wearing him out.”

“Nobody in these panels really goes at it with live ammunition. Sometimes it's just hard to control how far things go,” Tang Weiwei told QDaily. The debates were drilled beforehand, but to preserve “the freshness and authenticity of the moment,” neither side knew what the other would actually say.

IV

If you have read the books, Yuval's talk will sound familiar — and so will the views he offered in the debate afterward.

“Historically speaking, the first thing we can see is that when something becomes very plentiful and very cheap, so that everyone has it, people immediately start expanding or raising their own desires and expectations; they take it for granted that they want more … That's the first point. The second is meaning. Can people find meaning in their lives? There are all sorts of possibilities here. They might have too much free time, no need to work, and just play VR computer games. That's a lot more fun than driving a taxi.”

“I think … the gap between the upper class and the useless class is simply too large, and there may even be a biological gap. In the past there was no biological difference between us; English nobility or peasants, they were all Homo sapiens. And through revolution — the Ming dynasty, for example — a peasant could even become emperor. But a few hundred years from now, with biotechnology and artificial intelligence, biological differences really could appear, and for the first time in history our economic inequality really could be converted into biological inequality. At that point we would no longer have the same capabilities.”

“I think we will develop into a kind of god, and we will hold many so-called divine powers. Traditionally, only gods could hold these powers, but powers like creating life — creating life by engineering, extending life — powers on that scale, humanity will have in the future. We already have genetic engineering, we have intelligence, and so on. I completely agree that we really should focus on ourselves, that we should live in the present first and solve our own problems and not lose ourselves in these philosophical questions. But so much new technology is arriving right now, and it will bring fundamental changes to your personal life as well. So it still matters a great deal.”

“Religions like Christianity, Hinduism and Islam all make people promises of every kind — promising you eternal life, happiness and so on. Those promises will still be made later, except their foundation won't be God. It will be technology.”

While the panel discussed “What will humans finally evolve into?”, Wang Jian, chairman of BGI, said he might work with the government to set up a “gene alliance of Belt and Road countries” that would “let every country keep pace with China's progress at the technological frontier.” “Capitalist countries, especially the Jewish state, would find this hard to imagine. They've pretty much forgotten the core ideas of their own ancestor Marx, and we need to pull him back.”

The moment he finished, one or two people in the audience started jeering.

Wang Jian raised his voice and hit back: “Jeering won't get you anywhere. I'm doing it anyway. Isn't this the future? When all of humanity moves toward a future of great harmony, isn't that the future? Make another sound and I'll synthesize a copy of you. Get this straight: you live in today, you've never done anything in the future, so don't jeer blindly.”

Perhaps because of the language barrier, whatever views the guests laid out, Yuval showed almost no expression. He simply watched.

He ended his talk this way: “If you don't like some of the futures I've just described, or if they even frighten you a little, you can still do something to change that future.”

V

At the 2013 London Book Fair, Yuval Noah Harari was still unknown. Before that, when he tried to publish Sapiens in Israel, six publishers turned him down.

But at that year's fair, agents from 23 countries were negotiating rights to Sapiens with his representative, and six British publishers joined a bidding war. In China, several publishers including CITIC took an interest in the book.

“A few publishers were bidding against us at the time, and they felt the way we did. They also thought the work was good, but weren't that sure it would sell. We got the rights at a floor price, 15,000 US dollars,” Li Chang, the acquiring editor for Sapiens, told QDaily. For a social science or history title, that price counts as only “middling.”

Sapiens came out in China in November 2014 and set off a bestseller boom. Li Chang said “it first started fermenting in internet circles.” “Sapiens went from a bestselling, well-reviewed book within the social sciences to a book the whole society was talking about. The turning point was really the explosion in internet circles. I think the reason internet people thought so highly of this book is the power of fiction it champions — the ability to coordinate more organizations, and humanity as a whole. That's the same as the development of the internet, the same underlying culture, the same logic. The engine of the internet economy is, in fact, connection,” said Zhu Hong, deputy editor-in-chief of CITIC Press and head of its economics and management imprint.

That became the marketing opening for Homo Deus too. “We did a reader analysis and settled on internet companies interested in artificial intelligence as our primary target audience. Their opinion leaders, the ones who want to control the direction and trends of the future,” Zhu Hong told QDaily.

In March 2016, learning that Yuval had a new book, CITIC Press bought the rights at once; because it had already bought the rights to Sapiens, it had first look at any new title of his.

Weighing the timing, it decided to publish Homo Deus in January 2017 — the month of the book trade fair, when attention is easier to win, and just before the Chinese New Year holiday, when more people have time to read and can pass the book on to family and friends. Pre-orders opened on New Year's Day and reached 200,000 copies.

In March, during the “Two Sessions,” the artificial intelligence industry entered the government work report for the first time, setting off another round of talk among entrepreneurs and others. Zhu Hong said that some delegates and entrepreneurs brought up the book in their discussions.

To reach opinion leaders in internet circles, CITIC also produced special editions of Homo Deus “with the opinion leader's name printed on the belly band” and mailed them out ahead of publication. The recipients included Fu Sheng of Cheetah Mobile and Tencent's Pony Ma and Zhang Xiaolong.

By July 2017, in under half a year, Homo Deus was growing faster than Sapiens had.

To push word of mouth harder, CITIC worked with the big-data firm Beijing Percent Group to publish a reader profile of Homo Deus. It found that 27.1 percent of the book's readers earned more than 1 million yuan a year; 59.7 percent earned between 80,000 and 1 million yuan; the remaining 13.2 percent were low-income. Readers from the internet, computer software, video game and other internet technology industries were relatively numerous; 59.2 percent were men and 40.8 percent women; and most were young or middle-aged, with the 18-to-49 bracket accounting for more than 80 percent.

The report also said people were keen to argue about “Are humans really just algorithms?”, which pulled in philosophical questions such as “What is the real meaning of being alive? Where does the value of future humans lie?” Worth noting: 73.6 percent of the report's sample came from online communities like Douban and Zhihu, so a sample that narrow may have skewed the findings.

“Chinese readers have enormous demand for acquiring knowledge, for new viewpoints and new perspectives. They need a new set of cognitive tools to give them guidance and fresh thinking in the face of anxiety about the future and about change. I think that's what Chinese readers lack,” Li Chang told QDaily.

VI

Yuval worked three venues on this trip to China.

The day before Shanghai, he took part in the XWorld conference in Beijing, themed “future evolution,” with 1,500 people in the hall and more than 2 million watching the livestream.

On the evening of July 7 he caught the last train from Beijing to Shanghai. On the day of the Shanghai event he entered the venue at 10 am; before that he had an event arranged by the Israeli embassy.

When the conference finished that evening, he left straight for Hangzhou to appear the next day at the Global Artificial Intelligence Summit Forum, titled “The Future Has Arrived.” In between, he also had interviews with dozens of Chinese media outlets.

This was Yuval's second visit to China. On the evening of April 23, 2016, at the Beijing Exhibition Center Theater, he and five other guests spoke for a full four hours to an audience of 2,700. One Chinese scholar wrote afterward on WeChat Moments that it was “like a live recording of a rock concert.”

Even with a schedule that full, during the intermission of the Shanghai rehearsal Yuval still had to sign books for readers. “He said he'd sign as many as he could, so we set that time aside just for it,” Tang Weiwei said. She calls the “Active Evolution: Zaojiu Future Conference” a “very interesting experiment.”

“The question is whether people are willing to pay concert-ticket prices for a feast of ideas and talks,” Tang Weiwei said. “The 880-yuan tickets went on sale at 11 at night, and by 7 the next morning they were gone — more than 200 tickets, cleared out. We were stunned.”

(At the interviewee's request, Li Chang is a pseudonym.)

The cover image and the unlabeled images in the body are all from Zaojiu; the extended cover image is from: YouTube