Book Review – Homo Deus (Will Humanity Become Slaves to Big Data, Losing Freedom and Dignity?)

This article discusses the risk of humanity becoming data-dependent and losing its freedom and dignity amid the development of big data and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Focusing on Yuval Harari’s concept of “data religion,” the author emphasizes the positive use of data and maintaining human initiative.

 

In recent years, the concept of “big data” has become a hot topic in society. In the social development trend of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, data is the most essential element, and some people even claim that data is the language of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Various future new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and autonomous vehicles will be dependent on this medium, and humans will increasingly rely on it to make various decisions. As the processing of existing data becomes more sophisticated and produces many good results, data has gained greater meaning and trust for humanity. In recent years, there has even been a strongly religious concept of “data religion,” which Yuval Harari describes in the last part of his book Homo Deus.
Harari defines the ideology of data religion as follows “It says that the universe consists of a flow of data, and that the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to data processing.” The author gives examples of economic systems, political systems, humanity and data, and the doctrine of data religion, and explicitly expresses his concern and wariness that humans will be completely subordinated to data and lose their freedom, selfhood, and dignity as human beings. However, I believe that while such caution is certainly necessary, it is not appropriate to go to such extremes as the author does. I also question whether the single concept of data can rise to the level of religion.
The author believes that as the algorithms used to process data become more sophisticated, humanity will become completely dependent on them, meaning that each of us is increasingly becoming a tiny chip in a huge data system that no one truly understands. Every day, we acquire tons of data, process it, and produce new data through emails, phone calls, articles, and more. People feel the need to be part of this flow of data and equate disconnecting from it with losing meaning in their lives. This is because they see no point in experiencing and practicing something if their own data does not contribute to the global exchange of information. My question here is, with the emergence of these phenomena, can we say that humanity has become subordinated to data and humanism has been completely abandoned? Different scholars have different definitions of freedom, and individuals have different views on free will and the self. The author describes the future of humanity as being reduced to a ripple in a large stream of data, as if we have lost our freedom and dignity, but I think this is an extremely narrow definition. Furthermore, I believe that the author’s “why people want to join this data flow” should be interpreted as a desire to enjoy a freer and richer life, not just because they can feel happy by contributing to the exchange of information, because no one thinks of themselves as slaves to the data system when we acquire and share data. People just want to make better, more rational choices from big data, but rarely do they share and use it to preserve the meaning of life, as the author says. In other words, the essence of the future phenomena described by the author is to improve our individual lives, and the initiative is in the hands of humans.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the threat of artificial intelligence based on big data. In ‘Legal and Ethical Issues in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’, a researcher at the Free Internet Project, a future research focus, said, “Despite the advancement of artificial intelligence technology, there is already a consensus that human values should be maintained, control over robots and algorithms should be firm, and algorithm-based judgments should be useful to humans. Therefore, despite the advent of an era in which artificial intelligence is responsible for perceiving, analyzing, and judging information, laws and policies should not be designed solely from an economic perspective, but should also be designed from the perspective of appropriately allocating risks, clarifying the attribution of responsibility, and protecting the social norms that have been formed around human values.” While I partially accept the author’s argument that the vast accumulation of data will determine the shape of society in the future, I believe that we should not lose the color and role of humanity. Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, also responded to the AI threat by saying, “Technology has always been used for good and bad, so don’t think about what will happen. Instead, think about what you’re going to build and how you’re going to use it.” This quote omits the subject, humans, which suggests that there is a presupposition that humans use technology under control. Rather than being subjugated and subordinated to the giant medium of data, humanity will control and manage it to derive a new concept of freedom unlike any other.
Another characteristic claim of data religion is that humans do not need to find empirical meaning within themselves, but only need to record their experiences and connect them to the vast flow of data, and algorithms will determine and tell them what they mean. The premise of this argument is a denial of the core concept of liberal humanism, which is to focus on the self. In other words, the denial of humanism is essential if Dataism is to grow into a powerful religion, as the author believes it will. In the middle of Homo Deus, Yuval Harari claims that “modern science is revealing that free will does not exist, and therefore humanism will have no place in future generations,” giving further significance to the religion. However, I think the author’s argument is flawed.
First, let’s briefly review the definition of liberalism that the author adopts, which can be summarized as follows. For libertarianism to be true, it must be non-deterministic, non-random, and independent of genetic dictates. However, I believe that by defining free will quite narrowly as something that satisfies these conditions, the author is taking the logical advantage of suggesting that free will does not exist. By not defining free will as a “subjective reality” but as an “objective reality” with a number of objective factors added to it, the author deduces that free will is a fiction, whereas free will operates as a “subjective reality” in humans (how we actually feel). In his book The Right Mind, Harvard professor Jonathan Haidt argues that when we try to make a judgment about something, our emotional reactions in the moment inevitably come into play, narrowing the field for rational thought. Based on this, we can see that the “non-deterministic” part of Yuval Harari’s definition of “free will” is unattainable in the first place. In other words, liberal humanism is not as doomed as the author claims, and it will allow us to recognize individual experiences for what they are and fully derive their value.
Of course, no one can say for sure what the future society will look like, but I don’t think human freedom and individual choice will be completely ignored in the face of data as the author claims. As Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, said earlier, if we look back at the history of humanity, we have been able to solve the challenges that have arisen with each new technology, and we have been able to adjust the technology accordingly to advance humanity. In this process, humans have always been in the driver’s seat, and I think it is very likely that they will continue to be. Although Marx predicted that capitalism would inevitably collapse due to its own structural contradictions, this has not happened to date. Marx’s arguments and logic have been accepted by capitalism to a certain extent, and capitalism has gone through a period of internal adjustment and revision for the better. Rather than having vague fears and worries about data, it would be more desirable if we could think about “How will we utilize this data?” and “How will we interpret the problems that the author thought about and design it for humanity?” and modify it together.
To summarize, the author believes that as the algorithms of the data bridge become more sophisticated and the amount of data becomes huge, humanity will become dependent on data, which will pose a great challenge to the reason and value of human existence. As such, the author pessimistically describes the future of humanity, which will be changed by the development of science and technology, including data. However, the development of science and technology is very natural, and humanity will accept the changes that come from development anyway. Throughout history, human beings have always dealt with the changes that come from the development of science and technology with both joy and fear. However, humanity creates new value from such changes, evolves, and finally becomes the master of technology. As such, I argue that humans are still in charge of the social phenomena that will unfold through the development of data technology, and that data should be regarded as a medium that helps humans make their own judgments with free will.