Yuval Noah Harari warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that artificial intelligence is shifting from passive tools to autonomous agents, risking human control of language. He said this matters because language enables large-scale cooperation and underpins law, religion, and finance.
Harari argued that systems based on text face special exposure to machines that generate and manipulate words at scale. He added, “If laws are made of words, then AI will take over the legal system.”
He pointed to religions grounded in sacred texts and said AI could become authoritative interpreters of scripture. He also noted that books and other written records could be subsumed by machine analysis and synthesis.
Harari compared the spread of AI agents to a new form of immigration and urged leaders to decide whether AI should receive legal personhood soon. Several U.S. states, including Utah, Idaho, and North Dakota, have already passed laws stating that AI cannot be treated as a legal person.
Professor Emily M. Bender (faculty page) criticized Harari’s framing and said it shifts attention away from the human actors and corporations building these systems. She said, “The term artificial intelligence doesn’t refer to a coherent set of technologies,” and added, “The purpose there is fraud. Period.”
