How to safeguard your mind in the age of junk information

“All information technologies up to the 21st century were organic networks based on our organic brain.”

Description: Yuval Noah Harari sees one glaring problem at the heart of our quest for an AI-led world: The incompatibility of humans and the always-on information cycles.

Harari cautions that organic beings trying to force themselves into these 24/7 inorganic cycles will eventually fail, and bring about their own destruction. His solution? Clear delineation of inorganic information, and a strict diet for your consumption.

Two excerpts (from transcript):

1) "A curious fact is that at least in the United States, there is already a legal path open for AIs to become legal persons. Corporations are considered legal persons that even have rights like freedom of speech. For instance, it can open a bank account. Corporations open bank accounts, why can't the AI do it? It's a corporation. It can earn money and then it takes its money and invest it. Because it's so good at making investment decisions, it earned billions and billions." We could be in a situation when the richest person in the United States is not a human being. The richest person in the United States is an incorporated AI."

2) "...my best recommendation is to go on an information diet, the same way that people go on food diets. Information is the food of the mind. More information isn't always good for you. It's actually good to, from time to time, take time for information fasts. When we don't put anything more in, we just digest and detoxify. Similarly, we should watch the quality of the information we feed our mind. If we feed our mind with all this junk information full of greed and hate and fear, we will have sick minds."