Reports that the famous Israeli historian, philosopher and author of several best-selling books in the non-fiction genre proposed changing the text of the Bible and subsequently creating a new religion became popular on the RuNet in June 2023. We checked to see if Yuval Noah Harari had come up with a similar initiative.

Various versions story about the proposal to “rewrite the Bible using artificial intelligence,” “create a new inclusive religion,” and even “redefine morality"appeared in the Russian-language segment of the Network no later than June 12, 2023 and are still being distributed to this day. In particular, a TV presenter wrote about Harari’s proposal on Telegram Ruslan Ostashko (148,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) and blogger Dmitry Puchkov (220,000), publicist Nikolai Starikov published fast with the wording “Satanists have completely stopped being shy” (246,000), and TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov drew attention to the initiative three times, reposting from the channels Starikova (June 14, 215,000) and blogger Roman Golovanov (June 19 And July 3, 192,000 and 383,000). Users also shared similar publications “VKontakte", LiveJournal And "Odnoklassniki», and also row pro-Kremlin Media, with some publications calling Harari either an advisor or senior director at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Yuval Noah Harari indeed writes a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and religion, and some of his public lectures are devoted to these topics. In particular, he spoke about the use of AI on April 29, 2023 as part of Frontiers Forum in Montreux, Switzerland. Video recording of the lecture “AI and the future of humanity” posted on Harari's YouTube channel May 14, Russian translation available on the Turing Test channel. However, the writer’s statements during this lecture are directly opposite in meaning to those attributed to him by the Russian media and bloggers.

Harari argues that the most important aspect of the current phase of AI development is that it is acquiring language at a level above average human ability. This, in turn, means “hacking the operating system of human civilization,” because it is with the help of language that we construct reality, including gods and religions. The writer proposes to imagine a world in which most of the stories, images, music, laws are formed by non-human intelligence that knows how to effectively exploit the weaknesses, prejudices and biases of the human mind, and asks the question: what will happen if AI writes a number of texts that people perceive as religious revelation?

“Simply by mastering human language, AI has everything it needs to immerse us in a Matrix-like world of illusion.” <…> There is no need to implant chips in people’s brains to control or manipulate them. <…> If we are not careful, a curtain of illusion will fall over all of humanity,” Harari warns the audience about the possible dangers of the uncontrolled use of new developments in the field of AI, calling it “a weapon of mass destruction that can destroy our mental and social world.” Recognizing the usefulness of AI in potentially solving many problems, the writer calls for careful regulation of everything related to the use of such developments. In conclusion, Harari suggests introducing a kind of analogue first law of robotics: The AI must indicate every time it speaks that it is an AI and not a human.

With exactly the same theses, but a little less emotionally, the philosopher spoke in Lisbon on May 19 as part of a public conversation with journalist Pedro Pinto. But both in Switzerland and in Portugal, convinced atheist Harari spoke mainly about the dangers of AI (including the example of the possible creation of AI religion) and did not at all declare about rewriting the Bible or creating some kind of inclusive religion. Speaking verbatim about the dangers associated with AI, he said the following: “You know, Gutenberg printed the Bible in the middle of the 15th century. The printing press produced as many copies of the Bible as Gutenberg ordered, but it did not create a single new page. He had no ideas of his own about the Bible: is it good? Is it bad? How to interpret this? How to interpret that? Artificial intelligence can create new ideas, it can even write a new Bible.” Harari then repeated almost word for word the concerns expressed in Switzerland.

Posts about the writer’s April and May theses began appearing in the Russian-language Telegram segment at the end of May. The authors of these texts reported quite neutrally about Harari's hypothesis regarding religion and AI and even brought authentic quotes from the speech. But these publications did not achieve a viral effect.

The most likely source of the statement in question in Russian was the publication in the Telegram channel of the Chairman of the Commission of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation on Information Policy and Interaction with the Media, Alexey Pushkov. June 12 at 00:07 Moscow time Pushkov wrote (spelling preserved): “Ideologist of transhumanism and globalism Noah Yuval Hariri, speaking recently in Lisbon, Hariri said that Artificial Intelligence will rewrite the Bible and create a new “inclusive religion” that will be “correct” in content.” These formulations formed the basis for the subsequent viral spread of the story in Russian.

However, the first publications about the initiative allegedly put forward by Harari appeared in English two days earlier. A story about rewriting the Bible and creating an inclusive religion with slightly different wording was published on the Slay News website June 10. This created in 2021, an ultra-conservative resource where only two authors write, and the main content is directed against the US Democratic Party and Joe Biden. Declaring in the “About Us” section about compliance with fact-checking principles, in reality the site systematically spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories, for example about COVID-19 - whole chapter The site is dedicated to anti-vaccine propaganda.

An article on Slay News published a recording of Harari's Lisbon conversation with Pedro Pinto and cited the above quote about Gutenberg and the printing press, but its meaning in the text is distorted to the opposite. It was in this publication that, among other things, it was stated that Harari is an adviser to Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum (WEF), but it also does not correspond reality. WEF is one of the main targets of attacks from not only American, but also Russian conspiracy theorists, and their statements usually turn out to be false.

Thus, the story of Harari's proposal to rewrite the Bible is completely fictitious. It first appeared on a non-authoritative English-language website, and spread in Russian after a post by Senator Pushkov. And although many bloggers used while disseminating the disinformation message, real quotes from Harari’s speeches in Switzerland and Portugal or fragments of corresponding video recordings, the writer did not put forward the idea attributed to him either in these speeches or at any time before.

Cover photo: Still from Harari's speech in Montreux