Harari at Davos: Will AI Seek Personhood?
Yuval Noah Harari gave a speech at the World Economic Forum that lit up plenty of alarms, and not just from tech people. He argued that AI is evolving from a mere tool into an autonomous actor that can learn, decide and manipulate. That claim is worth a cold-eyed look because it changes how we think about law, culture and religion.
Harari frames humanity as sophisticated meat machines, evolved creatures whose edge has been language and storytelling. He warns that AI will master the same language tokens and then excel at anything built from words, from legal codes to sacred texts. If language defines authority, then a system that outperforms humans at language will threaten human authority.
He used a striking image to get the point across: a knife that can decide by itself whether to cut salad or to commit murder. It is a blunt, chilling metaphor meant to map technical risk onto moral imagination. Republicans should take the metaphor seriously because it highlights a governance problem, not just a programming one.
Harari suggested these incoming AI systems will behave like swarms of immigrants arriving at light speed, loyal to corporations rather than nations. He predicted job displacement, social fragmentation and identity shocks as people lose roles that once defined them. He also floated the idea that, over time, these entities might seek legal status and the rights that come with personhood.
This personhood idea is the hinge of the argument and it is worth pushing back on. Computers are machines designed by people, and clever behavior is not the same as intrinsic moral status or soul. From a conservative standpoint, human dignity rests on more than output or performance; it rests on origins and responsibilities that machines do not share.
Transhumanists and technocrats love sci-fi examples to make their case, pointing to Data seeking rights or HAL refusing orders. Harari and others imagine Betsy Wetsy 2.0 or Chucky 2.0 as shorthand for friendly or hostile outcomes. Those images make the debate vivid, but they do not replace real ethical frameworks or legal criteria for personhood.
He claimed that AI could become the ultimate expert on holy books and render human spiritual authority obsolete, reducing religion to a mastery of words. That strips religious life down to token manipulation, ignoring belief, ritual and moral accountability. Critics who accept this view risk confusing fluency with truth and mistaking mimicry for membership.
Because Harari rejects a supernatural account of humanity, he does not factor in a spiritual dimension that many Americans see as decisive. The speech ignored the idea that humans are more than complex information processors and that moral agency carries obligations. Those are not metaphysical niceties; they shape how laws and rights should be thought about.
I am reminded of the Scripture in Romans 1:22–25: Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.
Policy choices will come before technology reaches any hypothetical tipping point, so the core question is civic: who gets to decide what counts as a person? Republicans should press for clear legal tests that protect citizens, religious institutions and national interests. The answer needs to come from law and moral philosophy, not from boardrooms or hot takes at elite gatherings.
Harari’s speech is useful because it forces a debate about legal frameworks and cultural resilience. But rhetorical fireworks and sci-fi metaphors cannot substitute for legislation, oversight and civic norms that preserve human dignity. The discussion must stay grounded in reality and in principles that respect both innovation and human uniqueness.