Yuval Noah Harari

“By 2028, the U.S. presidential race might no longer be run by humans.”

Yuval Noah HarariThought Leader

Historian and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus; lead co-author, with Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, of the New York Times guest essay 'You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We're Out of Blue Pills'

The 2028 US presidential election has not yet taken place; AI-generated campaign content has proliferated since 2023, but campaigns to date remain run by human candidates and staff.

“I generally agree with the first and third predictions — that it's very likely, given current trajectories, that AI will be more intelligent than us in 10 years and therefore will be in control... If we continue with the present accelerating pace of the AI race, yes, this will be the result. In 10 years, the AIs will take over. But this is not inevitable. We are still in control in 2026.”

Yuval Noah HarariThought Leader

Historian and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus; lecturer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Said in response to Elon Musk's prediction that AI would far surpass human intelligence and humans would not be in control within ten years; Harari endorses the trajectory while rejecting its inevitability.

“Increasingly, humans will give AIs control of financial decisions. AIs will come up with new financial devices far more sophisticated than bonds and stocks, and we will not be able to understand it anymore... In 10 years, when we have entrusted AIs with the financial system, no human on the planet understands it — there is a financial crash and advisors are running to the president saying, the market is collapsing, the AI says do X, we don't know why, but we have to believe it.”

Yuval Noah HarariThought Leader

Historian and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus; lecturer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Framed as the consequence of continuing on the present course, in agreement with Musk's prediction that human money disappears within a decade.

“The crucial problem isn't creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms. Consequently, by 2050 a new class of people might emerge – the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable.”

Yuval Noah HarariThought Leader

Historian and author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus; lecturer in history, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Target is 2050; as of 2026 AI-driven displacement is visible in some white-collar and customer-service roles, but no 'useless class' of structurally unemployable people has emerged.