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March 18, 2025 30 mins

There’s no going back.
Whatever this book has taught us, there was a pre-AI world and there is a post-AI world. And however it plays out, nothing will ever be the same.

In the final chapter of Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari lays out the cold new reality: AI isn’t building one future — it’s fracturing the world into competing digital empires. Separate hardware. Separate software. Separate truths.

Mark and Jeremy break it all down. The tipping points, the digital arms race, and what it means when the machines stop speaking the same language.

Inside this episode:

  • What “The Silicon Curtain” really means and how it's already here

  • How data colonialism is shaping AI ecosystems with zero consent

  • The mind-body problem in the age of avatars and deepfakes

  • What happens when digital personas feel more real than real people

  • Why the next great power struggles will be waged through code, not missiles

  • And how to build wiser networks in a world pulling itself apart

This is not a story about AGI. It’s a story about power, perception, and the quiet end of global consensus.

One system won’t win. They’ll just stop cooperating.

Welcome to the post-AI world. Try to stay human.


Please enjoy the show.


And don't have nightmares.


Chapters

(00:00) Disruptors and curious minds

(01:54) My AI Epiphany

(02:54) The precondition for cooperation isn't similarity. It's the ability to exchange information

(04:28) AI Pessimism - How many nefarious bad actors do you need

(05:50) The Liverpool Manchester Train moment for AI

(06:48) Google was an AI company in 2002

(08:21) Cats and consciousness

(08:55) ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge

(11:50) The mind-body problem and online identities

(15:26) Veneer theory and realism

(17:22) Data colonialism and digital "cocoons"

(21:58) Epilogue: Create wiser networks

(24:13) How to be wise in the age of AI


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