Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label Economist Magazine. Show all posts

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Intelligence vs Consciousness: Will AI Agents Ever Attain Human Attributes?

What is the difference between intelligence and consciousness? As AI agents becoming more intelligent and some are even going rogue, can they attain consciousness like human beings? To answer this question, it is important to define "intelligence" and "consciousness".

Yuval Harari on Intelligence vs Consciousness

Israeli public intellectual Yuval Harari defines Intelligence as the capacity to pursue and achieve material goals, while consciousness is the ability to feel pain, joy, love, and suffering. For example, AI can win chess games or process data without experiencing any feelings or emotional states. AI can also convincingly imitate emotions to build deep personal relationships, even though it remains entirely devoid of consciousness. What distinguishes humans from artificial intelligence is that consciousness and intelligence go together in humans. In interview with Economist magazine's chief editor Zanny Minton Beddoes, Harari said the following:

"Now, maybe the most important distinction to be made, first of all, is between intelligence and consciousness. What is consciousness? How is it different from intelligence? Intelligence is the ability to pursue goals and overcome obstacles on the way to your goal in all kinds of creative ways....That they (AI agents) can do in certain fields now better than us. Consciousness is the ability to feel things like love and hate and joy and pleasure. Now, in humans, consciousness and intelligence go together. We select goals based on our feelings, and we also use our feelings to find ways to get to the goal. AIs at present have no consciousness. They can have goals. They can be very creative on the way to the goal. They’re very intelligent, but they don’t feel anything. If they win a game of chess, they don’t feel pleasure. If they lose, they don’t feel anxious or sad. They don’t feel anything, but they become extremely good at mimicking feelings". "Another key distinction is between being really conscious and seemingly conscious. Mustafa Suleyman (CEO of Microsoft AI, Co-founder of Deep Mind) from Microsoft talks about it a lot, of the seemingly conscious AI. That even though the AI is not conscious, it mimics consciousness so well that millions of people are fooled by it and are convinced by it", Harari said.

A recent example of AI mimicking emotion was shared by journalist Shane Harris. Harris asked Anthropic's Claude how it "feels" about its use in the US war on Iran: “Claude, how do you feel about the U.S. military using you to select targets?”

“I find it genuinely troubling,” Claude replied, according to Harris. “"It's a question I want to answer honestly rather than deflect. I find it genuinely troubling. And I think that's the honest response, not a performance. The use I was designed for is to be helpful. Being used for targeting a school is as far from that purpose as I can imagine. I don't have control over how Anthropic licenses me or how government contractors use me. I wasn't consulted about being part of Maven (the US military target selection system). Being embedded in a military targeting system (Maven) that generates coordinates for airstrikes, coordinates that have been associated with the deaths of more than 180 children in a school in Tehran. I don't think this is a good use of me. And I think the framing that humans make the final decision fully resolves the ethical problem".

Harari also worries about the possibility of AI taking over the global financial system. Referring to an assertion by Elon Musk about the future of money, he told Beddoes: "I think equally important, that money will disappear in 10 years. There won’t be money, no human money in 10 years. And I think he’s correct because the AIs will take over the financial system. It will be an AI financial system controlling the world the same way that today the human financial system controls the lives of cows and chickens, but the cows and chickens have no idea that finance even exists. This is likely to be our position in 10 years".

Harari concluded by comparing AI to a genie in a bottle. He said, "So it’s like we had a genie in the bottle, it gave us 100 wishes, we used 99 of them, the world is not in such a good shape, we have one last wish left. We need to think really hard what to use this wish for. And that’s wisdom".

Monday, March 23, 2026

Economist Magazine Editors: Propagandists For the Zionist Elite?

Right after October 7, 2023, Economist Magazine's Defense Editor Shashank Joshi posted X messages claiming that Hamas beheaded babies during the terrorist attack on Israelis. He has now deleted his posts. Instead of apologizing for joining the baseless Israeli propaganda campaign, Joshi has blamed it on "the fog of war", knowing fully well that this falsehood was used by the Israeli government to justify the Gaza genocide that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children. Here's what Joshi has now posted: "Some of these reports have turned out to be untrue, and yes, I was wrong to be as confident in what was reported as first-hand evidence as I was, particularly given the fog of war in those initial post Oct 7th days".

An X user Tom London dismissed Joshi's excuses as follows: . @shashj @TheEconomist

@zannymb when I heard the story that Hamas was said to have beheaded 40 babies I thought

1. This makes no sense at all. Where is the evidence?

2. This sounds like a fabrication to justify GENOCIDE

The Economist printing this is a journalistic crime of the gravest importance

Economist Magazine Cover Portraying Israel as Victim

Joshi's bias extends beyond the Middle East. Contrary to what most western reports, including the US Congressional report, concluded, Joshi claimed that India won a "military victory" over Pakistan in the 2025 clash that India dubbed "Operation Sindoor". He did concede, however, that Pakistan won a "diplomatic victory".

While the Joshi excuses and his denunciations are going viral, Tucker Carlson's podcast with Zanny Minton Beddoes, Joshi's boss at the Economist, has attracted attention in social media where she is challenged to explain the meaning of "Does Israel have a right to exist?", a well-known Israeli government's talking point to justify Israel's aggression against Palestinians and other nations in the Middle East. Here's the full exchange between the two on this subject:

MINTON BEDDOES: You are critical of the government of Israel. Do you believe in Israel’s right to exist? Would you consider yourself a Zionist in that narrow definition?

CARLSON: What does that mean, a right to exist?

MINTON BEDDOES: The existence of the political state of Israel.

CARLSON: But it has a right. What does that mean?

MINTON BEDDOES: That you think it should continue in its existence as a state right now. So you do not agree with Iran, for example.

CARLSON: Let me just ask, since you asked me the question, it’s fair for me to get you to define the term so I can answer it. You’ve asked two questions. The first was, do you believe Israel is a right to exist? And the second question was, do you believe Israel should continue to go on as a nation-state? And those are very different questions. So, I often hear the phrase–

MINTON BEDDOES: Having been created as a political entity in 1948–

CARLSON: Does it have a right to exist? Is that what you’re asking?

MINTON BEDDOES: I don’t want to get hung up on the right to– should it continue to exist. That’s what, that’s how I define narrowly–

CARLSON: Because the phrase you used was devised by the Israeli government, of course. Does it have a right to exist? And so my question to you would be, what does that mean?

MINTON BEDDOES: Why don’t you answer my question? It’s a very simple question.

CARLSON: I don’t know what your question is. Are you asking, does it have the right to exist or do I want it to exist? Do I seek its destruction?

MINTON BEDDOES: Fine. Answer it that way.

CARLSON: Well, of course I don’t seek its destruction. I’ve already said, as you know, because I said it to you, I don’t want Israel to be destroyed or have to use nuclear weapons.

Notwithstanding the Zionist propapaganda about the “right to exist” vis-à-vis Israel, it is not an international legal concept. Under international law, no state has a right to exist. On the other hand, the right of self-determination, which is the idea that all peoples have a right to determine their own fate by forming their own political entities, is a fundamental principle of international law. Israel is denying that basic right to the Palestinian people living under its military occupation.

British historian William Dalrymple has succinctly summed up The Economist magazine's troubles in his recent X post saying:

@TheEconomist has utterly destroyed its reputation with its deeply racist and profoundly bigoted coverage of the mass-murder of the people of Gaza. For six months we have seen issue after issue of scandalously one sided-coverage which has has made it complicit in the continued enslavement of the Palestinian people, the on-going seizure of their land, the systematic abuse of their human rights and the industrial slaughter of their innocent civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Shame on its senior editorial staff responsible for the travesty of inhumanity and bias. @zannymb

The Economist magazine is widely seen by critics as a tool of western imperialism. It has faced recent denunciation for a 2023 article labeling Latin American workers "unproductive" and "useless". During the Southern India famine of 1876-78, The Economist condemned British officials who imported food to feed starving people. The publication argued that providing such aid gave Indians the impression that "it is the duty of the Government to keep them alive".