The core premise of Homo Deus is that humanity has reached an unprecedented inflection point. For the first time in history, we face more deaths from overeating than from starvation, more deaths from old age than from infectious disease, and more deaths from suicide than from violence and war combined. Having essentially conquered the ancient scourges of famine, plague, and war, humanity is setting itself three new goals: achieving immortality, securing permanent happiness, and acquiring divine powers of creation and destruction.
The problem Harari identifies is that pursuing these god-like goals will fundamentally transform human society and possibly humanity itself in ways that undermine the very values and systems we currently hold sacred. The liberal humanist ideology that dominates modern thought places individual human experience, feelings, and choices at the center of meaning and authority. But biotechnology and artificial intelligence are revealing that the “self” is not an indivisible, autonomous entity with free will. It is a collection of biochemical algorithms shaped by evolution and culture.