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Life 3.0
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Life 3.0

Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Max Tegmark
Knopf, 2017
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Editorial Rating

9

getAbstract Rating

  • Analytical
  • Scientific
  • Visionary

Recommendation

Humans have passed through Life 1.0: biological evolution over vast time. In Life 2.0, people gained knowledge about politics, art, and science that changed how they see the world and their own purpose. In Life 3.0, which may come within the 21st century, humans will use powerful technology to transcend evolution. MIT theoretical physicist Max Tegmark explores what may happen and what it means. He becomes your guide through complex terrain – the nature of life, intelligence, and computation; the physics of energy; the future of the universe; and the questions people will face in a seriously different future world.

Summary

Developments in AI may enable Life 3.0, an era in which people design their own software and hardware.

Unlike people, an individual bacteria don’t learn how to survive and reproduce; they just do it. Their DNA dictates the structure of their bodies (their hardware) as well as how they identify, move toward, and consume their sources of food (their software). Bacteria acquired these characteristics through evolution by natural selection; any improvements came by way of random DNA mutations. Bacteria exemplify Life 1.0 in that their hardware and software result from biological evolution.

People, by contrast, can’t perform basic survival tasks when they are born. They enter the world with the capacity to learn from family members, teachers, religious leaders, and other mentors during childhood. As children grow older, they may take more control of the knowledge and skills they acquire. They may decide to become doctors, lawyers, or mathematicians and to take the necessary steps to acquire the requisite knowledge and skills. Human beings exemplify instances of Life 2.0.

About the Author

Max Tegmark is a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and president of the Future of Life Institute. He also wrote Our Mathematical Universe.

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