Life 3.0 - Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

People have often been skeptical

about the whole idea of artificial intelligence all thanks to the mainstream media and the terminator. In recent years we have heard a lot about AI used in our commercial technology ie from your mobiles to automobiles. So what will be the consequences of the advancement of AI and how will it affect our future, will a robot take your job?. In his book life 3.0, Max Tegmark an MIT professor tries to answer these questions about the evolution of AI that is far more superior and smarter than humans in the near and distant future.

He does a very good job in explaining all the aspects and scenarios of superintelligent AI and how it will affect our jobs, laws, politics, war, government, and the whole of mankind.

Professor Tegmark describes life 1.0 as biological evolution, where the individual can evolve its hardware and software. Life 2.0 a cultural evolution, where the individual can evolve its hardware but can design their own software, this is where our human race is on. Life 3.0 is the technological evolution, where one can design its own hardware and software, this is where the AI beings will lie.

Max also discusses some of the philosophical and neuroscience questions about free will and consciousness and how it is just a subjective experience and will AI have their own consciousness and free will or not, which is very fascinating.

Some chapters dive deep into physics, but all the concepts like the Dyson sphere, artificial gravity, O’Neils cylinder, and a lot more are very well explained by diagrams and illustrations by the author.

I highly recommend this book for people who want to learn more about AI, it does a very good job in eliminating all the misconception that we have about AI and how it can not only shape mankind but also the entire universe in the distant future as it is argued by some experts that a super-intelligent artificial intelligence could be the last invention that mankind has to invent and reach technological singularity – a hypothetical moment in time when machine intelligence is greater than human intelligence.