Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Reviewing the book ‘Life 3.0‘ by By Max Tegmark

I’ve always looked at books regarding artificial intelligence with some suspicion. They often seem to have a very futuristic pop-science feel to them and ignore the more technical aspects of AI. I was happy to discover this wasn’t the case, and Max Tegmark is fairly educated on the topic.

What the title alludes to is that he calls AI life 3.0.

• Life 1.0 is basic life that primarily operates according to genetically programmed instructions (eg a bacteria and its algorithms that help it find sugar).
• Life 2.0 is where humans are. He makes the analogy that bacteria operate on hardware, but we operate both on hardware (genetic information) and software (our ability to learn, make sense of the world, and have culture).
• Life 3.0 is the “technological stage” where life can design both its hardware and software.

This is a very oversimplified framework and boundaries get blurry quickly, but it’s good enough as an introduction.

The book starts with a story of a possible near-future which was incredibly well written, and it’s worth checking out for its own sake and exemplifies many aspects of AI, which he covers later in the book.

What I hate the most about the topic of AI in the media was precisely what I loved the most about this book. Explaining the problems of AI that aren’t sensationalized and viewed in terms of war or evil. This was clearly a great concern for Tegmark, and I’m glad he covered this issue well.

I was also surprised at how much care he took in introducing the topic carefully to those who are completely new. Even if you have no background in the topic, the foundation needed to understand more complex problems is provided. It was more academic than I expected but in a very good way.

It’s also surprisingly long and covers a wide range of topics related to AI. My favourite is perhaps the technical aspects of AI which are an intermingling of cognitive science, computer science, and philosophy. But it also covered more sociological and political fronts, such as job loss, automatic weapons, or unregulated research.

There were some minor aspects which I didn’t like as much. I disagreed with some aspects related to consciousness, and perhaps most of all, I don’t like how he framed some of the issues regarding space colonialization. At some point, it was quite heavy on the topic of expansion within a framework of constant progress. I think this is a dangerous view and twisting the purpose of human life. It is a pervasive ideology in today’s technologically obsessed society, and it turns up in AI often, but it disappointed me nevertheless.

But it also had its positive sides. I really enjoyed his argument that intelligent life is misleadingly thought of as common throughout the universe for statistical reasons. I always thought it was the case, but I never saw anyone make the argument, so I was happy that I wasn’t alone. Likewise, perhaps the strongest suit of the book is how passionate the author is about the topic. Not only intellectually but from the actual concern of an existential threat to mankind.

This clearly shows in the later chapters in which he talks about his foundation, “Future of Life”, and how it boomed with the grant from Elon Musk. While it seemed very different from the rest of the book, nevertheless, I really enjoyed the description of how the foundation came to be and his part in shaping the popular opinion of AI to a more realistic and scientific one while also supporting direct AI research.

It’s a fantastic book for anyone interested in artificial intelligence; it greatly surpassed my expectations. It’s both well-grounded in the science of the field but also incredibly friendly toward people who are new to the topic. It’s a tricky trade-off, but Tegmark pulls it off well.

If you know almost nothing about AI, then this is a must-read book, because it’s an issue that concerns all of us, and its importance cannot be overstated. If you don’t really understand why, then even more reason to pick up the book, since it explains it beautifully.

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