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Life 3.0
Cover of Life 3.0
Life 3.0
Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Borrow Borrow
New York Times Best Seller
How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

 
How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?
 
What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues—from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.
New York Times Best Seller
How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

 
How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?
 
What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues—from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.
Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
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  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
  • Lexile:
    1370
  • Interest Level:
  • Text Difficulty:
    11 - 12


Excerpts-
  • From the book THE THREE STAGES OF LIFE

    The question of how to define life is notoriously controversial. Competing definitions abound, some of which include highly specific requirements such as being composed of cells, which might disqualify both future intelligent machines and extraterrestrial civilizations. Since we don’t want to limit our thinking about the future of life to the species we’ve encountered so far, let’s instead define life very broadly, simply as a process that can retain its complexity and replicate. What’s replicated isn’t matter (made of atoms) but information (made of bits) specifying how the atoms are arranged. When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information. In other words, we can think of life as a self-replicating information processing system whose information (software) determines both its behavior and the blueprints for its hardware.

    Like our universe itself, life gradually grew more complex and interesting, and as I’ll now explain, I find it helpful to classify life forms into three levels of sophistication: Life 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.

    It’s still an open question how, when and where life first appeared in our universe, but there is strong evidence that, here on Earth, life first appeared about 4 billion years ago. Before long, our planet was teeming with a diverse panoply of life forms. The most successful ones, which soon outcompeted the rest, were able to react to their environment in some way. Specifically, they were what computer scientists call “intelligent agents”: entities that collect information about their environment from sensors and then process this information to decide how to act back on their environment. This can include highly complex information-processing, such as when you use information from our eyes and ears to decide what to say in a conversation. But it can also involve hardware and software that’s quite simple.

    For example, many bacteria have a sensor measuring the sugar concentration in the liquid around them and can swim using propeller-shaped structures called flagella. The hardware linking the sensor to the flagella might implement the following simple but useful algorithm: “If my sugar concentration sensor reports a lower value than a couple of seconds ago, then reverse the rotation of my flagella so that I change direction.”

    Whereas you’ve learned how to speak and countless other skills, bacteria aren’t great learners. Their DNA specifies not only the design of their hardware, such as sugar sensors and flagella, but also the design of their software. They never learn to swim toward sugar; instead, that algorithm was hard-coded into their DNA from the start. There was of course a learning process of sorts, but it didn’t take place during the lifetime of that particular bacterium. Rather, it occurred during the preceding evolution of that species of bacteria, through a slow trial-and-error process spanning many generations, where natural selection favored those random DNA mutations that improved sugar consumption. Some of these mutations helped by improving the design of flagella and other hardware, while other mutations improved the bacterial information processing system that implements the sugar-finding algorithm and other software.

    Such bacteria are an example of what I’ll call “Life 1.0”: life where both the hardware and software is evolved rather than designed. You and I, on the other hand, are examples of “Life 2.0”: life whose...
About the Author-
  • MAX TEGMARK is an MIT professor who has authored more than 200 technical papers on topics from cosmology to artificial intelligence. As president of the Future of Life Institute, he worked with Elon Musk to launch the first-ever grants program for AI safety research. He has been featured in dozens of science documentaries. His passion for ideas, adventure, and entrepreneurship is infectious.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    July 10, 2017
    The robot takeover will ignite an explosion of “awe-inspiring” life even if humans don’t survive, according to this exhilarating, demoralizing primer. MIT physicist Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe) surveys advances in artificial intelligence such as self-driving cars and Jeopardy-winning software, but focuses on the looming prospect of “recursive self-improvement”—AI systems that build smarter versions of themselves at an accelerating pace until their intellects surpass ours. Tegmark’s smart, freewheeling discussion leads to fascinating speculations on AI-based civilizations spanning galaxies and eons—and knotty questions: Will our digital overlords be conscious? Will they coddle us with abundance and virtual-reality idylls or exterminate us with bumblebee-size attack robots? While digerati may be enthralled by the idea of superintelligent civilizations where “beautiful theorems” serve as the main economic resource, Tegmark’s future will strike many as a one in which, at best, humans are dependent on AI-powered technology and, at worst, are extinct. His call for strong controls on AI systems sits awkwardly beside his acknowledgment that controlling such godlike entities will be almost impossible. Love it or hate it, it’s an engrossing forecast.

  • Kirkus

    July 1, 2017
    The founder of the Future of Life Institute explores one of the most intriguing scientific frontiers, artificial general intelligence, and how humans can grow along with it.Nowadays, computers read, learn, recognize faces, translate languages, and consult other computers. They don't yet think, but the contingent of researchers who believe that they will never be smarter than humans is steadily shrinking. In this expert but often wildly speculative rumination, Tegmark (Physics/MIT; Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, 2014, etc.) joins the fierce debate on what will happen when AGI reaches human level and beyond. He dismisses tabloid scenarios of rampaging robots but warns, "we might create societies that flourish like never before...or a Kafkasque global surveillance state so powerful that it could never be toppled." The author defines intelligence as the ability to accomplish complex goals. This sounds trivial until he points out that both brains and computers are able to do this. Since computers are improving faster than brains, superhuman AGI will happen, and a beneficial outcome is not guaranteed. Thus, autonomous, self-driving cars will save lives. Autonomous battlefield drones will save soldiers' lives, but keeping them away from rogue nations, terrorists, and criminals will prove impossible. In the early chapters, Tegmark portrays near futures that range from Utopian to Orwellian. Later in the book, he delivers a vision of the far future: a universe filled with the products of superintelligence, with organic Homo sapiens a distant memory. Throughout, the author lays out his ideas in precisely detailed scenarios. Many read like science fiction; others, such as a fine chapter on the nature of consciousness, are simply good popular science. Prophesies have a dreadful record, but they are also endlessly fascinating. Readers may balk now and then--Tegmark's solutions to inevitable mass unemployment are a stretch--but most will find the narrative irresistible.

    COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Library Journal

    September 15, 2017

    Tegmark (physics, MIT; Our Mathematical Universe) is a cofounder (along with his wife and colleagues) of the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, which focuses on improving the future through technology, an idea that inspired the creation of this book. The narrative begins with a fictional tale of a team that creates an artificial intelligence (AI) called Prometheus, which has the ability to learn and adapt and possibly take over multiple industries. The story of Prometheus is brought up again in later chapters when human-level AI is discussed and leads into what the author deems the most important conversation of our time. According to the author, AI has real-world applications that are already being implemented such as self-driving cars, computer viruses, manufacturing robots, and even weaponry. These technologies are discussed along with the possible future of the next billion years. The technical and scientific reading material is divided by illustrations and graphs, and Tegmark provides bulleted key points at the end of every chapter. VERDICT A must-read for those entrenched in technology and future AI applications; however, this work is not for the casual reader.--Natalie Browning, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community Coll. Lib., Richmond, VASensible tips for new homeowners, reining in an unstoppable flame & the freedom of mustangs

    Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    October 2, 2017
    MIT physicist Tegmark explores the pivotal role that artificial intelligence will play in the future of humankind. From chores around the house and what employment will look like to how death might be rethought and even what it will mean to live among the stars, Tegmark considers what self-replicating and self-improving intelligent beings will mean for humans from many angles. Shapiro has a gentle and nonchalant voice that moves effortlessly through technical descriptions of AI technology and its potential upheaval of society. His steady but deliberate narration helps listeners maintain focus and feel comfortable with a variety of topics that Tegmark touches upon, such as how AI works and what it could mean for law enforcement, employment, and political organization. Even as Tegmark veers toward the philosophical, Shapiro keeps listeners attuned. A Knopf hardcover.

  • AI systems that build smarter versions of themselves at an accelerating pace until their intellects surpass ours. Tegmark's smart, freewheeling discussion leads to fascinating speculations on AI-based civilizations spanning galaxies and... "Exhilarating....MIT physicist Tegmark surveys advances in artificial intelligence such as self-driving cars and Jeopardy-winning software, but focuses on the looming prospect of "recursive self-improvement"
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Life 3.0
Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Max Tegmark
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