Life 3.0

I got the recommendation from Obama's 2018 book list and ‘read' it during my commute over the past two weeks. It offers a general understanding of the current status of AI technology and its potential and threats (real or perceived). As with every technical field, some threats are exaggerated but our limited knowledge in terms of its extent temper any attempts at dismissing most fears. I like that Tegmark delves into the ontological debates and poses the “should we” questions. I particularly liked the 7 potential scenarios that AI can lead to.

The delivery is a tad dull and it would've helped if the reader didn't spell out the ‘colon' and ‘backslash backslash' in URLs that are peppered throughout the book.

Max Tegmark thinks big. In his first book, Our Mathematical Universe, Max walked through a modern cosmological conception of our universe. Now he is describing the kind of life that might expand through it. And one cannot help but be inspired by the potential that Tegmark sees in this next step of life:

“After spending billions of years as an almost negligibly small perturbation on an indifferent lifeless cosmos, life suddenly explodes onto the cosmic arena as a spherical blast wave expanding near the speed of light, never slowing down, and igniting everything in its path with the spark of life”

Sorry Nick Bostrom, but Superintelligence was just dethroned as best “future of AI” book

Really enjoyed how Tegmark explored the possible futures for humanity and AI. The sections on consciousness and goals were also interesting, and I feel like he gave a pretty good overview of the many differing opinions that researchers have on these topics.

It was kind of odd reading his description of Elon Musk ("Tall, handsome, eloquent and incredibly knowledgeable" - lol) but I guess you have to be nice to the person that donated 10 million to your foundation...