Life 3.0

Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

By: Max Tegmark

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2017 Max Tegmark (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"This is a compelling guide to the challenges and choices in our quest for a great future of life, intelligence and consciousness - on Earth and beyond." (Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX and cofounder and CEO of Tesla Motors)

"All of us - not only scientists, industrialists and generals - should ask ourselves what can we do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits of future AI and avoiding the risks. This is the most important conversation of our time, and Tegmark's thought-provoking book will help you join it." (Professor Stephen Hawking, director of research, Cambridge Centre for Theoretical Cosmology)

"Tegmark's new book is a deeply thoughtful guide to the most important conversation of our time, about how to create a benevolent future civilization as we merge our biological thinking with an even greater intelligence of our own creation." (Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author, and futurist, author of The Singularity Is Near and How to Create a Mind)

A lot to think about!!

This book gives a person a lot to think about! It was written well and keeps you engaged! It is my first AI book and I'm motivated to find more!

Deep dive into AI

This is not a light read. Rather the author essentially takes you through a deep analysis of the dynamic forces that will shape the future of AI. You will walk away smarter as a result.

Existential Hope

Loved this book. I've read Tegmark's first book, and this one is just as fantastic.

Great book

Great author and very good analysis of AI current situation and future options (2017).
The book is to read by every AI interested person.

Friendly approach to an immensely interesting topics

I've read Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence and hesitated that this book might just be a repetition of the same, but I was so wrong. This book takes a whole different approach, is significantly less "textbook-like", yet is to the point. I especially enjoyed how the author used proofs or semi-proofs to support ideas presented in the book, which is a relatively cool festure in a such an open topic as the future of AI.

Summary:
Reader friendly
Concise
Ideas supported by proofs/evidence
Flows nicely

Insightful

This book explores some pretty profound ideas, and it would be easy to dismiss many of them as conjecture. I’ve seen a lot of negative reviews for this book stating just that which initially made me hesitant to pick it up. Now having read it myself, I would recommend you read it and form your own opinion. There are so many different ideas and concepts present here that there has to be something that will spark your interest or help you view a preconceived notion you have in a different way.

Great Book, Great Information

Life 3.0 is a wonderful book, written clearly by a careful and detailed thinker. I recommend it for the topic, the information, the good organization, and even the narrator.

Having previously read Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, I recommend this book be read first, then absolutely follow it up with Superintelligence. The information and concepts from this book will aid you in digesting the next one. Both are critically important books on, almost certainly, the most important subject humans will ever consider and execute. Artificial General Intelligence is certainly the final human invention, hence the need for care in its formulation.

A very good book for anyone wanting to know and understand more about AI

I was very pleased with this book, I wanted to learn more about Artificial intelligence and what future it might bring, this book looks into a lot of different topics and future scenarios which I found both pleasant and disturbing at times. I am eager to learn more about AI after listening to this book.

Timely, Essential Questions

Max Tegmark's Life 3.0 is probably the most important book I've read since I read Ray Kurzweil's Age of the Spiritual Machines over a decade ago. Having recently read Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Yuval Noah Hariri's Homo Deus, Sidhartha Mukergee's The Gene, among a fairly extensive list of books on Audible converging on developments in AI, Biology, Neuroscience, biographies of scientists and engineers, Life 3.0 offers a way forward through a confusing thicket of possibilities. Life 3.0 is reminiscent of Sir Francis Bacon's admonition at the dawn of science that it be used foe the purposes of life.

The future of life in the universe

A thought-provoking read about our long-term future and how AI super intelligence can affect it.

Compared to other things I have read on this topic, this book gave a very balanced perspective. There is potential for catastrophic outcomes, but also very good outcomes.

The book starts with a fictional story about an AI team that succeeds in creating super intelligence. Then, it goes into why it is both plausible but also not the only possible outcome.

I was surprised to read about some of the current knowledge of physics as the book talked about the very long timeline of our universe as a whole. It was interesting to hear about what physical constraints there may be on future life.

There was a chapter on consciousness that I probably could have done without. I understand his point that we should try to understand what consciousness is if we want to ensure that future life is conscious, but I think the current state of uncertainty in this topic could have been summarized more succinctly.

I am leaving this book with both optimism about the future, but a renewed sense that there's something I need to do to ensure a good future.