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Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Paperback – July 5, 2018

by Max Tegmark (Author)

5,917 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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''This is the most important conversation of our time, and Tegmark''s thought-provoking book will help you join it'' Stephen Hawking

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR
SELECTED AS ONE OF BARACK OBAMA''S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2018

AI is the future - but what will that future look like? Will superhuman intelligence be our slave, or become our god?

Taking us to the heart of the latest thinking about AI, Max Tegmark, the MIT professor whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial, separates myths from reality, utopias from dystopias, to explore the next phase of our existence.

How can we grow our prosperity through automation, without leaving people lacking income or purpose? How can we ensure that future AI systems do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will AI help life flourish as never before, or will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, and even, perhaps, replace us altogether?

''This is a rich and visionary book and everyone should read it'' The Times

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ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0141981806
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books Ltd
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 5, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780141981802
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141981802
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 7.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #31,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in AI & Machine Learning

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Max Tegmark

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Max Tegmark is an MIT professor who who loves thinking about life's big questions, and has authored 2 books and more than 200 technical papers on topics from cosmology to artificial intelligence. He is known as "Mad Max" for his unorthodox ideas and passion for adventure. He is also president of the Future of Life Institute, which aims to ensure that we develop not only technology, but also the wisdom required to use it beneficially.

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Customers find the book eloquently explains all aspects of AI and appreciate its readability. Moreover, the book provides a well-reasoned look at the subject, with one customer noting its excellent job at revealing the philosophical aspects. However, the science fiction elements receive mixed reactions, with some praising the author's expertise while others find the latter portion too esoteric. Additionally, the ethics aspect draws mixed opinions, with some focusing on safety concerns while others criticize the limited understanding of humanity. The scariness level also receives mixed reactions, with some appreciating its realistic approach to danger while others find it too sci-fi.

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Insight Look Eye opening Science fiction Ethics Scariness level

178 customers mention "Insight"168 positive10 negative

Customers find the book insightful, providing great information and an articulate discussion of artificial intelligence's future, with one customer highlighting its well-done summaries of applicable psychology.

"Excellent introduction to AI from a non-technical standpoint. I loved how the author makes me think about topics I wouldn’t ever think about" Read more

"...The book is also fun to read and challenging to our common political and economic realities...." Read more

"...Max Tegmark, a professor at MIT, is brilliant, creative, and rational, giving him that rare ability to explain the complex and mind-boggling to the..." Read more

"...It provides information on all aspects that we are capable of digesting at this point in time...." Read more

17 customers mention "Look"17 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's appearance, describing it as well reasoned and well put out.

"...for AI development, assembled by the FLI Team, I think they look great. But, the hardest part will be enforcement...." Read more

"I enjoyed this author’s clear and interesting style, and that he takes pains to illuminate controversies and differing views concerning the future..." Read more

"...It covers big, fascinating topics in a pleasant manor. No one will feel left out, nor does anything seem "dumbed-down"...." Read more

"I enjoy his style - In Chapter 5 for instance, Max lists out and articulates the visions of the many different possibilities of future AI outcomes..." Read more

11 customers mention "Eye opening"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the book eye opening, with one customer noting its excellent job at revealing philosophical concepts.

"...You won't only be enriched, enlightened and better informed, but your life will be enhanced and you'll not only "Imagine" (with John Lennon) but..." Read more

"The book does an excellent job at revealing the phylosophical and ethical concerns that are implied if we as Homo Sapiens manage to create human..." Read more

"I found the information informative and eye opening." Read more

"Loved the realistic look at the danger but also positive vision presented for the possible future of AI in harmony with humanity and life in general...." Read more

19 customers mention "Science fiction"12 positive7 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's science fiction content, with some praising the author's scientific approach while others find it too esoteric, with one customer noting it grossly misunderstands the nature of life.

"...Tegmark covers the spectrum of physics, cosmology, and artificial intelligence with the clarity and enthusiasm I haven’t witnessed since we were all..." Read more

"...with the book is that the latter part (about half of it) is very speculative, like a SciFi fantasy...." Read more

"...I accept that the author is a brilliant scientist, but his writing style does not draw the reader in...." Read more

"...book, Tegmark draws on the insights of computer science, biology, cosmology, physics, human psychology and philosophy in reaching his conclusions --..." Read more

16 customers mention "Ethics"10 positive6 negative

Customers have mixed views on the book's approach to AI ethics, with some focusing on safety concerns, while one customer notes that AI is more dangerous than global warming or nuclear weapons.

"...Tegmark points out that AI is morally neutral and like guns is not the evil element in the equation...." Read more

"...This change is more dangerous than global warming or nuclear weapons...." Read more

"...Instead it becomes clear that the main topic is safety of AI...." Read more

"...the introduction to the technology as well as the depth into which the author explored ethical, social, political, legal, philosophical, and other..." Read more

11 customers mention "Scariness level"4 positive7 negative

Customers have mixed reactions to the book's scariness level, with some appreciating its realistic approach to danger while others find it too sci-fi.

"...Some are good and some are bad. This is a very disturbing book. It is not particularly well written...." Read more

"...It does not try to scare the reader, it try to educate them in the reality of the technology and also lets you know what the discussions that are..." Read more

"...The book gets a bit too Sci-Fi and falls short when it heads into these fanciful accounts of what could result if we push the boundaries of physics,..." Read more

"...They are either unappealing or complete nightmares. I’d rather live on Isaac Asimov Spacer worlds, or Star Trek-like societies...." Read more

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John Pino
Excellent introduction to AI from a non-technical standpoint
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase

Excellent introduction to AI from a non-technical standpoint. I loved how the author makes me think about topics I wouldn’t ever think about

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J. Kutz
Deeper thought and action needed
Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2017
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Life 3.0
Max Tegmark enthusiastically and excitedly writes about what life will be like for us humans with the rise in AI (Artificial Intelligence), AGI (Artificial General Intelligence – Intelligence on par with humans) and the possibility/probability of creating Super-Intelligence (AI enabled intelligence that far surpasses human intelligence and capabilities.). He asks the reader to critically engage with him in imagining scenarios of what such AI reality could mean for us and to respond on his Age of AI website.

The book begins with the Tale of the Omega Team, a group of humans who decide to release advanced AI, named Prometheus, surreptitiously and in a controlled way into human society. The tale unfolds as a world take-over by Prometheus and in a final triumph becomes the world’s first single power able to enable life to flourish for billions of years on Earth and to be spread throughout the cosmos.

If you have never read much post-modern futurology, Tegmark is a good way to take the plunge. He brings together much of the thinking about what humanity will have to deal with, the decisions it will have to make and the options it might have with the inevitable advancement of technology and specifically AI. Above all he encourages the reader to believe that she/he has an important role to play in what the future will hold for us and that we need not, indeed cannot, succumb to fatalism. The most commendable, concrete and hopeful part of the book is in his story of AI researchers coming to agreement about the path forward for AI that is pro-active in addressing the challenges it presents and the impact it will have on human society. The end of the book lays out this path in the Asilomar AI Principles, which were created, critiqued, refined and agreed through a process initiated in an AI conference in Puerto Rico in January 2015. The takeaway for Tegmark is that AI research can now confidently go forward with the knowledge that impacts and consequences for humanity have been and will be addressed in the process to mitigate any negatives. He and his colleagues deserve credit for such engagement and thoughtful commitment in their endeavors.

For the above I gave the book four stars. The book is also fun to read and challenging to our common political and economic realities. There are, however, areas of concern that are either untouched or passed over lightly, to which I now turn:

1. The quest for truth - Tegmark assumes that we have an “excellent framework for our truth quest: the scientific method.” I start my critique here because this assumption is not argued nor established. There is no argument against the formidable power of scientific methodology to give deep explanation to natural reality. However, the issue of truth is rightly not the purview of science, but of philosophy. This may seem nit-picky, but we are too used to the idea that science is the absolute arbiter of truth as though it can offer a complete picture of reality, when in fact that’s not within its job description.

2. The way Tegmark frames his definition of life is a case in point. To do this he makes two moves: first, using the scientific method he deconstructs life in a reductionist move; the second move is to decenter biotic, human life in its importance and necessity in the unfolding of what he calls Life 3.0. Tegmark's first move reduces the definition of life to “a process that can retain its complexity and replicate itself.” In this highly generalized definition he can than reduce life further to atoms arranged in a pattern that contains information.

This broad definition is important for the second move which is the decentering of biotic human life. Here he offers a post-modern notion that human life (anthropocentric) can no longer be the measure of all things. Humans have been displaced from the center of the universe in great steps since Copernicus. If we are going to promote Life 3.0, we must continue this decentering to make room for the expanded definition of life he offers. Life must now be imagined as other than biotic. It must include the possibilities imagined by our new technologies of superintelligence housed in robust substrates where human consciousness or even non-human consciousness can reside for great lengths of time and go beyond earth to the reaches of the universe. If it sounds utopian, there is that clear melody line in Tegmark’s writing, in spite of some protestations to the contrary.

This is Tegmark’s book. He can define life however he sees fit. From my perspective life was the good old fashioned, highly unlikely emergence of biotic generativity – the beginning of which we yet do not know. Evolution did its trial and error number over four billion years to produce humans. If and when there is ever the need to call something non-biotic, life, it will be apparent at that moment and not before. This does not mean that preparation for AI is not needed. It is that sapience is not sentience nor does intelligence to some superhuman degree make something life even if it can mimic or surpass human neurology. Call it what it is: a really smart human-made machine that is programed to learn, replicate, maybe have what we call consciousness and cause us all kinds of grief and gladness. Life? No.

3. It is good that Tegmark wades into the arena of ethics because they cry out for attention.
• First, can anyone actually account for or quantify/qualify accurately for human behavior? History has yet to convince us that humans, whether naturally tending toward the moral or not, cannot be morally controlled. The scientific evidence is in our history. And yes, there are many heroes, but there are many who are classified “evil.” One need only to look at the current “fad” of mass shootings in the USA. We may blame mentally unstable people for this, but we are those people. Tegmark points out that AI is morally neutral and like guns is not the evil element in the equation. But AI is initially and therefore ultimately a human endeavor and therefore is imbued with human imitation and limits. As good and needed an attempt that is made with the Asilomar AI Principles, we can be sure that AI will be used wrongly and perhaps fatally to all of life. Our certainty is because we know ourselves as humans. We are a product of Nature which models the whole spectrum of behaviors from the deeply violent to the deeply loving. More species of life on earth have gone extinct than are alive today. Dare we think that humans might escape a similar fate because we are intelligent or have benign superintelligent buddies? Before anything else can be discussed regarding the deep future of humanity, humanity itself has to come to grips with itself. Though Tegmark rhetorically acknowledges such negative possibilities, he is full steam ahead in his assumptions and commitment to the development of superintelligence.

• Second, in our modern world moral absolutes are hard to come by. In a purely naturalistic setting all morality is relative and therefore depends upon the decision of humans within a cultural setting within the personal psyches of the individuals making moral choices. It is not cynical to believe that if you scratch a beautiful public moral persona, you will get it to bleed a bewildering moral anomaly. Look at how many moral quibbles some of the scientists who were involved in developing atomic/nuclear weaponry had. When threatened, it seems “all options are on the table.” For all the good of Tegmark’s intentions this is a very uncertain area. Even his examples of several Russian men, who prevented nuclear holocaust, are frightening enough for us to understand just how serious the moment in which we live is morally. So, the question is: do we have a sufficient moral foundation and will to unleash AI invention and use?

•Third, in spite of trying to move away from human-centeredness rhetorically throughout his book, Tegmark does no better than anyone else when he, in the end, does not do so. In fact it is likely that humans will never be able to decenter themselves because all our concepts, heuristic overlays, thought processes, bodily constraints and needs make it impossible. At any rate, Tegmark, without great explanation or justification joins others in believing that humans must spread their life and intelligence throughout as much of the universe as possible – in order to unleash its potential! That very idea is human-centered: colonialist, exploitative, presumptive and perhaps idolatrous. In a universe where life is located only on our planet, as far as we know for sure, why do we think life, our life, should interrupt that immense time/space with our angst? Do we think our machines will overcome human moral ambivalence? Why inflict our unfinished project on earth to more territory? Why not make a moral stand to address earth and human issues so that until we have reached a greater potential morally, spiritually, intellectually, materially and relationally, we stay here and make sure our AI does too? Talk about a utopian dream! The point is that morally there is no good argument for taking human life and issues elsewhere, especially because that means unleashing the whole spectrum of human experience.

Fourth, though the book’s subtitle is “Being Human in an Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Tegmark does not address to any depth what happens to or even if humanity can last in the face of superintelligence. This is even with the assumption that AI will be good for humans. Human and AI life forms are critically different from each other. Though there might be some compatibility between the two, AI is more like the rocks and electrical switches than it is to humans. The human biotic substrate of our existence is in comparison, obsolete. The issues this raises cannot be put aside cavalierly with the technological move of uploading our humanity into a more robust substrate. Humanity by definition is biotic. If one cannot accept Tegmark’s generous new definition of life it means humans will be decentered in a devastating way.

4. One last thing needs mention, Tegmark’s use of the words “pessimistic” and “optimistic” in regard to the future path that AI will take. Both these words are unscientific. They describe a general psychological intuition or feeling about something based on a foundation that seems solid or not. To use such words in the context of AI value and possible future effects on humanity is misplaced. Better to stick with more concrete descriptions. One can say the same thing about Tegmark and his colleagues regarding their enthusiasm for technological future wonderments. History again has to keep us grounded. Who would have thought (no one obviously did) at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that its descendants would be threatened within a degree or two of their lives because of the burning of plentiful fossil fuel? Whatever plans are put forth to mitigate the impact of humans messing around with nature, we can be assured that we will always miscalculate and create unintended consequences. Explorers, explore, but beware!

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Gary Moreau, Author
A Must Read for Everyone on the Planet
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2017
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Profound. It’s the only word I can come up with to describe this book. It should be required reading for everyone on the planet.

If you’re a curious reader, it is an excellent primer on where the scientists are now. Tegmark covers the spectrum of physics, cosmology, and artificial intelligence with the clarity and enthusiasm I haven’t witnessed since we were all glued to our televisions in the 1980s watching Carl Sagan unwrap the mysteries of the cosmos. Max Tegmark, a professor at MIT, is brilliant, creative, and rational, giving him that rare ability to explain the complex and mind-boggling to the rest of us.

The primary purpose of the book, in Tegmark’s words, is to invite all of us to participate in setting goals for the development of artificial intelligence and, indeed, the future of scientific inquiry. It is rare that someone of Tegmark’s standing in the scientific community invites us into the tent and as I read the book I felt an overwhelming sense of obligation to oblige the request. This book, I think, is that important.

Philosopher Karl Popper popularized the adage, “If it’s not falsifiable, it’s not scientific.” It is a perspective widely accepted in the scientific community and in popular culture and it has driven a seemingly irreconcilable intellectual wedge between science and philosophy. It is a wedge that has damaged, and will ultimately constrain, both pursuits.

Tegmark makes an impassioned and well argued rejection of the scientific dismissal of consciousness. It is, he argues, the elephant in the room of AI. It must be addressed and understood. And I think he’s right. (He also seems optimistic that science will one day figure it out. Of that I am not so confidant, but I am certainly open to trying.)

As Tegmark clearly notes, there is no consensus in the AI community as to when, if ever, an intelligent machine capable of both learning and improving it’s own physical structure and performance, his definition of Life 3.0, will be created. Once it comes into existence, however, he makes a very convincing case that it will be too late to start thinking about aligning the machine’s goals with our own. The horse, by definition, will be out of the barn. And there is no reason to believe the outcome will be a good one if we don’t plan for it.

If you enjoy incredible facts, Tegmark provides plenty of them. I know he certainly helped me to gain a better appreciation for the sheer magnitude of the universe and the mathematical splendor of time and space.

I started this book with some skepticism. Because language itself is a human convention that we invented, I am naturally skeptical of any written or oral explanation of anything that claims to be final and complete. I think of knowledge in the way that post-Impressionist painter, George Seurat, thought of art. He established the Pointillist school, wherein the artist uses dots of pigment instead of brush strokes to create his or her artistic rendering of reality. When complete the image is obvious. Randomly remove half or more of the dots of pigment, however, and you’re forced to speculate.

And that’s precisely where we are, I believe, in a lot of areas of science and general human understanding. It’s folly for anyone to proclaim that we have fully uncovered all of the laws of reality much less filled in the blanks. We have made progress in our understanding but our journey is far from over.

I won’t suggest that Tegmark would agree with that, at least in degree. He is a scientist, to be sure. I do feel, however, that he is sincerely receptive to dialogue—even insistent on it—and that makes him the voice we need to move forward in our pursuit of understanding and the wonders, like AI, that knowledge will put at our doorstep.

If not here, the future is coming. After reading this book it’s a lot closer than I realized. The conversation Tegmark requests is both timely and necessary.

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sherry henricks
Informative and Inspiring
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
This book takes expansive, complicated concepts and presents them in easier to understand language. It provides information on all aspects that we are capable of digesting at this point in time. It leaves the reader better informed and optimistic about our future with AI.

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Stan
A Good Overview
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2025
Verified Purchase
Not too bad for when it was published. AI is changing so rapidly that this book is already dated.

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Aleksander Westby
Väl skriven och mycket intressant
Reviewed in Sweden on July 29, 2024
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

En bok alla borde läsa

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Nando
Understanding AI
Reviewed in Spain on May 22, 2024
Verified Purchase
Tegmark covers many aspects of AI in this book, which not only include a basic technical part to simplify how AI works, but also the different aspects that impact our society. A must read book to be more informed about AI and how we can contribute to a better future,by asking ourselves, and those around us, difficult questions about consciousness.

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JAYANTI PRASAD
Honest, deep and insightful account
Reviewed in India on November 8, 2022
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Artificial Intelligence or AI is the buzzword at top at present and everyone has a take on it and so Prof. Max Tegmark is not alone. Just before reading Life3.0, which is now few years old. Just before reading this I completed “Human Compatible” by Stuart Russel, another AI Pioneer. Just to mention that my reading of all the three books of Yuval Harari is still fresh. I am mentioning these references just to highlight that it is about the same great story – the past, present and future of humanity.

I know Tegmark since I started doing my Ph.D. in cosmology and some of the early papers I read were written by Tegmark. I found him warm and remarkable, in the way his approach was lively and engaging and not cold and authoritarian as mostly is the case if academics. His curiosity looked genuine and his enthusiasm childlike. In early 2000s he was growing and has more enthusiasm and may be less depth. His scientific American article “Parallel Universe” was blockbuster. His account of the historical development of quantum mechanics remarkable and obviously from the very beginning he had privilege of being in company of John Wheeler, Nick Bostrom and Frank Wilczek. When I got a chance to meet Tegmark in 2006 in ICTP, Italy, where he as giving a course and I was one of the attendees, I had a chance to spend some time with him and I had a long list of questions which I was able to ask him and he answered most of them. Just to mention that at that time there was not much hype about AI and occasional philosophers with roots in physics and astrophysics were more interested in origin of the universe, definition of life, free will, space-time singularities and interpretation of quantum mechanics. Now fast forward 15 years and AI has overshadowed other profound questions and Tegmark switched the great and find himself engaging with AI questions. Some of the plus points of the books are as follows:

1. It looks like a single coherent story, rather a bunch of disconnected story.
2. The approach is quite honest, Tegmark mostly asks big questions and he never tries to give authentic answers of those, science there are none !
3. This is a book which is written to be read and not put on bookshelf. He brings minimum technical stuff as required and fill the rest with ideas from other experts and his personal accounts.
4. Whether AI will overtake humanity or not and for that what kind of safety protocols to be put in place that may be hard to converge on but Max is able to convince the need to solve the problem.
5. The books has important references and the readers can check for more details.

There are some negative points also of the book, or approach like the followings.

1. Most of the ideas presented in the book are not new and Max just presented them in a new format.
2. Money is important and it can be a great enabler or distractor and in most cases it is the second. So it is not clear how securing funding for AI safety can be considered an achievement.

The last part of the book mostly talks about how we can regulate the AI research to make it safe and there are many suggestions. But now problem is that we know this approach does not work. After WWII we created United Nations but we know it failed to stop the misery of millions of people by superpower. Ukraine war is an example – the entire world is left on the mercy of one single detector who can press the red button any time. AI empowered superpowers may be much more dangerous than nuclear powered.

Apart from AI safety, the book raises many other questions such as purpose and meaning of life, computation, complexity and consciousness. In short I will say anyone who is interested in deep questions must read this book.

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JAYANTI PRASAD

Honest, deep and insightful account

Reviewed in India on November 8, 2022
Artificial Intelligence or AI is the buzzword at top at present and everyone has a take on it and so Prof. Max Tegmark is not alone. Just before reading Life3.0, which is now few years old. Just before reading this I completed “Human Compatible” by Stuart Russel, another AI Pioneer. Just to mention that my reading of all the three books of Yuval Harari is still fresh. I am mentioning these references just to highlight that it is about the same great story – the past, present and future of humanity.

I know Tegmark since I started doing my Ph.D. in cosmology and some of the early papers I read were written by Tegmark. I found him warm and remarkable, in the way his approach was lively and engaging and not cold and authoritarian as mostly is the case if academics. His curiosity looked genuine and his enthusiasm childlike. In early 2000s he was growing and has more enthusiasm and may be less depth. His scientific American article “Parallel Universe” was blockbuster. His account of the historical development of quantum mechanics remarkable and obviously from the very beginning he had privilege of being in company of John Wheeler, Nick Bostrom and Frank Wilczek. When I got a chance to meet Tegmark in 2006 in ICTP, Italy, where he as giving a course and I was one of the attendees, I had a chance to spend some time with him and I had a long list of questions which I was able to ask him and he answered most of them. Just to mention that at that time there was not much hype about AI and occasional philosophers with roots in physics and astrophysics were more interested in origin of the universe, definition of life, free will, space-time singularities and interpretation of quantum mechanics. Now fast forward 15 years and AI has overshadowed other profound questions and Tegmark switched the great and find himself engaging with AI questions. Some of the plus points of the books are as follows:

1. It looks like a single coherent story, rather a bunch of disconnected story.
2. The approach is quite honest, Tegmark mostly asks big questions and he never tries to give authentic answers of those, science there are none !
3. This is a book which is written to be read and not put on bookshelf. He brings minimum technical stuff as required and fill the rest with ideas from other experts and his personal accounts.
4. Whether AI will overtake humanity or not and for that what kind of safety protocols to be put in place that may be hard to converge on but Max is able to convince the need to solve the problem.
5. The books has important references and the readers can check for more details.

There are some negative points also of the book, or approach like the followings.

1. Most of the ideas presented in the book are not new and Max just presented them in a new format.
2. Money is important and it can be a great enabler or distractor and in most cases it is the second. So it is not clear how securing funding for AI safety can be considered an achievement.

The last part of the book mostly talks about how we can regulate the AI research to make it safe and there are many suggestions. But now problem is that we know this approach does not work. After WWII we created United Nations but we know it failed to stop the misery of millions of people by superpower. Ukraine war is an example – the entire world is left on the mercy of one single detector who can press the red button any time. AI empowered superpowers may be much more dangerous than nuclear powered.

Apart from AI safety, the book raises many other questions such as purpose and meaning of life, computation, complexity and consciousness. In short I will say anyone who is interested in deep questions must read this book.

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アメリカguy
Very interesting read but necessarily makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of consciousness
Reviewed in Japan on June 1, 2020
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
The author is clearly very knowledgeable and gives a skillful overview of AI in general layman's terms. As a scientist, he naturally takes a very materialist approach which seems to believe that, if we can recreate the essential, physical functionality of consciousness through the principles of computer science then we will in effect be able to recreate (at some point in the future) consciousness itself. So much so that human beings will be able to upload their own consciousness into either a robot body or some kind of virtual reality on a server and continue to "live" in that way indefinitely. Interesting but hard to believe and frankly a little scary.

I really enjoyed his explanations of an artificial super intelligence and the philosophical challenges of ensuring that it can understand, adopt and retain the goals of its human creators. Did not enjoy the materialistic reductionism of what human beings are and the idea that machines can simply just replace us once they reach a certain level of technological development.

In the end, he is very honest about the mystery of consciousness and I commend him for addressing the issue as so many blowhards with tenure in the scientific community simply won't. He admits that, while we simply don't know what consciousness is, progress is being made in developing technology to help our understanding of it. So good for him about having some integrity instead of glossing over probably the most important question there is.

I learned a lot from this book and feel somewhat more optimistic about the future of AI and, more so, am soundly convinced our future will absolutely include AI just as much so as the present includes computers. Definitely worth a read and food for thought but, again, makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of consciousness.

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Tiago L
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Reviewed in Brazil on April 27, 2018
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Muito bom! Livro que deve ser lido sem a menor dúvida! Muito bem escrito. Leitura fácil. Tema complexo, mas explicado em linguagem acessível.

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Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Paperback – July 5, 2018

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to AI from a non-technical standpoint

4.0 out of 5 stars Deeper thought and action needed

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Everyone on the Planet

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Inspiring

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Overview

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5.0 out of 5 stars Väl skriven och mycket intressant

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding AI

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest, deep and insightful account

Honest, deep and insightful account

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5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting read but necessarily makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of consciousness

5.0 out of 5 stars Excepcional

Excellent introduction to AI from a non-technical standpoint

Deeper thought and action needed

A Must Read for Everyone on the Planet

Informative and Inspiring

A Good Overview

Väl skriven och mycket intressant

Understanding AI

Honest, deep and insightful account

Very interesting read but necessarily makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of consciousness

Excepcional