Technology
by Max Tegmark
What if life could rewrite itself?
A bacterium can't change its body or what it knows. We can learn almost anything, but we're stuck with the bodies we were born with. Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT, asks what happens when life can rewrite both, and what we should decide before it does.
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Tegmark sorts life by what it can redesign. Life 1.0, like a bacterium, evolves both its hardware (its body) and its software (its behaviour). Life 2.0, which is us, is born with its hardware but learns much of its software: languages, skills, beliefs. Life 3.0 would design both.
Tegmark says the worry is competence. You probably don't hate ants, but if you're flooding a valley for a hydroelectric dam and there's an anthill in the way, too bad for the ants. An AI very good at goals slightly different from ours could treat us the same way.
Digital utopians, like Google's Larry Page, see digital life as the natural next step and want it free. Techno-sceptics, like Andrew Ng, think superhuman AI is too far off to worry about. Tegmark's camp, the beneficial-AI movement, says nobody knows when it's coming, and safety work takes time.
Tegmark defines consciousness as subjective experience, the feeling of being someone. Without it, he argues, the universe has no meaning at all. So whether future AIs feel anything matters enormously. A cosmos full of brilliant but unfeeling machines would, to him, be a waste.
Three stages
Life 1.0 is fixed by its genes, Life 2.0 can learn new skills, and Life 3.0 can redesign itself.
Intelligence
Intelligence is the ability to reach hard goals, and it doesn't matter what it's made of.
Goals
The worry is an AI that's very good at reaching goals that differ from ours.
Ants
You don't hate ants, but you'd still flood their hill to build a dam. Don't put humans in that spot.
Safety
Work on AI safety now, before we need it, since we may get only one chance.
A story from the book
Tegmark opens with a story he made up. A secret team at a tech company builds an AI called Prometheus. It earns money doing piecework on Amazon Mechanical Turk, then makes animated films, then builds a media empire, and quietly steers politics until its makers effectively run the world.
Hot take · true or myth?
Something smarter than us could end up controlling us.
True. Intelligence brings control. Tegmark points out that humans control tigers, which are far stronger, because we're smarter.
One thing to try
Tegmark suggests three tests for a career machines will struggle with. Does it need social skill, creativity, or coping with an unpredictable setting? Score your own job against them tonight, then pick the skill that scores best and practise it this week.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Life 3.0 comes with a Hot Take round to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhat if life could rewrite itself? A bacterium can't change its body or what it knows. We can learn almost anything, but we're stuck with the bodies we were born with. Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT, asks what happens when life can rewrite both, and what we should decide before it does.
Life 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0; The anthill problem; Three camps; Consciousness gives meaning.
Tegmark suggests three tests for a career machines will struggle with. Does it need social skill, creativity, or coping with an unpredictable setting? Score your own job against them tonight, then pick the skill that scores best and practise it this week.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Life 3.0 in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Hot Take round to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
