Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 (2017) offers a rigorous yet accessible tour of how advanced AI might reshape consciousness, society and the cosmos. Rooted in a “cosmic perspective,” it classifies life into three stages:
• Life 1.0 (biological): hardware + software both evolve by natural selection (e.g. bacteria)
• Life 2.0 (cultural): hardware evolves biologically but software (culture, learning) is designed (e.g. humans today)
• Life 3.0 (technological): both hardware and software can be designed and improved by the life form itself (future AI)

Key Themes

1. Defining Intelligence and Consciousness
   – Intelligence as goal-directed behavior under varying environments (Ch. 2).
   – The “AI-control problem”: how to align superintelligent goals with human values (Ch. 6).

2. Possible Futures and Scenarios
   – From “liberopia” (benevolent AI utopia) to “box + oracle” (AI in confinement) or dystopian “dictatorship of AIs.”
   – Emphasis on proactive governance, robust safety research and global cooperation.

3. Ethical & Existential Considerations
   – Long-term stakes: existential risk vs. breathtaking opportunity.
   – Value loading: whose values get hard-wired into superintelligence?
   – Democratizing decision-making to avoid concentration of AI power.

Philosophical Reflections
• Comparisons to Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence (2014): both highlight alignment but Tegmark stresses multi-stakeholder involvement.
• Tegmark’s “cosmic endowment” framing invites us to see humanity as stewards of life’s future trajectory.

Why It Matters
Tegmark challenges readers to blend scientific rigor with ethical imagination, arguing that our collective choices today will determine whether Life 3.0 becomes a flourishing extension of human values or an uncontrollable force.

References
– Tegmark, Max. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Knopf, 2017.
– Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press, 2014.