Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Max Tegmark

As David has emphasized, there are really two separate mysteries of the mind. First, there’s the mystery of how a brain processes information, which David calls the “easy” problems. For example, how does a brain attend to, interpret and respond to sensory input? How can it report on its internal state using language? Although these questions are actually extremely difficult, they’re by our definitions not mysteries of consciousness, but mysteries of intelligence: they ask how a brain remembers, computes and learns. Moreover, we saw in the first part of the book how AI researchers have started to make serious progress on solving many of these “easy problems” with machines—from playing Go to driving cars, analyzing images and processing natural language. Then there’s the separate mystery of why you have a subjective experience, which David calls the hard problem. When you’re driving, you’re experiencing colors, sounds, emotions, and a feeling of self. But why are you experiencing anything at all? Does a self-driving car experience anything at all? If you’re racing against a self-driving car, you’re both inputting information from sensors, processing it and outputting motor commands. But subjectively experiencing driving is something logically separate—is it optional, and if so, what causes it?