Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Max Tegmark

optimization power and recalcitrance,

content overhang

The history of life shows it self-organizing into an ever more complex hierarchy shaped by collaboration, competition and control.

It is easy to imagine human thought freed from bondage to a mortal body—belief in an afterlife is common. But it is not necessary to adopt a mystical or religious stance to accept this possibility. Computers provide a model for even the most ardent mechanist. Hans Moravec, Mind Children

Humans will become as irrelevant as cockroaches. Marshall Brain

denizens

unfettered

brains posthumously frozen by the Arizona-based company Alcor.

obsessive-compulsive hoarders

indentured

drab

dreary

Valuing diversity, and recognizing that different people have different preferences, the AI has divided Earth into different sectors for people to choose between,

Optionally, you can choose not to be told certain beautiful insights, but to be led close and then have the joy of rediscovering them for yourself.

Prison sector: If you break rules, you’ll end up here for retraining unless you get the instant death penalty.

People are initially free to move between sectors whenever they want,

The AI enforces two tiers of rules: universal and local.

Libertarian Sector whose denizens pride themselves on having no local rules whatsoever. All punishments, even local ones, are carried out by the AI, since a human punishing another human would violate the universal no-harm rule.

If you violate a local rule, the AI gives you the choice (unless you’re in the prison sector) of accepting the prescribed punishment or banishment from that sector forever.

in Julian Barnes’ 1989 novel History of the World in 10½ Chapters (and also the 1960 Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit”), where you get what you desire.

lamenting

ennui

Marshall Brain’s 2003 novel Manna.

open-source software movement:

According to the law of supply and demand, cost reflects scarcity, so if supply is essentially unlimited, the price becomes negligible.

all intellectual property rights are abolished: there are no patents, copyrights or trademarked designs—people simply share their good ideas, and everyone is free to use them.

Intellectual property rights are sometimes hailed as the mother of creativity and invention. However, Marshall Brain points out that many of the finest examples of human creativity—from

Vertebrane. It wirelessly connects all willing humans via neural implants, giving instant mental access to the world’s free information through mere thought.

Manna

stymied.

squander

cede

quip

theodicy

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence,

concocting

in the Old Testament, wherein Abraham had slaves. “For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule,” Aristotle wrote in the Politics.

One common pro-slavery argument is that slaves don’t deserve human rights because they or their race/species/kind are somehow inferior.

Another common argument is that slaves are better off enslaved: they get to exist, be taken care of and so on.

in his Politics, Aristotle analogously argued that animals were better off tamed and ruled by men, continuing: “And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different.”

drab

On Intelligence, AI researcher Jeff Hawkins

the zombie solution: building only AIs that completely lack consciousness,

The zombie solution is a risky gamble, however, with a huge downside. If a superintelligent zombie AI breaks out and eliminates humanity, we’ve arguably landed in the worst scenario imaginable:

Of all traits that our human form of intelligence has, I feel that consciousness is by far the most remarkable, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s how our Universe gets meaning.

A third strategy for making the enslaved-god scenario more ethical is to allow the enslaved AI to have fun in its prison, letting it create a virtual inner world where it can have all sorts of inspiring experiences

the scenario where one or more AIs conquer and kill all humans.

Why and How?

it may view us as a threat, nuisance or waste of resources.

Elizabeth Kolbert