Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Max Tegmark

I finally got to meet Elon in person for further planning when he came to MIT two months later for a space symposium. It felt very strange to be alone with him in a small green room just moments after he’d enraptured over a thousand MIT students like a rock star, but after a few minutes, all I could think of was our joint project. I instantly liked him. He radiated sincerity, and I was inspired by how much he cared about the long-term future of humanity—and how he audaciously turned his aspiration into actions. He wanted humanity to explore and settle our Universe, so he started a space company. He wanted sustainable energy, so he started a solar company and an electric-car company. Tall, handsome, eloquent and incredibly knowledgeable, it was easy to understand why people listened to him. Unfortunately, this MIT event also taught me how fear-driven and divisive media can be. Elon’s stage performance consisted of an hour of fascinating discussion about space exploration, which I think would have made great TV. At the very end, a student asked him an off-topic question about AI. His answer included the phrase “with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” which became the only thing that most media reported—and