Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Max Tegmark

Two decades later, on September 9, 1983, tensions were again high between the superpowers: the Soviet Union had recently been called an “evil empire” by U.S. president Ronald Reagan, and just the previous week, it had shot down a Korean Airlines passenger plane that strayed into its airspace, killing 269 people—including a U.S. congressman. Now an automated Soviet early-warning system reported that the United States had launched five land-based nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union, leaving Officer Stanislav Petrov merely minutes to decide whether this was a false alarm. The satellite was found to be operating properly, so following protocol would have led him to report an incoming nuclear attack. Instead, he trusted his gut instinct, figuring that the United States was unlikely to attack with only five missiles, and reported to his commanders that it was a false alarm without knowing this to be true. It later became clear that a satellite had mistaken the Sun’s reflections off cloud tops for flames from rocket engines.39 I wonder what would have happened if Petrov had been replaced by an AI system that properly followed proper protocol.