Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Max Tegmark

We’ve seen throughout this book how AI is likely to give us both grand opportunities and tough challenges. A strategy that’s likely to help with essentially all AI challenges is for us to get our act together and improve our human society before AI fully takes off. We’re better off educating our young to make technology robust

and beneficial before ceding great power to it. We’re better off modernizing our laws before technology makes them obsolete. We’re better off resolving international conflicts before they escalate into an arms race in autonomous weapons. We’re better off creating an economy that ensures prosperity for all before AI potentially amplifies inequalities. We’re better off in a society where AI-safety research results get implemented rather than ignored.

And looking further ahead, to challenges related to superhuman AGI, we’re better off agreeing on at least some basic ethical standards before we start tea...

In summary, if we can create a more harmonious human society characterized by cooperation toward shared goals, this will

improve the prospects of the AI revolution ending well.

In other words, one of the best ways for you to improve the future of life ...

You have power to do so in many ways. Of course you can vote at the ballot box and tell your politicians what you think about education, privacy, lethal autonomous weapons, technological unemployment and other issues. But you also vote every day through what you choose to buy, what news you choose to consume, what you choose to share and what sort of role model you choose to be. Do you want to be someone who interrupts all their conversations by checking their smartphone, or someone who feels empowered...