With the outbreak of generative A.I. instigated by ChatGPT and now hurredly being followed up by the tech behmoths like Microsoft and Google, I thought it I’d recomend a great read on the subject of AI.
“Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Max Tegmark explores the potential implications and challenges of advancing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Why Life 3.0 ?
Four billion or so years ago, life on earth began at version 1.0. It relied on random mutation to adapt to it’s environment. Next came life 2.0 which had software instead of a hard wired brain which gave the advantage of allowing adaptation in real time, in other words, learning.
Next is life 3.0, where both the hardware (body) and software (brain) can be changed at will. No longer trapped in an ageing body A.I. will be able to live forever and re-progam it’s brain to acheive unimaginable growth beyond our understanding.
| Life version | Body | Brain | Example |
| 1.0 | Changes by evolution | Changes by evolution | Bacteria |
| 2.0 | Changes by evolution | Changes by design | Human |
| 3.0 | Changes by design | Changes by design | AI |
In his book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom describes the human brain running at a top speed of about 200 Hz, which is seven orders of magnitude slower than a modest silicon based processing unit running at 2 GHz. Moreover neurons transmit signals at a maximum of 120 m/s whereas silicon units transmit at the speed of light. The brain compensates for it’s slow clock speed by running in massive parrellelisation.
Life 3.0 can upgrade it’s faster hardware even further and maybe able to eventually mimic the parrellel processing abilities of the brain resulting in a mind milliions of times faster than a human.
Reference
- https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34272565
- https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/20527133
