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  • Life 3.0

  • By: Max Tegmark
  • Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
  • Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,287 ratings)
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Life 3.0

By: Max Tegmark
Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
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Summary

Penguin Audio presents Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, read by Rob Shapiro.

We stand at the beginning of a new era. What was once science fiction is fast becoming reality, as AI transforms war, crime, justice, jobs and society - and even our very sense of what it means to be human. More than any other technology, AI has the potential to revolutionise our collective future - and there's nobody better situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and cofounder of the Future of Life Institute, whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

In this deeply researched and vitally important new book, Tegmark takes us to the heart of thinking about AI and the human condition, bringing us face to face with the essential questions of our time. What sort of future do we want? Life 3.0 gives us the tools to join what may be the most important conversation of our time.

©2018 Rob Shapiro (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Audible Sessions with Max Tegmark

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What listeners say about Life 3.0

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Entertaining and thought provoking.

I have been waiting for this to come to audible, as Tegmark's mathematical universe is one of my favourite popular physics book. It does not disappoint. The subject matter is such an important one, that this book, as well as Nick Bostrom's superintelligence, should be mandatory reading for all politicians. Life 3.0 examines the great benefits and immense dangers, that artificial intelligence will offer in the decades to come, and does so in a superbly entertaining way. A word too for Rob Shapiro, who narrated Tegmark's previous book, as he does a faultless job here also. Highly recommended.

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16 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars

A good beginning to the end life 2.0

Definitions and concepts to ideas that are changing the world while humanity fights over gods and philosophies of other centuries, the shock will hit so hard it will change everything or everything will burn.
Politicians are pushing for population growth to stimulate economies and importing humans with retrograde religions to boost modern societies while these societies are advancing modes of technology that will diminish the necessity of ever-growing numbers of human to stimulate economies, and by the very nature of this technologies and sciences contradicting the exitance of god and our own importance as biological beings in this plane of reality. Time to have science influence politics a lot more than just as a possible future, but because science is the main engine of the future good or bad, and having social change created by half blind demagogs will not put us in line with the future shock.
Excelente expose of how our world is changing and how little of this information is bleeding into the general public as a possible total game changer.

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9 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Good reading of a bad book

The interesting information in this book could have fit into a blog post, or maybe even just a paragraph. It was a mix of sci-fi, a love letter to Elon Musk, a little bit of AI history, and a lot of name dropping.

The worst bits were either when he tried to step into biology (it's usually quite cringy when physicists try to biology) and just how excessively preppy and privileged parts of it sounded, like saying that the Harvard graduate you're trying to recruit (to a program that got bank-rolled by Elon Musk. Oh, did he mentioned they'd met and were besties? Must have slipped out. So weird) agreed over dinner before you'd even got to the sushi.

To be fair, the reading was fine, some parts on famous AI figures like Stuart Russel were interesting, and it's probably quite hard to write a book while masturbating so furiously outside Elon Musk's bedroom window.

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8 people found this helpful

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An interesting take on humanity and our future

The premise is really interesting, with a number of key issues posed and articulated in a way that is easily understandable to a person with only a passing understanding of the topic of AI.

There's a decent amount of futuristic thinking and philosophical element which could possibly have been addressed by a second contributor with a more humanist approach, but nonetheless was engaging from beginning to end.

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5 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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More science fiction than science

This is a book that speculates about the future.
It’s problem is that it takes our current understanding as a basis for imagining where we might be going in the future

. Medical science,as well as most of biology, is still largely based on Victorian ideas, which are not perhaps as accurate as we might like to believe Until we have an accurate science of the present, we cannot rationally use it as a basis to speculate about the future
The book does contain some interesting ideas but for me it’s more Sci-fi than ‘Why’ and is therefore of limited value and factual accuracy

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars

Great overview and up to date

Very broad coverage mostly on longer term impact of superintelligent AGI and research on AI safety. One of if not the best book on the topic. The book was also very much up to date with rapid evolution on the topic. The physics parts on the ultimate limits of AI could be skipped, these essentially describe the limits of our universe assuming our current knowledge is correct and state AI could use all to its benefit. Personally I found these bold and closer to Sci-fi than science, speculative at best... instead maybe spend a bit more time on neuroscience and brain-machine interfaces?

The narrator was really good.

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3 people found this helpful

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thought provoking

really insightful view of the future of humanity and the impact technology will have. the middle few chapters are a bit heavy at times but that's the only negative

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Mind blowing and inspiring

It’s a must-read for every human being!
A lot of guessing and theories that can be abolished but still it’s a good start.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Inspirational but frightening

An important summary of where we are headed as a species and as the guardians of the future of A.I.

The book goes through several science fiction and science fact(ion) scenarios, from utopian to dystopian. These help to illustrate, in vivid colours, the ethically challenging pathways that a superintelligent A.I. could take in the near future, and their potential impact on human society.

Tegmark writes passionately without succumbing to the naive enthusiasm of the most lurid techno-optimists. In fact, since I am (perhaps) one of those sorry people, he appears to me excessively conservative when he cautions the reader against the risks associated with unregulated and undirected A.I. But he simultaneously waxes lyrical about the positive powers of enhancement that A.I. could bring.
(The reader is thus served hot and cold dishes in schizophrenic rotation. Which I don't mind.)

One thing that Tegmark has special expertise in is space (he is a physicist), so the chapters on space exploration and colonisation are the most solidly grounded and, for that reason, inspiring of awe. But even outside his purported main area of expertise, he pulls no punches: the chapters on ethics and consciousness, for example, are eminently thoughtful and illuminating. The importance he readily gives to philosophy as the arbiter of the big questions of the future warms this philosopher's heart.

Overall, the book sheds light on the current state of knowledge around A.I. research in a fruitful and exciting way. I wish there had been more discussion on the possibility of the transhumanistic fusion between man and machine via biotechnological engineering. It seems unlikely that, barring catastrophe, we will be left behind as a biological relic stuck at a permanently low stage of development. While I agree with Tegmark that we need ethical guidelines, I am not so convinced that consensus building leads to an optimal outcome. The (reasonable) ethical and political concerns around A.I., as well as around transhumanistic self-modification and -enhancement, might do more harm than good, unless the liberty of experimentation is safeguarded (of course within the cautionary bounds of internalized externalities).

Dreamy stuff. Nightmarish, too. Frightful hope is knocking robotically at the door, so you better take it like a (hu)man. Or a man machine.

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Phenomenal

Some really thought provoking ideas and considerations read by a fantastic narrator. A must-listen if you’re at all interested in AI.

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1 person found this helpful