Excerpts-

• From the cover THE THREE STAGES OF LIFE
  
  The question of how to define life is notoriously controversial. Competing definitions abound, some of which include highly specific requirements such as being composed of cells, which might disqualify both future intelligent machines and extraterrestrial civilizations. Since we don’t want to limit our thinking about the future of life to the species we’ve encountered so far, let’s instead define life very broadly, simply as a process that can retain its complexity and replicate. What’s replicated isn’t matter (made of atoms) but information (made of bits) specifying how the atoms are arranged. When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information. In other words, we can think of life as a self-replicating information processing system whose information (software) determines both its behavior and the blueprints for its hardware.
  
  Like our universe itself, life gradually grew more complex and interesting, and as I’ll now explain, I find it helpful to classify life forms into three levels of sophistication: Life 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
  
  It’s still an open question how, when and where life first appeared in our universe, but there is strong evidence that, here on Earth, life first appeared about 4 billion years ago. Before long, our planet was teeming with a diverse panoply of life forms. The most successful ones, which soon outcompeted the rest, were able to react to their environment in some way. Specifically, they were what computer scientists call “intelligent agents”: entities that collect information about their environment from sensors and then process this information to decide how to act back on their environment. This can include highly complex information-processing, such as when you use information from our eyes and ears to decide what to say in a conversation. But it can also involve hardware and software that’s quite simple.
  
  For example, many bacteria have a sensor measuring the sugar concentration in the liquid around them and can swim using propeller-shaped structures called flagella. The hardware linking the sensor to the flagella might implement the following simple but useful algorithm: “If my sugar concentration sensor reports a lower value than a couple of seconds ago, then reverse the rotation of my flagella so that I change direction.”
  
  Whereas you’ve learned how to speak and countless other skills, bacteria aren’t great learners. Their DNA specifies not only the design of their hardware, such as sugar sensors and flagella, but also the design of their software. They never learn to swim toward sugar; instead, that algorithm was hard-coded into their DNA from the start. There was of course a learning process of sorts, but it didn’t take place during the lifetime of that particular bacterium. Rather, it occurred during the preceding evolution of that species of bacteria, through a slow trial-and-error process spanning many generations, where natural selection favored those random DNA mutations that improved sugar consumption. Some of these mutations helped by improving the design of flagella and other hardware, while other mutations improved the bacterial information processing system that implements the sugar-finding algorithm and other software.
  
  Such bacteria are an example of what I’ll call “Life 1.0”: life where both the hardware and software is evolved rather than designed. You and I, on the other hand, are examples of “Life 2.0”: life whose...

About the Author-

• MAX TEGMARK is an MIT professor who has authored more than 200 technical papers on topics from cosmology to artificial intelligence. As president of the Future of Life Institute, he worked with Elon Musk to launch the first-ever grants program for AI safety research. He has been featured in dozens of science documentaries. His passion for ideas, adventure, and entrepreneurship is infectious.

Reviews-

• It's hard to believe that a machine could replace Rob Shapiro's effective, nuanced narration of this audiobook, but then again it was once hard to believe there would be driverless cars and voice-activated homes. We are witnessing the baby steps of artificial intelligence (AI) research. But what happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? Will malicious redeyed robots enslave humanity (not likely), or will man and machine become one ("the singularity"--or as it's known by nonbelievers, "the rapture of the Geeks")? Author Max Tegmark doesn't predict the future, but he lays out AI in an engaging style, particularly in the use of entertaining scenarios, read with flair by narrator Shapiro. R.W.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
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  July 10, 2017
  The robot takeover will ignite an explosion of “awe-inspiring” life even if humans don’t survive, according to this exhilarating, demoralizing primer. MIT physicist Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe) surveys advances in artificial intelligence such as self-driving cars and Jeopardy-winning software, but focuses on the looming prospect of “recursive self-improvement”—AI systems that build smarter versions of themselves at an accelerating pace until their intellects surpass ours. Tegmark’s smart, freewheeling discussion leads to fascinating speculations on AI-based civilizations spanning galaxies and eons—and knotty questions: Will our digital overlords be conscious? Will they coddle us with abundance and virtual-reality idylls or exterminate us with bumblebee-size attack robots? While digerati may be enthralled by the idea of superintelligent civilizations where “beautiful theorems” serve as the main economic resource, Tegmark’s future will strike many as a one in which, at best, humans are dependent on AI-powered technology and, at worst, are extinct. His call for strong controls on AI systems sits awkwardly beside his acknowledgment that controlling such godlike entities will be almost impossible. Love it or hate it, it’s an engrossing forecast.

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  October 2, 2017
  MIT physicist Tegmark explores the pivotal role that artificial intelligence will play in the future of humankind. From chores around the house and what employment will look like to how death might be rethought and even what it will mean to live among the stars, Tegmark considers what self-replicating and self-improving intelligent beings will mean for humans from many angles. Shapiro has a gentle and nonchalant voice that moves effortlessly through technical descriptions of AI technology and its potential upheaval of society. His steady but deliberate narration helps listeners maintain focus and feel comfortable with a variety of topics that Tegmark touches upon, such as how AI works and what it could mean for law enforcement, employment, and political organization. Even as Tegmark veers toward the philosophical, Shapiro keeps listeners attuned. A Knopf hardcover.

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