{"id":18939,"date":"2017-08-28T04:33:53","date_gmt":"2017-08-28T04:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/?p=304023"},"modified":"2017-08-31T10:21:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T10:21:29","slug":"will-ai-enable-the-third-stage-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2017\/08\/28\/will-ai-enable-the-third-stage-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Will AI enable the third stage of life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

In his new book\u00a0<\/em>Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence<\/a>, MIT physicist and AI researcher Max Tegmark explores the future of technology, life, and intelligence.<\/em><\/p>\n

The question of how to define life is notoriously controversial. Competing definitions abound, some of which\u00a0include highly specific requirements such as being composed of cells, which might disqualify both future\u00a0intelligent machines and extraterrestrial civilizations.\u00a0Since we don\u2019t want to limit our thinking about the future of life to the species we\u2019ve encountered so far, let\u2019s\u00a0instead define life very broadly, simply as a process that can retain its complexity and replicate.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s\u00a0replicated isn\u2019t matter (made of atoms) but information (made of bits) specifying how the atoms are arranged.\u00a0When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged\u00a0in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information.<\/p>\n

In other words, we can think of life as a\u00a0self-replicating information-processing system whose information (software) determines both its behavior\u00a0and the blueprints for its hardware.<\/p>\n

Like our Universe itself, life gradually grew more\u00a0complex and interesting, and as I\u2019ll now explain, I\u00a0find it helpful to classify life forms into three levels\u00a0of sophistication: Life 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still an open question how, when and where\u00a0life first appeared in our Universe, but there is\u00a0strong evidence that here on Earth life first\u00a0appeared about 4 billion years ago.<\/p>\n

Before long,\u00a0our planet was teeming with a diverse panoply of\u00a0life forms. The most successful ones, which soon\u00a0outcompeted the rest, were able to react to their\u00a0environment in some way.<\/p>\n

Specifically, they were\u00a0what computer scientists call \u201cintelligent agents\u201d:\u00a0entities that collect information about their\u00a0environment from sensors and then process this\u00a0information to decide how to act back on their environment. This can include highly complex information\u00a0processing, such as when you use information from your eyes and ears to decide what to say in a\u00a0conversation. But it can also involve hardware and software that\u2019s quite simple.<\/p>\n

For example, many bacteria have a sensor measuring the sugar concentration in the liquid around them and\u00a0can swim using propeller-shaped structures called flagella. The hardware linking the sensor to the flagella\u00a0might implement the following simple but useful algorithm: \u201cIf my sugar concentration sensor reports a lower\u00a0value than a couple of seconds ago, then reverse the rotation of my flagella so that I change direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve learned how to speak and countless other skills. Bacteria, on the other hand, aren\u2019t great learners.\u00a0Their DNA specifies not only the design of their hardware, such as sugar sensors and flagella, but also the\u00a0design of their software. They never learn to swim toward sugar; instead, that algorithm was hard- coded into\u00a0their DNA from the start.<\/p>\n

There was of course a learning process of sorts, but it didn\u2019t take place during the\u00a0lifetime of that particular bacterium. Rather, it occurred during the preceding evolution of that species of\u00a0bacteria, through a slow trial-and-error process spanning many generations, where natural selection favored\u00a0those random DNA mutations that improved sugar consumption. Some of these mutations helped by\u00a0improving the design of flagella and other hardware, while other mutations improved the bacterial\u00a0information-processing system that implements the sugar-finding algorithm and other software.<\/p>\n

\n

“Tegmark’s new book is a deeply thoughtful guide to the most important conversation of our time, about how to create a benevolent future civilization as we merge our biological thinking with an even greater intelligence of our own creation.” — Ray Kurzweil, Inventor, Author and Futurist, author of\u00a0The Singularity Is Near<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0How to Create a Mind<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Such bacteria are an example of what I\u2019ll call \u201cLife 1.0\u201d: life where both the hardware and software are\u00a0evolved rather than designed. You and I, on the other hand, are examples of \u201cLife 2.0\u201d: life whose hardware is\u00a0evolved, but whose software is largely designed. By your software, I mean all the algorithms and knowledge\u00a0that you use to process the information from your senses and decide what to do\u2014everything from the ability\u00a0to recognize your friends when you see them to your ability to walk, read, write, calculate, sing and tell jokes.<\/p>\n

You weren\u2019t able to perform any of those tasks when you were born, so all this software got programmed into\u00a0your brain later through the process we call learning. Whereas your childhood curriculum is largely designed\u00a0by your family and teachers, who decide what you should learn, you gradually gain more power to design\u00a0your own software.<\/p>\n

Perhaps your school allows you to select a foreign language: Do you want to install a\u00a0software module into your brain that enables you to speak French, or one that enables you to speak\u00a0Spanish? Do you want to learn to play tennis or chess? Do you want to study to become a chef, a lawyer or\u00a0a pharmacist? Do you want to learn more about artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of life by reading a\u00a0book about it?<\/p>\n

This ability of Life 2.0 to design its software enables it to be much smarter than Life 1.0. High intelligence\u00a0requires both lots of hardware (made of atoms) and lots of software (made of bits). The fact that most of our\u00a0human hardware is added after birth (through growth) is useful, since our ultimate size isn\u2019t limited by the\u00a0width of our mom\u2019s birth canal. In the same way, the fact that most of our human software is added after\u00a0birth (through learning) is useful, since our ultimate intelligence isn\u2019t limited by how much information can be\u00a0transmitted to us at conception via our DNA, 1.0-style.<\/p>\n

I weigh about twenty-five times more than when I was born, and the synaptic connections that link the\u00a0neurons in my brain can store about a hundred thousand times more information than the DNA that I was\u00a0born with. Your synapses store all your knowledge and skills as roughly 100 terabytes\u2019 worth of information,\u00a0while your DNA stores merely about a gigabyte, barely enough to store a single movie download. So it\u2019s\u00a0physically impossible for an infant to be born speaking perfect English and ready to ace her college entrance\u00a0exams: there\u2019s no way the information could have been preloaded into her brain, since the main information\u00a0module she got from her parents (her DNA) lacks sufficient information-storage capacity.<\/p>\n

The ability to design its software enables Life 2.0 to be not only smarter than Life 1.0, but also more flexible.\u00a0If the environment changes, 1.0 can only adapt by slowly evolving over many generations. Life 2.0, on the\u00a0other hand, can adapt almost instantly, via a software update. For example, bacteria frequently encountering\u00a0antibiotics may evolve drug resistance over many generations, but an individual bacterium won\u2019t change its\u00a0behavior at all; in contrast, a girl learning that she has a peanut allergy will immediately change her behavior\u00a0to start avoiding peanuts.<\/p>\n

This flexibility gives Life 2.0 an even greater edge at the population level: even though the information in our\u00a0human DNA hasn\u2019t evolved dramatically over the past fifty thousand years, the information collectively stored\u00a0in our brains, books and computers has exploded. By installing a software module enabling us to\u00a0communicate through sophisticated spoken language, we ensured that the most useful information stored in\u00a0one person\u2019s brain could get copied to other brains, potentially surviving even after the original brain died.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0installing a software module enabling us to read and write, we became able to store and share vastly more\u00a0information than people could memorize. By developing brain software capable of producing technology (i.e.,\u00a0by studying science and engineering), we enabled much of the world\u2019s information to be accessed by many\u00a0of the world\u2019s humans with just a few clicks.<\/p>\n

This flexibility has enabled Life 2.0 to dominate Earth. Freed from its genetic shackles, humanity\u2019s combined\u00a0knowledge has kept growing at an accelerating pace as each breakthrough enabled the next: language,\u00a0writing, the printing press, modern science, computers, the internet, etc. This ever-faster cultural evolution of\u00a0our shared software has emerged as the dominant force shaping our human future, rendering our glacially\u00a0slow biological evolution almost irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Yet despite the most powerful technologies we have today, all life forms we know of remain fundamentally\u00a0limited by their biological hardware. None can live for a million years, memorize all of Wikipedia, understand\u00a0all known science or enjoy spaceflight without a spacecraft. None can transform our largely lifeless cosmos\u00a0into a diverse biosphere that will flourish for billions or trillions of years, enabling our Universe to finally fulfill\u00a0its potential and wake up fully. All this requires life to undergo a final upgrade, to Life 3.0, which can design\u00a0not only its software but also its hardware. In other words, Life 3.0 is the master of its own destiny, finally fully\u00a0free from its evolutionary shackles.<\/p>\n

The boundaries between the three stages of life are slightly fuzzy. If bacteria are Life 1.0 and humans are Life\u00a02.0, then you might classify mice as 1.1: they can learn many things, but not enough to develop language or\u00a0invent the internet. Moreover, because they lack language, what they learn gets largely lost when they die,\u00a0not passed on to the next generation. Similarly, you might argue that today\u2019s humans should count as Life\u00a02.1: we can perform minor hardware upgrades such as implanting artificial teeth, knees and pacemakers, but\u00a0nothing as dramatic as getting ten times taller or acquiring a thousand times bigger brain.<\/p>\n

In summary, we can divide the development of life into three stages, distinguished by life\u2019s ability to design\u00a0itself:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Life 1.0 (biological stage): evolves its hardware and software<\/p>\n

\u2022 Life 2.0 (cultural stage): evolves its hardware, designs much of its software<\/p>\n

\u2022 Life 3.0 (technological stage): designs its hardware and software<\/p>\n

After 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution, development has accelerated dramatically here on Earth: Life 1.0\u00a0arrived about 4 billion years ago, Life 2.0 (we humans) arrived about a hundred millennia ago, and many AI\u00a0researchers think that Life 3.0 may arrive during the coming century, perhaps even during our lifetime,\u00a0spawned by progress in AI. What will happen, and what will this mean for us? That\u2019s the topic of this book.<\/p>\n

From the book\u00a0<\/em>Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence<\/a>\u00a0by Max Tegmark, \u00a9 2017 by Max\u00a0Tegmark. Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing\u00a0Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his new book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, MIT physicist and AI researcher Max Tegmark explores the future of technology, life, and intelligence. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,42,49,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airobotics","category-biotech","category-cognitive-scienceneuroscience","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18939"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18999,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18939\/revisions\/18999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}