Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

In this epilogue, Tegmark shares the story of the inception and productivity of his nonprofit organization, The Future of Life Institute, co-founded with his wife, Meia Chita-Tegmark and a Harvard student, Viktoriya Krakovna. This institute was created in 2014 and designed with the goal of using “technological stewardship” to improve quality of life. Much of the Future of Life Institute’s work is aimed at the avoidance of future catastrophes, from nuclear war, misdirected AI, or other causes.

Tegmark discusses a trip to the London Science Museum in which he becomes deeply emotional about the history of technological progress and the potential of a “poetically tragic” future in which humans are completely replaced by machines (320). He discusses his resolve to focus on FLI and AI-safety research and mentions two conferences aimed at AI-safety, one in Puerto Rico in 2015 and another in Asilomar in 2017. On the former, he writes, “Our goal was to shift the AI-safety conversation from worrying to working: from bickering about how worried to be, to agreeing on concrete research projects that could be started right away to maximize the chance of a good outcome” (321). The work was to create consensus and unity.