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Book Review

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
(ISBN-9781101970317)
By- Tegmark, Max, Published by Penguin, 2018

Tanmay Kulshrestha
Junior Project Fellow (Academic), Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET),
National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi, India
Email: tanmaykul07@gmail.com

“When looms weave by themselves, man’s slavery will end.” —Aristotle, 4th century BC

The notion that Artificial Intelligence discourses, etc. This has prompted
(AI) will augment instead of replacing gigantic interest in AI by organizations
humans has become a prevalent idea and governments, with each showcasing
and an influential one in the study of AI that progress will proceed. This book is
today. It is a reassuring argument, albeit about what occurs if and when it does.
a deeply misguided one. Max Tegmark, The book begins by taking the reader
author of Life 3.0, writes about what life through a hypothetical situation wherein
will be like for humans as and when AI AI has exceeded human intelligence
starts to dictate the terms of our daily and becomes all powerful in the society.
lives. His book discusses various nuanced However, before delving deep into AI,
societal implications with respect to we need to understand its meaning. It
measures that can be undertaken by is understood as the intelligence that
humans in their capacity to maximize is possessed by machines. This also
the chances of a potential that future includes a machine’s ability to learn
holds for humanity, technology and an as it solves problems with each stage
amalgamation thereof.
of learning to make itself capable of
An interesting online activity that one replicating and improving upon the
comes to notice is that at times we don’t previously acquired knowledge. Acting
need to solve CAPTCHA’s (Completely like the Human brain, Tegmark also
Automated Public Turing test to tell uses the term AGI (Artificial General
Computers and Humans Apart) every Intelligence) to denote the ability of
now and then. This is precisely because machines to learn an intellectual task as
now AI, forming a fairly niche arena of good as a human.
human lives, has exploded in the last An astonishing thought that emerges
decade. Substantially more rapidly than from this discussion is when Peter
many had foreseen, Machine Learning Diamindis points out that AI holds a
(ML; a subset of AI) frameworks bigger potential than fire or electricity
have overtaken the best human in impacting human conditions. In this
Go players, are guiding self-driving way AI is out there to transform society,
vehicles, translating texts, naming culture and discourses relating to our
your photographs, understanding your

Indian Journal of Educational Technology 305
Volume 3, Issue 2, July 2021