What is Life 3.0?
Alex McFarland
AI Journalist for Unite.AI | Founder of AI Disruptor | Content for Startups
How do we define life? We’ve heard the question a million times before, but it is becoming even more difficult to answer with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and powerful machines.
Questions to ask yourself as you read:
- How would you define the different types of life on Earth?
- When do you think Life 3.0 will arrive on Earth?
- What is it about the hardware and software of Life 2.0 (Humans) that enables them to dominate Earth?
Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist, and machine learning researcher Max Tegmark tackles this massive question in his book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. A professor at MIT and the president of the Future of Life Institute, Tegmark demonstrates that the question “How de we define life?” is actually wrong on its face, since there is more than one type of life. He embarks on a journey to explain three stages of life that make up the universe: Life 1.0, Life 2.0, and Life 3.0.
“Like our Universe itself, life gradually grew more complex and interesting...I find it helpful to classify life forms into three levels of sophistication: Life 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.”
The Problem of Defining Life
One of the problems of defining life with highly specific requirements, such as a composition of cells, is that it strips us of the ability to label future intelligent machines or extraterrestrial civilizations as life forms.
Life can be broadly defined as a process that retains its complexity and replicates. Rather than matter itself being replicated, what’s being replicated is information specifying how the matter is arranged. For example, a bacterium doesn’t make any new atoms when it makes a copy of its DNA, but rather a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original.
This means life can be defined as a self-replication information-processing system, and its information, or in other words software, is what determines its behavior and hardware.
When Life First Appeared
As our universe grew more complex and interesting with time, so did life. But when and where did it first appear? While this is a heavily debated question that divides communities, the evidence suggests that life on Earth began around 4 billion years ago.
This life took on many different forms, and the most successful outcompeted the others. These life forms are known as “intelligent agents,” or entities that use sensors to collect information about their environment before processing it and acting accordingly.
This information processing can be either highly complex, like using your eyes and ears before communicating with someone else, or it can involve simple hardware and software.
Simple Yet Complex Forms of Life
Bacteria is a great example of a life form that uses this information processing. Many different types of bacteria rely on a sensor to measure the sugar concentration in the liquid around them.
They also use propeller-shaped structures called flagella to swim around, and they rely on a type of algorithm that controls their behavior. If the sugar concentration becomes too low, then the bacteria knows to change direction.
The bacteria did not learn this. Their DNA is what led to the design of their hardware, like sugar sensors and flagella, as well as their software. Instead of learning to swim toward sugar, the algorithm was hard-coded into their DNA throughout its evolution with trial-and-error.
Life 1.0 - The Bacterium
Bacteria are a type of Life 1.0. With these life forms, both their hardware and software are evolved over time, not designed.
Life 1.0 is not very flexible or adaptive to its environment. It adapts slowly by evolving over generations. While bacteria that encounter a high amount of antibiotics can evolve to be drug resistant over generations, the individual bacterium can’t change its behavior.
Life 2.0 - The Human
Humans are a type of Life 2.0. Our hardware evolves over time, but most of our software is designed. What is meant by software? It is all the algorithms and knowledge that we use to process the information gathered from our senses, which we then base our decisions on.
We cannot perform tasks like walking, reading, writing, and singing when we are born. This is all software that is programmed in our brains as we get older, and it is done through learning. We start out having our software programmed by family and teachers, but we eventually began to design it ourselves.
Because Life 2.0 can design its own software, it is far smarter and flexible than Life 1.0. Life 2.0 can adapt to a changing environment by updating its software, and this is what has allowed it to dominate Earth and other life forms.
Life 3.0 - The Machine
Life 3.0 can determine both its software and hardware. While the other two life forms are still limited by their hardware, not being able to live forever, Life 3.0 breaks free from these limitations. It is the master of its own destiny, not hindered by evolution.
Our future artificial intelligence (AI) machines will fall into this category of Life 3.0.
Evolution of Life Forms
Cosmic evolution has been going on for 13.8 billion years, but the development on Earth has been dramatically accelerated. Life 1.0 arrived around 4 billion years ago, Life 2.0 arrived around a hundred millennia ago, and Life 3.0 is preparing to arrive in the near future.
Many AI researchers believe this will occur within the next century, meaning many of us could live alongside Life 3.0 in the future.
Book Reference: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Author: Max Tegmark