Gary Beauregard Bottomley's Reviews > Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Nothing in this book was original. All of the many topics covered in this book were covered in other books that I have read previously. There was definitely a tedious feel to each of the chapters. I think there is no more important or interesting topic then super AI and the author is right when he wants to highlight the topic, but, please tell me things I don’t already know.

The author started each chapter by telling me something that I had already knew, then he would tell me almost nothing more than what I knew, then he would summarize what he had said as if I had not already had read it elsewhere or within the chapter. Overall, the lack of depth of each topic presented made for a tedious presentation.

I’m not even bothered by the things I think he got wrong. He makes a categorical error on the nature of our feelings. He thinks of them as things or objects which give us our subjective reality (subjectivity is his standard for self awareness, consciousness). I don’t think our feeling are things. He also appealed to S1 (quick) verse S2 (reflective) memory states. He had brought that up right after mentioning Popper’s falsification criteria. I found that somewhat ironic because S1 S2 definitely fall into the pseudo-science realm because there is no experiment in principal that I could design that would refute that S1 S2 paradigmatic hypothesis. I had a lot of these kinds of problems with this book, but the book failed mostly because it was superficial and it did not give a compelling narrative to wow the reader.

There is no more interesting topic than super AI. It gets at the heart of what it means to be human, what our purpose and meaning is, what is consciousness, is there other complex life in the universe (yes, super AI relates to the Fermi paradox with self replicating von Neumann machines), and even whether or not we are living within a simulation (by all means, check out Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘are we living in a simulation’ hosted debate. It is well worth the two hours), and there is a way to tie Martin Heidegger into the discussion because his ready-at-hand, present-at-hand, and dasein schema means that solipsism is nonsensical and conscious (self aware) machines are not possible (his opinion, not mine), or one could mention Hegel in detail on these topics because of his relating the in itself to the for itself to the other (or in other words the subjective to the objective to spirit, or self awareness) but this author definitely didn’t have much philosophy behind him and it showed by his lack of depth regarding philosophy or philosophy of science.

I have a weakness for books about AI. There should be no way that they bore me, but this author did that by not being able to connect the dots and by only telling me things that were overly familiar and having no real philosophical background as a foundation. (Read Bostrom’s , or Kurzweil’s, or Pedro Domingos’ book, or either of Harari’s books. Each (except for Domingo) was mentioned in this book).