Max Tegmark: Life 3.0 (#115)

Also on Youtube Max Tegmark is a physicist, cosmologist, and
artificial intelligence - machine learning researcher. He is a
professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the
scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute. He has
been my mentor and friend for a LONG time :-) Professor Tegmark’s
research is focused on precision cosmology, e.g., combining
theoretical work with new measurements to place sharp constraints
on cosmological models and their parameters. Early on, this
challenge has lead him to work mainly on cosmology and quantum
information. Although he’s continuing his cosmology work with the
HERA collaboration, the main focus of his current research is on
the physics of intelligence: using physics-based techniques to
better understand biological and artificial intelligence (AI).
Ultimately, this could culminate in what he calls an "AI Physicist"
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/11/01/1895/an-ai-physicist-can-derive-the-natural-laws-of-imagined-universes/
A native of Stockholm, Tegmark left Sweden in 1990 after receiving
his B.Sc. in Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology (&
a B.A. in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics). His
first academic venture beyond Scandinavia brought him to
California, where he studied physics at the University of
California, Berkeley, earning his PhD. in 1994. Tegmark is an
author on more than 200 technical papers, and has been featured in
dozens of science documentaries. He has received numerous awards
for his research, including a Packard Fellowship (2001-06),
Cottrell Scholar Award, an NSF Career grant. He is a Fellow of the
American Physical Society. His work with the SDSS collaboration on
galaxy clustering shared the first prize in Science magazine’s
“Breakthrough of the Year: 2003.” His book "LIFE 3.0" was an
instant New York Times Best Seller and one of Mark Cuban and Barack
Obama's favorite books of 2017. Life 3.0 asks the question: "How
will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs,
society and our very sense of being human?" The rise of AI has the
potential to transform our future more than any other
technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to
explore that future than Max Tegmark. How can we grow our
prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income
or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can
we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want
without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear
an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually
outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and
perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or
give us more power than we can handle? Read Life 3.0
https://amzn.to/2YTDg9L 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:09 Disagreement with
Noam Chomsky and the challenge of the Imitation Game 00:04:16 Will
AI exceed human intelligence? 00:07:04 Should we fear AI? Are we
being to passive? 00:09:02 Should we trust AI? What we should worry
about. 00:11:21 Were you born tooearly to make good use of AI?
Could AI avert war? 00:12:45 AI may have a democratizing impact.
00:17:55 The "Improve The News" experiment 00:26:19 What do you
think about exponential change? Will tech solve humanity's
problems? 00:30:31 What is your ethical will? Find me on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL
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