Omne ignotum pro magnifico

Book Review: Max Tegmark, "Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence", Penguin Books, 2018. A great way to follow up on Yuval Noah Harari's  Homo Deus   is to look at a different perspective on our future as human beings. Whereas Homo Deus  pessimistically forecasts the irrelevance of humankind after the proliferation of superintelligent algorithms, the book Life 3.0 by MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark explores a range of possible futures, from utopias to dystopias and the ground in between. These "AI aftermath scenarios" are also summarized on the book's companion website from the Future of Life Institute (where Tegmark is one of the founders). But the book is about much more than that -- it also attempts to address questions about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, goals, and the end of the universe. And while Life 3.0 may be speculative at times, the author is at least honest about it, to the point of including a table with the ...

Book Review: Yuval Noah Harari, "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow", Vintage, 2017. Previously, we saw how Homo sapiens was able to conquer the world due to a handful of key events: The Cognitive Revolution and emergence of fictive language about 70,000 years ago The extinction of American and Australian megafauna as well as other human species (like Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis ) by 13,000 years before the present The Agricultural Revolution and establishment of permanent settlements, kingdoms, scripts, money, and polytheistic religions between 5,000 and 12,000 years ago Empires, coinage, and monotheistic religions between 2,000 and 4,250 years ago The Scientific Revolution, Industrial Revolution, European colonialism, capitalism, and further extinction of plants and animals between 200 and 500 years ago Yuval Noah Harari concludes his "timeline of history" with the following ominous questions about the future: "Intelligent design beco...

Book Review: Yuval Noah Harari, "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", Vintage, 2015. This is the first of two posts wherein I take a look at the bestselling books of the Israeli historian Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, who has become somewhat of an international phenomenon over the past couple of years. Besides the fact that Sapiens and Homo Deus  are popular, my motivation for reading them has also been stimulated by the fact that they are on the "bookshelf" of the website Conceptually.org , which claims that they can improve one's "cognitive toolkit". So what is this all about? Well, the first book is structured into four parts, with a total of twenty chapters. These are summarized below. *** "Fire gave us power..." Part One of Sapiens deals with the "cognitive revolution", which jump-started the development of human culture about 70,000 years ago. We like to think of our species ( Homo sapiens ) as special, but between...