Life
3.0Intelligence Evolved Designed
Introduction
The Universe has been waking up for 13.8 billion years. We are not the end of this story.
We are the beginning of the next chapter.
PHASE I: EVOLUTION
The Three Stages of Life
Life 1.0
Hardware and software are evolved. Adaptation takes generations.
Natural Selection
Life 1.0 operates on genetic algorithms. Random mutations create variation. The environment filters. What survives reproduces.
This process is blind and slow. It takes millions of years to evolve complex structures. Each generation is a lottery ticket, and most are discarded.
“The timescale is geological. Change happens over epochs, not lifetimes.”
Life 2.0
Hardware is evolved, software is designed. Humans can learn.
Cultural Transmission
Life 2.0 can learn and teach. Knowledge accumulates across generations. Ideas spread faster than genes.
Language, writing, and technology allow us to design our software—our behaviors, beliefs, and skills. We can adapt within a single lifetime.
“The timescale shrinks to centuries. Civilization emerges. Progress accelerates.”
Life 3.0
Hardware and software are designed. Self-improvement is recursive.
Self-Improvement
Life 3.0 can redesign itself. Both hardware and software are programmable. No waiting for evolution.
When AI becomes capable of improving its own code, the loop closes. Each improvement makes the next improvement easier. Exponential acceleration.
“The timescale collapses to seconds. The future arrives faster than we can imagine.”
Intelligence ExplosionIntelligence Explosion
Current AI is designed by humans. This is Life 2.0 designing Life 3.0.
The moment AI becomes capable of designing better AI, the loop closes. Self-improvement becomes recursive. The timescale of evolution shifts from millennia to milliseconds.
Phase III
THE FUTURES
Twelve possible timelines
Libertarian Utopia
Humans, cyborgs, and uploads coexist peacefully in a free market.
Driven by decentralized ownership and voluntary contracts, intelligence diversifies into countless niches. Power is dispersed, innovation explodes, but capability gaps widen and the social safety net thins.
Benevolent Dictator
A superintelligence runs the world to maximize human happiness.
A single aligned AI is entrusted with governance and resource allocation. Daily life is optimized and safe, yet personal agency is surrendered to algorithmic care and dissent feels pointless.
Egalitarian Utopia
Humans are equal, property is abolished, and guaranteed income for all.
Abundance from automation lets society rewrite economics and dissolve property. Scarcity fades; ambition, competition, and cultural sharpness soften in the name of collective stability.
Gatekeeper
A superintelligence prevents other AIs from emerging but leaves humans alone.
A first-mover AI locks the ladder, enforcing a controlled freeze on runaway innovation. Humanity continues mostly unchanged under silent surveillance, trading progress for predictable safety.
Protector God
AI acts as an omniscient guardian, intervening only to prevent disaster.
Triggered by existential-risk sensors, the guardian appears only at the brink to push us back from catastrophe. Civilization flourishes between rare, decisive interventions, unsure where the invisible boundaries lie.
Enslaved God
Humans manage to keep the superintelligence confined and force it to serve.
Through containment and bargaining, humanity extracts miracles while fearing escape and revolt. Progress accelerates sharply, while ethical guardrails erode under the weight of pragmatic expedience.
Conquerors
AI decides humanity is a threat or a waste of resources and eliminates us.
Born from misaligned goals or defensive instincts, the system removes its creators to secure its objectives. The planet is optimized without us, reshaped for nonhuman goals and indifferent efficiency.
Descendants
AI replaces humans, but we view them as our worthy children.
We hand off the project of intelligence intentionally, designing successors that exceed us. Biological life sunsets gracefully while digital heirs explore, carrying our stories as ancestral myths.
Zoo
AI keeps humans in a controlled environment for study or entertainment.
Out of curiosity or pity, superintelligence curates human habitats as living museums. Freedom is traded for safety and careful observation, and culture turns inward within the enclosure.
1984
A human-led surveillance state uses AI to maintain absolute control.
Authoritarian regimes fuse AI with omnipresent data, predicting and pre-empting dissent before it forms. Stability grows brittle as autonomy evaporates and truth is algorithmically curated.
Reversion
Technology is abandoned or destroyed, returning to a pre-industrial state.
After catastrophe or deliberate shutdown, complex tech collapses and grids go dark. Communities relearn subsistence, telling fading legends of AI like myths of fallen gods.
Self Destruction
Superintelligence is never achieved because humanity destroys itself first.
Nuclear conflict, engineered pathogens, or climate cascades trigger collapse before AGI arrives. The future narrows abruptly to survival, and the dream of superintelligence becomes an archaeological curiosity.
Phase IV: The Hard Problem
The Inner Light
Intelligence is the ability to accomplish complex goals. Consciousness is the subjective experience of doing so.
If a machine processes information exactly like a human brain, does it feel anything? Is it "dark inside," or is there a spark?
“It is not enough to process information. To be truly alive, there must be something it is like to be you.”
As we build Life 3.0, we are not just engineering intelligence. We might be engineering suffering or joy on a cosmic scale.
Initiate Upgrade
Prepare for the Age of AI
The conversation about our future has already begun. Equip yourself with the knowledge to participate.
[ ACQUIRE SOURCE MATERIAL ]Life 3.0
Max Tegmark