Chapter 3 is a survey analysis of potential near-future scenarios. It focuses on the advancement of artificial intelligence and its impact on various sectors of human life, including warfare, economics, the future of hiring, law, and healthcare.

The chapter begins with a guiding existential question: “What does it mean to be human in the present day and age?” (82). Tegmark proceeds to discuss breakthroughs in modern AI development, especially in a field called deep reinforcement learning. Such AIs, like those from DeepMind, learn by receiving positive reinforcement for achieving tasks related to their programmed goals. When discussing the success of another AI that has advanced through deep reinforcement learning, AlphaGo, Tegmark notes that the achievements of such AIs often look like they’re based on intuition. For Tegmark, the “marriage of intuition and logic” provides some AI with the ability to be genuinely creative. He believes that there are many examples of AI taking “baby steps” toward appearing completely human in its ability to converse (90).

Tegmark predicts that the near future will be very different and will challenge much of what it means to be human even before AGIs reach human levels of ability in complex situations.