Tegmark begins the book with a fictional vignette describing how a small division in a tech company could plausibly build an AI that could take over the world in a single person’s lifetime. The rest of Life 3.0 fails to pay off on the promise of its opening, settling for a tone the is more “wondering aloud” than “dee scientific thinking.”

Rather than dive deeply into the science behind AI and how it works, Tegmark spends much of the book airily describing possible future states of certain types of AI, then asking “what do you think, reader?” His ultimate conclusion for the future of life as AI continues to develop is an optimistic one, which I don’t happen to share.