I have recently read a book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark.

The book have profound questions on artificial intelligence. He breaks down lot of myths.

He explains in detail lot of interesting questions.

What is life?
He explains. Life is simply a process that can retain its complexity and replicate. When a bacterium makes a copy of its DNA, no new atoms are created, but a new set of atoms are arranged in the same pattern as the original, thereby copying the information. In other words, we can think of life as a self replicating information-processing system whose information (software) determines both its behaviour and the blueprints for its hardware.

Can machine have goals?
Yes. Stoves try to heat our food while refrigerators try to keep food cool. Chess program trying to win is also a goal. In some sense, earth’s atoms (non-living things) also have three stages of goal oriented behaviour. First, all matter seemed focused on dissipation which is increase in entropy. Second, some of the matter came alive and instead focused on replication and subgoals of that. Third, a rapidly growing fraction of matter was rearranged by living organisms to accomplish their goals.

How many FLOPS are needed for human intelligence?
This no clear answer. By some estimates it could be 16 tera FLOPS. It maybe wrong due to analog nature of the human brain.

Super star effect
Only top writer, artist, gets the most wealth. Writer, J K Rolwing is more richer than Shakespere.

And, lot more…