# AI Could Be Humanity’s Best—or Worst—Event by Max Tegmark > "I think if we succeed in building machines that are smarter than us in all ways, it’s going to be either the best thing ever to happen to humanity or the worst thing." > **— Max Tegmark**, *Life 3.0 / Future of Life Institute presentation context* ## Sources and Context - **Exact original source passage:** "I think if we succeed in building machines that are smarter than us in all ways, it’s going to be either the best thing ever to happen to humanity or the worst thing." - **Editorial repair and evidence:** Restores Tegmark's explicit machine-building condition from his own FLI book page. The result remains a conditional best-or-worst judgment. [Direct source](https://futureoflife.org/resource/life-3-0-being-human-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/). No timecode is asserted. - **Full quotation and context:** [AI will either be the best thing to happen or the worst thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1DO9SS4JD4) — The recorded interview preserves Tegmark's full best-or-worst formulation and its AI-governance context. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/MARS|MARS]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|We Were Never Going to Make It]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Artificial General Intelligence|Artificial General Intelligence]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Alignment Problem|Alignment Problem]] - [[wiki/State-Dependent Catastrophe|State-Dependent Catastrophe]] - [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - [[wiki/AI Coordination Systems|AI Coordination Systems]] - [[wiki/Marsification|Marsification]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "I think if we succeed in building machines that are smarter than us in all ways, it’s going to be either the best thing ever to happen to humanity or the worst thing." — Max Tegmark, Life 3.0 / Future of Life Institute presentation context https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-max-tegmark-ai-humanitys-bestor-worstevent ```