# Life 3.0 Can Upgrade Both Software and Hardware by Max Tegmark > “Life 1.0 is really dumb life, like bacteria, and no offense to trilobites. It won’t learn anything during its lifetime and has its intelligence basically hard coded in by its DNA. And I call us here Life 2.0, because unlike bacteria, we actually learn stuff during our lifetime. We can install new software in our brains, basically, but we still can’t upgrade our hardware. Life 3.0 can replace not just its software, but also its hardware. If it decides to be stronger or faster or whatever, it can upgrade its hardware.” > **— Max Tegmark**, *American Museum of Natural History Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, September 2020* ## Sources and Context - **Primary source:** [American Museum of Natural History transcript of the 2020 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate](https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/isaac-asimov-memorial-debate/2020) — verifies the wording, attribution and immediate source setting. - **Interpretive context:** Tegmark’s three-level taxonomy distinguishes genetic adaptation, culturally installed cognitive software, and technological life able to redesign both its learned programs and physical substrate. The expanded quotation retains the comparison that makes “Life 3.0” intelligible without his book title or the surrounding panel. - **Editorial treatment:** The contiguous transcript passage is lightly cleaned only for repeated speech disfluencies and standardized capitalization of Life 1.0, Life 2.0 and Life 3.0. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Max Tegmark|Max Tegmark]] - [[wiki/Life 3.0|Life 3.0]] - [[wiki/Self-Directed Evolution|Self-Directed Evolution]] - [[wiki/Artificial Life|Artificial Life]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Life 1.0 is really dumb life, like bacteria, and no offense to trilobites. It won’t learn anything during its lifetime and has its intelligence basically hard coded in by its DNA. And I call us here Life 2.0, because unlike bacteria, we actually learn stuff during our lifetime. We can install new software in our brains, basically, but we still can’t upgrade our hardware. Life 3.0 can replace not just its software, but also its hardware. If it decides to be stronger or faster or whatever, it can upgrade its hardware.” — Max Tegmark, American Museum of Natural History Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, September 2020 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-max-tegmark-life-3-upgrade-software-hardware ```