Max Tegmark

Max Tegmark (born 5 May 1967^[1]) is a Swedish-American academic physicist, machine learning researcher, and published popular author.^[2] Originally a cosmologist—Tegmark was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 for his contributions to that field^[3]—his work has moved toward a focus on AI, and he is a current professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is president of the independent Future of Life Institute,^[4][5] whose stated mission is to "steer transformative technologies away from extreme, large-scale risks and towards benefiting life."^[6] Toward the aim of its mitigating existential risks from AI, the Institute has received funding from Musk (who, as of 2015, sat on its scientific advisory board).^[7][8][9]

Tegmark is also known for his book Life 3.0, which addresses what the world might look like as artificial intelligence continues to develop. He and his organizations are an academic proponent of risk-aware perspectives on AI,^[7][9] and Tegmark is a supporter of the effective altruism movement.^[10]

Max Erik Tegmark was born Max Erik Shapiro^{[11][12][13]: p. no. unstated} in Stockholm, Sweden, on 5 May 1967,^[1] to Karin Tegmark and mathematician Harold S. Shapiro.^[12] While studying at the University of California at Berkeley, he adopted his mother's surname Tegmark, as there were many Shapiros in astronomy, including one of his professors.^{[13]: p. no. unstated} While in high school, Tegmark and a friend, Magnus Bodin, created and sold a word processor, Teddy, written in machine code for the Swedish eight-bit computer ABC 80 as a summer project, which was marketed "in a very modest manner" by Liber Läromedel,^[11] and—per Tegman's autobiographical description—he also coded a 3D Tetris-like game called Frac.^[13]: p.55

Tegmark left Sweden after receiving his B.A. in economics in 1989 at the Stockholm School of Economics, and an M.S.E in engineering physics from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 1990. He next studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his M.A. in 1992, and Ph.D. in 1994 under the supervision of Joseph Silk.^[14]

Tegmark began an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving tenure in 2003. In 2004, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's department of physics.

As of 2023, Tegmark was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,^[4] and is president of the independent Future of Life Institute,^[5] which he co-founded with Anthony Aguirre, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[9]

An earlier phase of Tegman's research focused on cosmology, wherein he combined theoretical and experimental work (the latter, often in collaboration) to constrain cosmological models and their free parameters. He has developed data analysis tools based on information theory and applied them to cosmic microwave background experiments such as COBE, QMAP, and WMAP, and to galaxy redshift surveys such as the Las Campanas Redshift Survey, the 2dF Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Tegmark, Daniel Eisenstein, and Wayne Hu, writing in The Astrophysical Journal in 1998, introduced the idea of using baryon acoustic oscillations as a standard ruler (here and following, see list of publications).^[15] His 2000 paper in Physical Review E, on quantum decoherence of neurons, concluded that decoherence is too rapid for Roger Penrose's orchestrated objective reduction ("quantum microtubule") model of consciousness to be viable.^[16] Working with Angelica de Oliveira-Costa and Andrew Hamilton, Tegmark and his collaborators reported, in Physical Review D in 2003, discovery of the anomalous multipole alignment in the WMAP data, sometimes referred to as the "axis of evil".^[15] With Anthony Aguirre, he developed what he described in their 2011 Physical Review D paper, as "A Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics". Tegmark also formulated "The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis", in a paper by that name published in Foundations of Physics in 2008, wherein he postulated the physical existance of all structures predicted mathematically.^[17][18][19]

As of this date, Tegmark's research focuses on machine learning. In April 2024, Tegmark, and a team of 7—including MIT/CalTech trainees Ziming Liu, Yixuan Wang, and Sachin Vaidya, and CalTech mathematician Thomas Hou, MIT physicist Marin Soljačić, and Northeastern University physicist James Halverson and mathematician Fabian Ruehle—presented a multiyear effort on their development of a new class of neural networks, Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), which differ fundamentally from the current, most widely applied multilayer perceptron design of networks; theirs is a new application based on the Kolmogorov–Arnold representation theorem that had been rejected decades earlier as impossible to apply to machine learning.^[20][21]

As described in their organizational promotional materials, Tegmark led a research project at MIT, beginning in 2020, focused on the application of machine learning to the classification of news reports.^[22] They called the AI-driven news aggregator "Improving the News", and it involved early participants Khaled Shehada, Mindy Long, and Arun Wongprommoon (toward the initial aggregator), and Tim Woolley (on scaling).^[22][23]

To maintain and scale the work, Tegmark and his co-worker and wife, Meia Chita-Tegmark, founded the eponymous Improve the News Foundation (ITN) as an "apolitical" 501(c)(3) in October 2020, with the stated mission of "[e]mpower[ing] people to rise above controversies and understand the world in a nuanced way."^[23] The ITN product was rebranded as "Verity News" in 2023.

Under Tegmark's founding leadership, the Future of Life Institute has pursued a stated mission to "steer transformative technologies away from extreme, large-scale risks and towards benefiting life."^[6] It has subsequently aimed, as variously described, at dedicating itself to "research aimed at 'mitigate[ing] existential risks facing humanity'... specifically those related to our ongoing progress towards AI... approach[ing] human capabilities",^[7] and more generally to researching "issues... related to the challenges technology presents... to ultimately develop a more optimistic vision for how humanity can take control of the future."^[9][7][24] A co-founding faculty member was University of California, Santa Cruz professor Anthony Aguirre, and its board-level leadership has included Elon Musk, Skype- and Kazaa-founder Jaan Tallinn, as well as celebrities (Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman), and individual graduate students (including his wife, Meia Chita-Tegmark, then a Boston University PhD-student).^[9] Tegmark and the organization are academic proponents of approaches and views that are aware and wrestle with the potential risks associated with the development of AI;^[7] the Institute has received substantial funding from Musk.^[7]

In 2023, Tegmark was the focus of a controversy when he was alleged to have signed a letter of intent on behalf of the Future of Life Institute for a $100,000 grant—ultimately rejected—to far-right media outlet Nya Dagbladet, an outlet for which Tegmark's brother wrote,^[25][26] an allegation to which the Institute formally responded.^[27] Tegmark later said that the Institute "ultimately decided to reject it because of what our subsequent due diligence uncovered", that they rejected it long before the media became involved, and that the institute "finds Nazi, neo-Nazi or pro-Nazi groups or ideologies despicable and would never knowingly support them".^[28] An official statement from the Future of Life Institute further expands on this: "FLI finds groups or ideologies espousing antisemitism, white supremacy, or racism despicable and would never knowingly support any such group".^[27]

Tegmark was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 for, according to the citation, "his contributions to cosmology, including precision measurements from cosmic microwave background and galaxy clustering data, tests of inflation and gravitation theories, and the development of a new technology for low-frequency radio interferometry".^[3]

He was awarded the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science's Gold Medal in 2019 for, according to the citation, "his contributions to our understanding of humanity's place in the cosmos and the opportunities and risks associated with artificial intelligence. He has courageously tackled these existential questions in his research and, in a commendable way, succeeded in communicating the issues to a wider public."^[29]

In 2023, Time named Tegmark one of the 100 most influential people in AI.^[30]

• Tegmark, Max (2014). Our Mathematical Universe. In this work, Tegmark suggests that his theory is simple in its having no free parameters at all, and that in structures complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real" world.

Tegmark's "mathematical universe" hypothesis has been criticized by mathematical physicist Edward Frenkel (and other scientists) as being both overly speculative and unscientific in nature—Frenkel characterizing it as closer to "science fiction and mysticism" than "the realm of science."^[31]

• Tegmark, Max (2017). Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

• Eisenstein, Daniel J.; Hu, Wayne; Tegmark, Max (1998). "Cosmic Complementarity: ${\displaystyle H_{0}}$ and ${\displaystyle \Omega _{m}}$ from Combining Cosmic Microwave Background Experiments and Redshift Surveys". The Astrophysical Journal. 504 (2): L57 – L60. arXiv:astro-ph/9805239. Bibcode:1998ApJ...504L..57E. doi:10.1086/311582. S2CID 8824919.
• Tegmark, Max (1 April 2000). "The Importance of Quantum Decoherence in Brain Processes". Physical Review E. 61 (4): 4194–4206. arXiv:quant-ph/9907009. Bibcode:2000PhRvE..61.4194T. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.61.4194. PMID 11088215. S2CID 17140058.
• Tegmark, Max; de Oliveira-Costa, Angélica; Hamilton, Andrew (1 December 2003). "High Resolution Foreground Cleaned CMB Map from WMAP". Physical Review D. 68 (12) 123523. arXiv:astro-ph/0302496. Bibcode:2003PhRvD..68l3523T. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.68.123523. S2CID 17981329.
• Tegmark, Max (2008). "The Mathematical Universe". Foundations of Physics. 38 (2): 101–150. arXiv:0704.0646. Bibcode:2008FoPh...38..101T. doi:10.1007/s10701-007-9186-9. S2CID 9890455.^[18]
• Aguirre, Anthony; Tegmark, Max (3 November 2011). "Born in an Infinite Universe: A Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics". Physical Review D. 84 (10) 105002. American Physical Society (APS). arXiv:1008.1066. Bibcode:2011PhRvD..84j5002A. doi:10.1103/physrevd.84.105002. ISSN 1550-7998. S2CID 17341893.

• In 2006, Tegmark was one of fifty scientists interviewed by New Scientist about their predictions for the future. His prediction: "In 50 years, you may be able to buy T-shirts on which are printed equations describing the unified laws of our universes."^[32]
• Tegmark appears in the 2007 documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives in which he is interviewed by Mark Oliver Everett, son of the founder of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, Hugh Everett.
• Tegmark also appears in "Who's Afraid of a Big Black Hole?", "What Time is It?", "To Infinity and Beyond", "Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?", "What is Reality?" and "Which Universe Are We In?", all part of the BBC's Horizon scientific series of programmes.
• He appears in several episodes of Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, an American documentary television series on science which first aired in the United States on December 1, 2009. The series is hosted by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.
• Tegmark was interviewed by Morgan Freeman in seasons 2 and 3 of Through the Wormhole in 2011–2012.
• Tegmark participated in the episode "Zooming Out" of BBC World Service's The Forum, which first aired on BBC Radio 4 on 26 April 2014.^[33]
• In 2014, Tegmark co-authored an op-ed in The Huffington Post with Stephen Hawking, Frank Wilczek and Stuart Russell on the movie Transcendence.^[34]
• In 2014, "The Perpetual Earth Program," a play based on Tegmark's book Our Mathematical Universe, was mounted in New York City as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festival.^[35]
• In 2014, he featured in The Principle, a documentary examining the Copernican Principle.^[36]
• In 2015, Tegmark participated in an episode of Sam Harris' the Waking Up podcast entitled "The Multiverse & You (& You & You & You...)" where they discussed topics such as artificial intelligence and the mathematical universe hypothesis.^[37]
• In 2017, Tegmark gave a talk entitled "Effective altruism, existential risk & existential hope" at the world's largest annual conference of the effective altruism movement.^[10]
• In 2017, Tegmark participated in an episode of Sam Harris' the Waking Up podcast entitled "The Future of Intelligence" where they discussed topics such as artificial intelligence and definitions of life.^[38]
• In 2018, Tegmark took part in a conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman about Artificial General Intelligence as part of a MIT course on AGI. He was the first guest on the Lex Fridman podcast.^[39] He was interviewed again on the Lex Fridman podcast in 2021^[40] and in 2023.^[41]
• Tegmark is interviewed in the 2018 documentary on artificial intelligence, Do You Trust This Computer?.

Tegmark married astrophysicist Angelica de Oliveira-Costa in 1997, and divorced in 2009. They have two sons.^[42] On August 5, 2012, Tegmark married Meia Chita.^[43]

Tegmark's brother is the journalist Per Shapiro, who has written for the far-right, populist Swedish newspaper Nya Dagbladet.^[25]

• List of astronomers
• List of physicists

• Official website