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Trust Stephen Hawking to speak the truth, no matter how scary it is. According to the physicist, there are three potential threats to humanity that are powerful enough to deliver doomsday at our doorstep within the next 100 years - robots, aliens and nuclear wars.
On artificial intelligence, Hawking had already raised a red flag as to how new technologies will be the end of us if we don't control it. On Reddit, the physicist had observed,
"The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble."
He further explained the reference by using the analogy of snails,
"If they [artificially intelligent machines] become clever, then we may face an intelligence explosion, as machines develop the ability to engineer themselves to be far more intelligent. That might eventually result in machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails."
Coming to the existence of aliens he noted,
"If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else."
That's not very comforting. And as far as nuclear weaponry is concerned, Hawking said that if robots and aliens didn't do the trick, we humans were adept enough to let nuclear wars befall on us,
"Unless we can use our intelligence to control our aggression, there is not much chance for the human race."
So there we have it. The three things we need to control and avoid in order to save ourselves. Seems about right.
http://www.indiatimes.com/news/worl...n-100-years-warns-stephen-hawking-257069.html
On artificial intelligence, Hawking had already raised a red flag as to how new technologies will be the end of us if we don't control it. On Reddit, the physicist had observed,
"The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble."
He further explained the reference by using the analogy of snails,
"If they [artificially intelligent machines] become clever, then we may face an intelligence explosion, as machines develop the ability to engineer themselves to be far more intelligent. That might eventually result in machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails."
Coming to the existence of aliens he noted,
"If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else."
That's not very comforting. And as far as nuclear weaponry is concerned, Hawking said that if robots and aliens didn't do the trick, we humans were adept enough to let nuclear wars befall on us,
"Unless we can use our intelligence to control our aggression, there is not much chance for the human race."
So there we have it. The three things we need to control and avoid in order to save ourselves. Seems about right.
http://www.indiatimes.com/news/worl...n-100-years-warns-stephen-hawking-257069.html
