Hawking Artificial Intelligence: Stephen Hawking Warns About Rise Of Robots

Hawking says artificial intelligence is bad news for mankind — and his comments? Have people talking. Said comments were made in a paper he co-wrote with University at California, Berkeley computer-science professor Stuart Russell and MIT physics professors Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek.

According to Mail Online, Stephen Hawking fears that the “rise of robots” is dangerous and that artificial intelligence could be the “worst thing to happen to humanity.” These comments came about when Hawking was discussing Johnny Depp’s film Transcendence. Said film is about a doctor (played by Depp) who tries to make computers transcend the abilities of the human brain (via IMDb).

“Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks,” explained Hawking.

Hawking says artificial intelligence requires serious research and the world simply is not prepared for the possible repercussions. Given the fact that computers have already taken over our lives in many ways, many people predict that decades from now, the world will be completely dependent upon technology. While that might not be a bad thing, Hawking suggests people start weighing the pros and the cons of living in a world like that. In doing so, we might be able to “reap the benefits and avoid the risks” when the time comes.

As previously reported by Inquisitr.com,Hawking doesn’t disagree that there could be a lot of positives to come — end to disease, war, and poverty would be significant benefits to artificial intelligence — but would A.I. actually create bigger problems? It’s certainly a possibility. And this is what Stephen Hawking is trying to warn the world about.

Hawking says of artificial intelligence:

“Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved. There is no physical law precluding particles from being organized in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.”

According to UPI, Hawking believes that artificial intelligence already has done some amazing things for mankind. He mentions self-driving cars and Apple’s creation of Siri as examples. If you think back just 10 years, you’d realize what a completely different world we live in today. In many ways, that’s cool. In many other ways, that’s scary. Where is the technological world going to go from here?

“One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”

Stephen Hawking’s artificial intelligence concerns are very real and shouldn’t be ignored according to many. Do you think the world needs to prepare now for what the future will inevitably become?

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]