Stephen Hawking: 'Transcendence Looks at the Implications of Artificial Intelligence - But are we Taking AI Seriously Enough?'
By Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, Frank Wilczek,
The Independent
| 05. 01. 2014
With the Hollywood blockbuster Transcendence playing in cinemas, with Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman showcasing clashing visions for the future of humanity, it's tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction. But this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake in history.
Artificial-intelligence (AI) research is now progressing rapidly. Recent landmarks such as self-driving cars, a computer winning at Jeopardy! and the digital personal assistants Siri, Google Now and Cortana are merely symptoms of an IT arms race fuelled by unprecedented investments and building on an increasingly mature theoretical foundation. Such achievements will probably pale against what the coming decades will bring.
The potential benefits are huge; everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone's list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.
Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we... see more
Related Articles
By Melissa Waddell, Living Non-GMO | 03.03.2022
The biotech industry loves to talk about precision.
For example, advocates for genetic engineering and genetic modification have adopted the term “precision agriculture” to rebrand unpopular technologies that produce GMOs. Divorced from its meaning, precision agriculture sounds very...
By Kelly Servick, Science | 03.22.2022
In its final stages, the neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can bring extreme isolation. People lose control of their muscles, and communication may become impossible. But with the help of an implanted device that reads his brain signals, a...
By Susan B. Levin, Slate | 03.22.2022
If, through biotechnology, we could drastically enhance ourselves—such that our ability to absorb and manipulate information was unlimited, we experienced no disquiet, and we did not age—would we? Should we? For advocates of radical enhancement, or “transhumanism,” answering “yes” is...
By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | 03.09.2022
An extinct rat that once lived on an island in the Indian Ocean may have put the kibosh on scientists’ dreams of resurrecting more famous extinct animals like...
