Hawking Says Scientific Progress Is Major Source of New Threats To Humanity

HughPickens.com writes: BBC reports that according to Stephen Hawking most of the threats humans now face come from advances in science and technology, including nuclear war, global warming and genetically-engineered viruses. "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years," said Hawking in answer to a question during the BBC Reith Lectures. "By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race. However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."

During his lecture Hawking also answered a question on whether his synthesized electronic voice had shaped his personality, perhaps allowing the introvert to become an extrovert. Replying that he had never been called an introvert before, Hawking added: "Just because I spend a lot of time thinking doesn't mean I don't like parties and getting into trouble."

Comments

Re:Stephen Hawkinson

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is when you look past the clickbait, it's actually a reasonable opinion not on the dangers of technology, but on the dangers of trying to keep our current social models without adapting to or acknowledging disruptive technology.

for example, the "OMG Hawkins fears skynet" was just clickbait for "Hawkins is worried that if we don't do anything about current inequality trends, most of humanity will be treated as disposable garbage when automation renders human labour obsolete"