Slashdot Mirror
Stephen Hawking Warns That AI and 'Superhumans' Could Wipe Humanity; Says There's No God in Posthumous Book (cnn.com)
Stephen Hawking says artificial intelligence will eventually become so advanced it will "outperform humans." The renowned physicist who died in March warns of both rises in advanced artificial intelligence and genetically-enhanced "superhumans" in a book published Tuesday. Hawking also weighed in on god, and aliens. From a report: According to an excerpt of the book "Brief Answers to the Big Questions" published by the U.K.'s Sunday Times, Hawking wrote AI could prove "huge" to humanity so long as restrictions are in place to control how quickly it grows. "While primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have proved very useful, I fear the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans," Hawking wrote. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded." Hawking wrote about a need for serious research to explore what impact AI would have on humanity, from the workplace to the military, where he expressed concerns about sophisticated weapons systems "that can choose and eliminate their own targets." Hawking also wrote about advances to manipulating DNA, or what he calls "self-designed evolution. Early advances involving the gene-editing tool CRISPR include alerting DNA to create "low-fat" pigs. CNN: "There is no God. No one directs the universe," he writes in "Brief Answers to the Big Questions." "For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God," he adds. "I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature."
"There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further." And he leaves open the possibility of other phenomena. "Travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding," he says. He also predicts that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."
"There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further." And he leaves open the possibility of other phenomena. "Travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding," he says. He also predicts that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."
The simple fact is we've made some crude machine learning algorithms that can be trained but this is not true intelligence, that can make intuitive leaps and predictions about things it has never experienced based on first principles. We are nowhere near being able to create something like that. We may never be able to do that.
... trained as a fundamentalist in AI.
It's not his wheelhouse.
I'm an atheist, too, but like Hawking, I don't have any science to support my faith-based world view.
Stephen's thoughts on these matters are as useless as tits on a boar.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Birth Control + Bread and Circuses and they stop breeding enough to sustain their population. This is what's happening in every first world country. Even the US with it's Evangelicals can't keep it's birthrate above 2.0. As for "below average", good enough is always good enough. You just need people smart enough that they don't fall for demagogues and mumbo-jumbo. That's not a very high bar, and we can do it now with some more education (yes, that means the liberal arts education that /.ers hate. If you're not smart enough for a STEM degree that's the next best way to tech critical thinking)
When people have options they don't breed uncontrollably. We're not animals. We're people. In the future the problem is likely to be under population. That is, unless we let the Evangelicals take control. Then they'll ban birth control and sex ed based on a few well chosen passages in their holy books.
What this all means is progressivism vs conservatism. e.g. we need to get folks to favor progress and improvement and stop looking back wistfully at the "good 'ole days". That does mean you're gonna have to take care of some folks who are now obsolete (like coal minors) and get over the fact that they get paid to do nothing because there's no useful work they can do anymore. Another thing folks hate because it pisses people off to have to get up to go to work when somebody else doesn't.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God,"
From John 9:2:
And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."
And Stephen Hawking has surely increased our understanding of the Universe.
I suppose it's all in how carefully you read the text, for many books, many authors, many stories are misunderstood.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So, which of the thousands of gods will you put your wager on?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
In what you might call spiritual terms, yes. Morality is largely a human construct. As a social species we need rules of conduct, but the nature of those rules has varied wildly in time and space.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Good old Pascal's Wager, an act of craven cowardice and an insult to God Almighty. Pascal's Wager is predicated on God being so stupid that He can't tell you're going through the motions out of fear and that you don't actually have faith. I'm sorry, but if God does exist, I'm not going to stand in front of him as a liar and insult Him to His face. And as for "what will you say to God?", there is nothing I can say, no case to plead, nothing to explain because God knows all. He (if He exists) knows why I didn't believe in Him. I will either burn or not, but I will do it with a clean conscience.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.