Professor Stephen Hawking warns us of the threat thinking machines pose to mankind…’Humans couldn’t compete’

Elon Musk has already warned us of the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Now Professor Stephen Hawking, is jumping in to offer an even more scientific warning against increased efforts to create thinking machines.

Hawking told the BBC in a recent interview:

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Hawking’s warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI. Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.

Others scientists do not share Hawking’s gloomy predictions about AI.

Via the BBC:

“I believe we will remain in charge of the technology for a decently long time and the potential of it to solve many of the world problems will be realised,” said Rollo Carpenter, creator of Cleverbot.

Cleverbot’s software learns from its past conversations, and has gained high scores in the Turing test, fooling a high proportion of people into believing they are talking to a human.

Mr Carpenter says we are a long way from having the computing power or developing the algorithms needed to achieve full artificial intelligence, but believes it will come in the next few decades.

“We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can’t know if we’ll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it,” he says.

But he is betting that AI is going to be a positive force.

I guess we will all find out soon enough if robots will be kind to us humans, or dispose of us in an orderly fashion.

References:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540