According to Theoretical Physicist, Stephen Hawking humans will not be the cleverest intellectuals on the earth 100 years from now. During a conference in London this week, he said that at some point, computers are likely to outdo humans in its place in artificial intelligence within the next century.
According to a report in TechWorld, here’s what he said during Zeitgeist 2015 conference:
Computers will overtake humans with AI at some within the next 100 years. When that happens, we need to make sure the computers have goals aligned with ours.
This isn’t the first time Hawking has spoken out about the topic of artificial intelligence and the potential threat it could pose. Back in December, he told the BBC that artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race.”
Hawking is not the only lone tech and science thought leader who is apprehensive about AI. He had signed an open letter along with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and SpaceX earlier this year advising caution when developing artificial intelligence moving forward. During an Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit, Bill Gates also disclosed that he is in agreement with Elon Musk on this topic, saying that we should be worried about artificial intelligence.
Louis Del Monte, Physicist and Entrepreneur while having a dialogue with former Business Insider reporter Dylan Love last year had made a similar statement similar to Hawking’s, stating the following:
Today there’s no legislation regarding how much intelligence a machine can have, how interconnected it can be. If that continues, look at the exponential trend. We will reach the singularity in the timeframe most experts predict. From that point on you’re going to see that the top species will no longer be humans, but machines.
Larry Page, CEO and co-founder of Google when talking with the Financial Times last year said that he doesn’t essentially think that the rise of artificial intelligence is certainly a bad thing. He pointed out that the introduction of more machines into the labour force could profit the economy:
You can’t wish away these things from happening, they are going to happen,” he told on the subject of artificial intelligence encroaching on the job market to the Financial Times. “You’re going to have some very amazing capabilities in the economy. When we have computers that can do more and more jobs, it’s going to change how we think about work. There’s no way around that. You can’t wish it away.