What Stephen Hawking Said About the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Beijing time March 14, 2018, according to BBC and other media, the renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76.

Stephen William Hawking (born January 8, 1942, Oxford) was a celebrated physicist and cosmologist.

His main research fields were cosmology and black holes. He proved the singularity theorem and the black‑hole area theorem, proposed Hawking radiation and the no‑boundary universe model, and made significant strides toward unifying Einstein’s relativity with Planck’s quantum mechanics. He received honors such as CH, CBE, FRS, and FRSA.

Despite suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Hawking’s mind roamed the cosmos. He was deeply interested in emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, and warned about its future impact on humanity.

In 2017 at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC), Hawking delivered a remote video speech titled “Let Artificial Intelligence Benefit Humanity and Its Home,” expressing his thoughts on AI.

“Artificial intelligence will develop its own will, conflicting with human will.”

“Once AI breaks free, it will redesign itself at an accelerating pace. Humans, limited by biological evolution, cannot compete and will be replaced.”

“The rise of strong AI could be the best or the worst thing in human history. Its development is a problematic trend that must be addressed now and in the future.”

“For the past 20 years or more, AI has focused on building intelligent agents that can perceive and act in specific environments. In this context, intelligence is a rational concept linked to statistics and economics—a capability to make good decisions, plans, and inferences. This work has led to breakthroughs in speech recognition, image classification, autonomous driving, machine translation, gait analysis, and question‑answer systems.”

“The ability of AI to interpret massive surveillance data raises privacy concerns, and we must manage the economic impact of AI replacing jobs.”

“People turning to study the future of intelligence is an exciting shift. While we are aware of potential dangers, I remain optimistic that the benefits of creating intelligence are enormous. With this new technological revolution, we may reduce industrial harm to nature.”

“We should also play a role in ensuring that the next generation not only has opportunities but also the determination to engage in scientific research early, so they can continue to realize their potential and help create a better world for humanity.”