Stephen Hawking: Threat to Humanity - Artificial Intelligence and Smart Weapon Systems

Stephen Hawking, in an article inspired by the new Johnny Depp flick Transcendence, said it would be the "worst mistake in history" to dismiss the threat of artificial intelligence.

In a paper he co-wrote with University at California, Berkeley computer-science professor Stuart Russell, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professors Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek, Hawking cited several achievements in the field of artificial intelligence, including self-driving cars, Siri and the computer that won the US game show Jeopardy!

"Such achievements will probably pale against what the coming decades will bring," the article in Britain's Independent said.

"Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history," the article continued. "Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."

The professors wrote that in the future there may be nothing to prevent machines with superhuman intelligence from self-improving, triggering a so-called "singularity."

"One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand."

"Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all," the article said.

"Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing to happen to humanity in history, little serious research is devoted to these issues outside non-profit institutes such as the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the Future of Life Institute."

"All of us should ask ourselves what we can do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits and avoiding the risks."

Astrophysicists propose 'Planck star' are core of black holes

This artist's concept depicts a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. 

The blue colour here represents radiation pouring out from material very close to the black hole. 

The grayish structure surrounding the black hole, called a torus, is made up of gas and dust. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Two astrophysics, Carlo Rovelli, Centre de Physique Theorique de Luminy and Francesca Vidotto, Radboud University Nijmegen, have uploaded a paper to the preprint server arXiv in which they suggest that a structure known as a Planck star exists at the center of black holes, rather than a singularity.

Carlo Rovelli

This would suggest, they note, that black holes at some point return all the information they have pulled in, to the universe.

The current thinking regarding black holes is that they have two very simple parts, an event horizon and a singularity.

Because a probe cannot be sent inside a black hole to see what is truly going on, researchers have to rely on theories.

The singularity theory suffers from what has come to be known as the "information paradox"—black holes appear to destroy information, which would seem to violate the rules of general relativity, because they follow rules of quantum mechanics instead.

This paradox has left deep thinking physicists such as Stephen Hawking uneasy—so much so that he and others have begun offering alternatives or amendments to existing theories. In this new effort, a pair of physicists suggest the idea of a Planck star.

Francesca Vidotto

The idea of a Planck star has its origins with an argument to the Big Bang theory, this other idea holds that when the inevitable Big Crunch comes, instead of forming a singularity, something just a little more tangible will result, something on the Planck scale.

And when that happens, a bounce will occur, causing the universe to expand again, and then to collapse again and so on forever back and forth.

Rovelli and Vidotto wonder why this couldn't be the case with black holes as well—instead of a singularity at its center, there could be a Planck structure, a star, which would allow for general relativity to come back into play.

If this were the case, then a black hole could slowly over time lose mass due to Hawking Radiation, as the black hole contracted, the Planck star inside would grow bigger as information was absorbed.

Eventually, the star would meet the event horizon and the black hole would dematerialise in an instant as all the information it had ever sucked in was cast out into the universe.

This new idea by Rovelli and Vidotto will undoubtedly undergo close scrutiny in the astrophysicist community likely culminating in debate amongst those who find the idea of a Planck star an answer to the information paradox and those who find the entire idea implausible.

More information: Planck stars, arXiv:1401.6562 [gr-qc] arxiv.org/abs/1401.6562

Stephen Hawking: We MUST Explore Space or Humanity has NO Future!

In this photo provided by Cedars-Sinai, British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who has motor neuron disease, gives a talk titled "A Brief History of Mine," to workers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, on Tuesday, April 9, 2013. 

AP Photo/Cedars-Sinai, Eric Reed

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who spent his career decoding the universe and even experienced weightlessness, is urging the continuation of space exploration—for humanity's sake.

The 71-year-old Hawking said he did not think humans would survive another 1,000 years "without escaping beyond our fragile planet."

Hawking made the remarks Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he toured a stem cell laboratory that's focused on trying to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig's disease.

Hawking was diagnosed with the neurological disorder 50 years ago while a student at the notorious  Cambridge University.

He recalled how he became depressed and initially didn't see a point in finishing his doctorate. But he continued his studies.

"If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way," Stephen Hawking. 

Renowned for his work on black holes and the origins of the cosmos, Hawking is famous for bringing esoteric physics concepts to the masses through his best-selling books, including "A Brief History of Time," which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

Hawking has survived longer than most people with Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

ALS Background
ALS attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control the muscles. People gradually have more and more trouble breathing and moving as muscles weaken and waste away.

There's no cure and no way to reverse the disease's progression. Few people with ALS live longer than a decade.

Hawking receives around-the-clock care, can only communicate by twitching his cheek, and relies on a computer mounted to his wheelchair to convey his thoughts in a distinctive robotic monotone.

Dr. Robert Baloh

Despite his diagnosis, Hawking has remained active. In 2007, he floated like an astronaut on an aircraft that creates weightlessness by making parabolic dives.

"However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at," he said Tuesday. Dr. Robert Baloh, director of Cedars-Sinai's ALS program, said he had no explanation for Hawking's longevity.

Baloh said he has treated patients who lived for 10 years or more. "But 50 years is unusual, to say the least," he said.

Stephen Hawking trials Mind-Reading device

Technology has helped Stephen Hawking in many ways, and now it might allow him to communicate using thought alone. 

The cosmologist is trialling a device that monitors brain activity with the ultimate aim of transforming it into speech.

Hawking has motor neurone disease - nerve decay that has left him almost completely paralysed. He currently communicates using a series of cheek twitches to select words from a screen. 

"It is a very, very slow process," says Philip Low at Stanford University in California, who is founder of healthcare company NeuroVigil.

As Hawking loses control of his cheek, Low hopes he might instead communicate using his company's portable device.

The iBrain records brain activity from a single point on the scalp. An algorithm then extracts useful information from this activity.

In a preliminary trial, Low's team asked Hawking to imagine moving his hands and feet while wearing the device. 

They were able to identify what movement he was imagining through changes in his brain activity.

They now hope to develop the technology to enable Hawking and others to use the imagined movements to instruct a computer to write or speak words.

Low presented the work at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference in Cambridge, UK, on 8 July.

Stephen Hawking Says Humanity Won't Survive Without Leaving Earth

If humanity is to survive long-term, it must find a way to get off planet Earth — and fast, according to famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

In fact, human beings may have less than 200 years to figure out how to escape our planet, Hawking said in a recent interview with video site Big Think. Otherwise our species could be at risk for extinction, he said.

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million," Hawking said. "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."

Humans stuck on Earth are at risk from two kinds of catastrophes, Hawking said. First, the kind we bring on ourselves, such as possible devastating impacts from climate change, or nuclear or biological warfare.

A number of cosmic phenomena could spell our demise, too. An asteroid could slam into Earth, killing large swaths of the population and rendering the planet uninhabitable. Or a supernova or gamma-ray burst near our spot in the Milky Way could prove ruinous for life on Earth.

Life on Earth could even be threatened by an extraterrestrial civilization, Hawking has pointed out on his Discovery Channel television series, "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking."

Dangerous aliens may want to take over the planet to use its resources for themselves, he said in the series. It would be safer for the survival of our species if we had people living on other worlds as a backup plan, Hawking proposed.

"The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," he told Big Think. "Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."