However you look at it, the future appears bleak. The world is under immense stress environmentally, economically and politically. It's hard to know what to fear the most. Even our own existence is no longer certain. Threats loom from many possible directions: a giant asteroid strike, global warming, a new plague, or nanomachines going rogue and turning everything into grey goo. Another threat is artificial intelligence. In December 2014, Stephen Hawking told the BBC that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race... It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded." Last year, he followed that up by saying that AI is likely "either the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity".
展开▼
