Larry King recently checked in with scientific genius, Stephen Hawking as it had been six years since they last spoke. King wanted to catch up with Hawking on the topics of global warming, mass shootings, global instability and overpopulation. And Stephen Hawking is concerned.
In their previous conversation, Hawking had said, “Mankind is in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.” So when they caught back up recently, King checked in to see if his opinions had changed. But Hawking said, “We have certainly not become less greedy or less stupid.”
From the article:
“Hawking gave a quick recap of what the world looks like in 2016, saying: “Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding, they have gotten worse since then.”
“The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100. Air pollution has increased by 8 percent over the past five years. More than 80 percent of inhabitants of urban areas are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution,” he said.”
Hawking believes that in the last six years, the problem with pollution hasn’t yet been addressed, “The increase in air pollution and the emission of increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Will we be too late to avoid dangerous levels of global warming?” But that wasn’t his only concern; when Larry questioned him about the potential dangers of AI (or artificial intelligence) he explained that for all our of tech advances, there still may be steep costs, “Governments seem to be engaged in an AI arms race, designing planes and weapons with intelligent technologies. The funding for projects directly beneficial to the human race, such as improved medical screening seems a somewhat lower priority.”
But, the biggest issue in his mind is what happens once we cross the line, “Once machines reach the critical stage of being able to evolve themselves, we cannot predict whether their goals will be the same as ours.”
It is amazing to hear his sharp mind, not at all lessened by the debilitating disease that has ravaged his body for the last five decades. That’s correct- FIVE.
Stephen Hawking is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author and Director of Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. He has lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for the last 53 years, which is unheard of in the medical community, as the majority of ALS patients die of respiratory failure within three to five years (from the onset of symptoms). What keeps him going is his desire to tackle still unanswered questions. He says, “There are questions I want to answer.”
Source: RT
