Stephen Hawking spoke about the threat posed by aliens and artificial intelligence
The scientist gave an interview to the Spanish edition of El Pais, talking about some issues that have long worried people. In particular, he emphasized that God does not exist, and all processes occurring in nature can be explained from a scientific point of view. The researcher understands God as the laws of nature - a similar approach was followed by Albert Einstein. "I use the word" God ", but only in an abstract sense," - says the scientist. Hawking believes that modern science can explain such a difficult issue as the emergence of the world.
In general, the scientist has recently been characterized by fears for the future of civilization. He named aliens as one of the threats in his interview. “Perhaps aliens will become invaders and colonize all the planets they can reach,” he said. We could see something similar in the 1996 film "Independence Day". If such aliens have a high level of development, then the chances for people are really small.
“The real challenge for us is to understand how they (the aliens - NS) might look like,” the scientist added. The theoretical physicist believes that if you look at the question from a mathematical point of view, the chances of the existence of aliens are high. Whether they will be conditionally "bad" or "good" is another question.
In his interview, the researcher also reiterated the threat posed by artificial intelligence. According to Hawking's forecasts, AI could surpass humans in about 100 years. So it will be necessary to think about this threat in the near future.
Hawking has previously focused on the problem of artificial intelligence. The main danger, in his opinion, lies in the fact that human evolution is too slow, while machines can improve themselves incredibly quickly. Interestingly, similar concerns were recently expressed by Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford in 1942. He studied at Oxford and then at Cambridge universities. Now he is one of the most influential theoretical physicists in the world: a significant part of his research concerns cosmology and quantum gravity. One of the scientist's main achievements is the theory, developed in 1975, that black holes "evaporate" due to a phenomenon called Hawking radiation. The theoretical physicist also became famous as one of the world's leading popularizers of science.