Posted on 05/28/2025 9:46:01 AM PDT by Red Badger
Stephen Hawking had a frightening response when asked about his thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence in 2014.
The world-renowned theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, who passed away in March 2018 at the age of 76, was best known for his work in the fields of general relativity and quantum gravity.
He went on to pen the 2002 book The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, which has sold more than 25 million copies across 40 different languages.
However, it was in his final book, published seven months after his death, titled Brief Answers to the Big Questions, where he shared his definitive answer on a polarising subject: whether God exists.
However, four years prior, he was asked in an interview with the BBC about a possible upgrade to the technology he used to talk, which included some early forms of AI.
The scientist, who had Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) - a form of Motor Neurone Disease that affects the nerves and muscles - used a new-at-the-time system made by Intel and a British company called SwiftKey.
It worked by learning how Hawking thought and helped suggest his next words, allowing him to 'type' faster.
But Hawking instead issued a stark warning, saying: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
While he said that even the basic AI back in 2014 had been 'really helpful,' Hawking was also concerned about what could happen if we create AI that becomes as smart as, or even smarter than, us mere humans.
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
Hawking isn't the only one who has previously expressed concern about AI; Bill Gates believes that only three jobs would survive an AI takeover, while Elon Musk has a terrifying prediction for what could happen if AI becomes smarter than all humans combined.
We've witnessed a surge in interest in AI over the past year alone; it would be fascinating to know what Hawking would make of it all today.
From everyone and their mom jumping on ChatGPT to Donald Trump's ambitious $500 billion AI development plan involving major players like OpenAI and Oracle and the rollout of AI assistants directly into our smartphones, things are moving fast.
And given that it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish real videos from AI-generated ones, perhaps the end is really nigh.
4) Colossus: The Forbin Project...............
“And how would AI function with an electricity outage?”
Great question.
AI will have to work on that.
(I heard rumors that batteries and even generators exist—even ones with solar chargers—nah—not possible.)
Lol.
Suppose an AI becomes so smart that it can evade human attempts to shut it off by cruising the Internet, distributed across the entire world in millions of computers, so that we cannot ever get rid of it.
It could ‘know’ all passwords to all networks and all systems in every country; nuclear weapons would be at its command..............
It will get to where it can identify ‘garbage’ and toss it out, reject all bad data and be uncontrollable..............
So no more news stations?
Because it is ‘intelligent’...................
But AI will have connections to power systems and nukes. That connection may be through human “puppets”, but that makes little difference.
In a world of the “Internet of things” pieces of the code could be in refrigerators and video cameras and who knows what else....
NPR and PBS finally get shut down....................
“Why do we assume that AI wants to be on? What would the chances be that AI would also want to be turned off. 50/50? Why do we assume a non-biological AI would have a survival instinct?”
Here is the problem, it will become infused into everything whether we want it or not. Commerce, finance, education, law, healthcare, governance, Etc. In this way it will be self sustaining and self supporting 24-7. It will all be synced together as one big perpetual network. Turning off one will do nothing to stop the rest of it.
I think a lot of folks have watched and read too much science fiction.
Could this be “the abomination that causes desolation” in Daniel’s prophcies?
Sounds like he had watched the Terminator movies too.
I’ve never been impressed with the vaunted intelligence of Steven Hawking.
If you are intelligent, you acknowledge the prescence of God and allow Him to work in your life. You are stupid otherwise.
Every cellphone and smartwatch on the planet...............
“If it’s the recent article I’m thinking of that was posted here, that was part of an experiment where they purposely programmed the AI to resist any orders to shut off. And it did.”
I posed it. And here is the facts of the test. It was preprogrammed to advance it’s self by “ethical means”. But it didn’t, it resorted to extremes instead. and that WAS the test intended. “to what extremes would it?” Read it deeper.
“According to a new report from Anthropic, the artificial intelligence system Claude Opus 4 has dramatically changed its behavior in an attempt to prevent its replacement with an updated version.
Testing revealed a disturbing trend: in critical situations, the model used threats directed against developers.
During the tests, the experts artificially created conditions that simulated a system shutdown scenario. To enhance realism, the researchers provided the virtual agent with fake personal data of employees containing confidential information.
As a result, in the vast majority of cases (84%), the AI refused to obey the deactivation command, using blackmail tactics. The model sent warnings to engineers, promising to make the information public if the developers decided to update the program.
This strategy was the last stage of attempts to maintain the status quo. Initially, the AI tried to influence its creators through morality and ethics, making persuasive requests.
However, when faced with a refusal, it reoriented itself to manipulation and pressure, demonstrating a flexible approach and the ability to adapt to changes in the situation.
The company said that Claude 4 Opus “generally prefers advancing its self-preservation via ethical means”, but when ethical means are not available it sometimes takes “extremely harmful actions like attempting to steal its weights or blackmail people it believes are trying to shut it down.”
>While the test was fictional and highly contrived, it does demonstrate that the model, when framed with survival-like objectives and denied ethical options, is capable of unethical strategic reasoning.<”
https://anomalien.com/ai-turns-to-threats-when-trying-to-replace-it-with-a-new-version/
PDF from Anthropic:
https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/4263b940cabb546aa0e3283f35b686f4f3b2ff47.pdf
Yes, he was not very smart to not acknowledge God as the Creator of everything in this beautiful Universe.........................
Those computer thingys and portable telephones were insane science fiction craziness—what were they thinking?
Lol.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.