Professor Stephen Hawking says ‘rogue robots’ threaten future of humanity
Legendary British physicist issues yet another nightmarish warning about an imminent apocalypse
The human species could be brutally finished off by "rogue" robots which are too strong for us to defeat.
That's the latest warning from the physicist and noted doom-monger Professor Stephen Hawking.
The legendary boffin is one of the most prominent critics of the unrestrained development of artificial intelligence, because he fears super-smart machines could end up turning on their human creators and sending us the way of the dodo.
"I don't think advances in artificial intelligence will necessarily be benign," he said during an appearance on the Larry King show.
A robot war is likely to erupt when they reach a point in development called the singularity, when their intellect matches that of a human.
If the machines ever attain this higher state of consciousness, they might decide that us unreliable flesh-bags are superfluous to Planet Earth's requirements and set about getting rid of us.
They could even begin building stronger and better machines, leaving humans choking in their dust.
"Once machines reach a critical stage of being able to evolve themselves we cannot predict whether their goals will be the same as ours," the Professor added.
"Artificial intelligence has the potential to evolve faster than the human race.
"We need to ensure AI is designed ethically, with safeguards in place."
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You might think governments would want to make sure there was no chance machines might rise against their creators.
But the same people who bought us such delights as the nuclear bomb and agent orange are actually pumping cash into the development of ever more sophisticated war machines.
"We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid,' Professor Hawking added.
“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."
Last year, the robot-rejecting physicist was one of 1,000 who signed a petition calling for an end to the "global artificial intelligence arms race".
The letter raised the horrifying prospect that racist killer bots could carry out vicious ethnic cleansing campaigns.
"Unlike nuclear weapons, [robots] require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce," the scientists wrote.
"It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing.
"Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.
"We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity."
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