Artificial intelligence has been a part of Stephen Hawking's life for years, helping him communicate when his motor neurone disease took away his ability to speak. So you might think that the famed astrophysicist would have nothing but praise for this form of technology. However, that seems to be far from the truth.
In fact, Hawking warns that artificial intelligence could be bad news for mankind. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," said Hawking in a new interview with the BBC.
Hawking partnered with Intel in the mid-1990s to create his speech synthesiser. For the past three years, Hawking has worked with the company to update the system, which includes a basic form of artificial intelligence. Experts from Swiftkey, a British company whose software helps predict what users will type on their smartphones, also helped revamp Hawking's communication system.
The new system is hooked over Hawking's glasses to detect motion in his cheek through an infrared sensor. This lets him choose a letter from the alphabet, which in turn, suggests a word he might use. The update allows Hawking to do some of his common tasks 10 times faster than the older system.
This new platform, which Hawking called "life changing" at an event in London earlier today, can do a lot with very little human input. So you see why Hawking is so concerned about its effect on the future of humanity. Artificial intelligence "would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," Hawking also told the BBC. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
But if artificial intelligence were to seal the human race's fate, Hawking might just be the guy to speed up the process, in the movies anyway. Earlier this week, we also learned that he wants to be a villain in a James Bond film. The guy has travelled the world, won prestigious awards and even has his own biopic, The Theory of Everything, in theaters now. But all he really wants is to be a Bond baddie. Go figure.
This isn't just a dream of Hawking's. He really thinks he would be perfect for the part. In the January 2015 issue of the U.K. edition of WIRED, which hits newsstands Thursday, Hawking says in an interview that his computerized voice and wheelchair would make him a natural for the role. Since Bond villains often have a unique prop or distinctive feature — think Le Chiffre's tears of blood or Jaws', well, jaws — perhaps Hawking is on to something here. He also has a tendency to freak us out about the end of the world, so maybe Hawking really does have a dark side we don't know about.
