Stephen Hawking warns AI could 'replace humans altogether' and create a 'new form of life'

byPass: Famed physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has voiced serious concerns over the growth and development of artificial intelligence, warning that someone may create a superior AI that could outperform humans and possibly "replace humans altogether". In an interview with Wired magazine, Hawking said this may result in a "new form of life".

Stephen Hawking said the development of powerful and superior AI may eventually lead to a "new form of life"

"I fear that AI may replace humans altogether," Hawking told Wired, according to a report in Cambridge News. "If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans."

At the launch of Cambridge University's £10m ($13m) Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in October last year, Hawking said the rise of powerful AI will be "either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity".

"I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer. It therefore follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence and exceed it," Hawking had said at the time, noting that the technology could be used to eradicate disease, poverty and the battle against climate change.

However, he also said the technology could be used to develop powerful autonomous weapons or "new ways for the few to oppress the many".

"Success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation," Hawking had said in 2016. "But it could also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks.

"Recent landmarks, such as self-driving cars, or a computer winning at the game of Go, are signs of what is to come. Enormous levels of investment are pouring into this technology. The achievements we have seen so far will surely pale against what the coming decades will bring."

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has also long expressed his concerns about AI, describing it as a "fundamental and existential risk to humanity". He recently spoke out against former Uber employee Anthony Levandowski, who apparently founded a non-profit religious organisation that called for the creation of an AI-based "Godhead".

Levandowski the lead engineer at the heart of the Uber-Waymo lawsuit over self-driving technology reportedly filed paperwork in September 2015 to create the "Way of the Future", which seeks to "contribute to the betterment of society" through the "understanding and worship of the Godhead".

Stephen Hawking said the development of powerful and superior AI may eventually lead to a "new form of life"

In a tweet last week, Musk said Levandowski should be "on the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence".

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What Darwin Can Tell Us About Aliens

byPass: What would life in a far-flung star system look like? Would humans even recognize it as life?
A new theory says yes, we would. In fact, life on other planets (or moons, or asteroids) might look surprisingly similar to life here on Earth, University of Oxford scientist wrote in the International Journal of Astrobiology on Oct. 31. That's because life on other planets would likely be subject to natural selection, just like life on Earth. And if life is subject to natural selection, it is likely to share similarities, even if it isn't carbon-based, for example, or codes its operating instructions in a way entirely different than DNA.

"Living things are adapted," study co-author Samuel Levin, a doctoral candidate in zoology at the University of Oxford, wrote in an email to Live Science. "They appear to be 'trying to do things' like eat, survive, grow, reproduce."

The only way to get adaptedness, Levin said, is through natural selection, the process through which hereditary variation among individuals leads to differences in success, and ultimately survival of the fittest.

"Anything that will stand out to us as alien life will have undergone natural selection," Levin said.

Adapted aliens
Taking natural selection as a starting point, Levin and his colleagues asked what that reveals about how aliens might look. This is a theoretical approach to the question, Levin said. Many astrobiologists take what's called a "mechanistic" approach, looking at how life has evolved on Earth say, around deep-sea vents and try to apply that to the environments of distant planets. Mechanistic predictions have their strengths, Levin said, but because the sample size of planets with known life is just one, it's hard to know what is unique to Earth and what would hold true in space. For example, eyes or eye-like structures have evolved independently about 40 times on Earth, but it's not clear if aliens would also have eyes or whether sight is an Earth-centric sense.

"Theoretical predictions, like the ones we make, are not tied to the details of Earth," Levin said. "They hold regardless of whether aliens are made of carbon or silicon, have DNA or 'XNA,' breathe oxygen or nitrogen, etc."

Theoretical predictions aren't able to determine anything so specific as whether aliens will look more like E.T. or the Predator, but natural selection does lead to certain kinds of organisms. Aliens that have undergone natural selection will be "nested," Levin said they will have undergone transformations in complexity over time, and they'll retain some evidence of those transitions. On Earth, genes "cooperated" to make genomes, genomes made blueprints for cells, and primitive cells eventually joined together to make more complex eukaryotic cells. (Mitochondria, the energy-transforming organelles of eukaryotic cells, were once separate organisms that entered a mutually beneficial relationship with their host cells.) Cells join together to make multicellular organisms, and multicellular organisms often cooperate in colonies or societies.

Getting to know the neighbors
To illustrate the concept, Levin and his colleagues dreamed up a tuber-like alien they call the "Octomite," a complex creature made up of smaller entities that have aligned their interests so that they cooperate, much like the human body's cells work together to keep a person alive.
"Are we alone?" is one of the fundamental questions of the universe, Levin said, so it's worth pondering the sort of life we might run across if we do find E.T. out there.

"On a more philosophical level, understanding what features will be universal to life, wherever it exists, seems deeply rewarding," Levin said. "Our work can't answer the question of whether we're alone, but it does tell us something about our neighbors if we're not alone."

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Robots might replace humans in future, warns Stephen Hawking

byPass: This is not the first time Stephen Hawking has raised an alarm about artificial intelligence. In 2015, he said that robots we design could crush humanity like an anthill.

While renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has been quite vocal about his views on how contacting aliens would be the downfall of humans, this time he has meted out a warning saying that robots will eventually replace humans completely.

The cosmologist has called artficial intelligence (AI) 'a new form of life', that will eventually take over mankind and 'outperform humans'.

According to a report in the Mirror, he said: He said: "I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.

"If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself.

"This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans."

In an interview with WIRED magazine, Hawking had said that he doesn't believe there's a difference between what a human brain and a computer can achieve, so it follows that at some point the machines can become better than us.

‘I believe we have reached the point of no return,’ he said. ‘Our earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing,’ he said according to a report in the Metro.

With this, he also stressed upon the gravitas of young people taking an interest in space research, so we can colonise other planets and save our species.

This is not the first time Stephen Hawking has raised an alarm about artificial intelligence. In 2015, he said that robots we design could crush humanity like an anthill.

He’s also said we should prepare to leave earth in 100 years, and that a ‘world government’ could be our only hope, the Metro report said.

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