The famous scientist was pressed on by journalists who asked him about his new voice system. Hawking suffers from a progressive neurological disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and uses a speech synthesizer to communicate. It recently uses a new system that takes advantage of artificial intelligence.
Developed in part by the British company SwiftKey, the new system learns from Hawking, suggesting the words he might want to use.
According to some IT companies, artificial intelligence could exceed (and replace) the human one within the 2045. For other experts, however, this is just science fiction.
This is not the first time Hawking has addressed the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. Last April, Hawking wrote an editorial for The Huffington Post, with physicists Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek of MIT and computer scientist Stuart Russell of the University of California, stating that "the biggest event in human history will be AI, but it could also be the last ".
Indeed, for some scientists, AI could potentially be more dangerous than the nuclear bomb.
Warnings that seem not to be taken seriously, however, considering that 40 million dollars have been invested in the latest research (in order of time) for the creation of an artificial brain. Among the investors, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and actor Ashton Kutcher.
"Becoming smarter means being wiser, kinder and more peaceful". This analysis of Nuance Communications, a software company responsible for an AI program in development.
"We are working on the development of super-intelligent machines, but this will not happen in the near future. A lot of time will pass before reaching the 'Skynet' level of self-awareness ”.
Franco Iacch
(photo: "Terminator" poster opens)
