Ever heard the older and the wiser say,
“Everything is good in moderation.”
They were obviously right because everything needs control, and so does technology. Even Professor Stephen Hawking, the physicist, agrees on the saying and recently, he warned the world by saying,
“Technology must be controlled by in order to safeguard the future of humanity.”
Stephen Hawking has talked about the dangers of artificial intelligence numerous times. He says that the only way to save humanity from the increasing dangers of technology is a ‘world government.’ We need to defeat the threat of nuclear or biological war with logic and reason.
Talking about the technology risks with the Times, Professor Hawking mentioned,
“Since civilization began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages. It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason. But that might become a tyranny. All this may sound a bit doom-laden but I am an optimist. I think the human race will rise to meet these challenges. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it. Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amid the stars, but right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it. I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers.”
Hawking is quite optimistic about space travel. He thinks that the space exploration will be the savior of humanity,
“I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space.”
When asked about how the human race will end, he showed no hesitance is saying that it will be the technology that will lead to the end of humanity,
“We are not going to stop making progress, or reverse it, so we must recognize the dangers and control them. We will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period.”
Hawking’s statements were an endorsement of Elon Musk’s idea when he said,
“The probable lifespan of human civilization is much greater if we’re a multi-planet species as opposed to a single-planet species. If we’re a single planet species, then eventually there will be some extinction event.”
Technology advancement, while being exciting, is equally threatening. The human race needs to tackle the threats seriously, and apparently, the only solution according to the physics genius is a world government, which is a scary idea in itself.
What are your thoughts regarding the comments made by the genius physicist? Comment below!