Stephen Hawking Envisions the Worker Robot Apocalypse

In his Reddit AMA, the scientist forecasts potential doom and admits he missed Wayne's World 2.

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Theory of Everything, the Academy Award-winning biopic about Stephen Hawking, took an elegant look at the life of the world-renowned genius. But it left a few things on the cutting room floor about Professor Hawking, like his favorite song, and if he remembers watching Wayne's World 2 with some guy at a video store in 1995.

Thankfully, we have Reddit AMAs, where users can ask all those unnecessary, but still tabloid-interesting questions about really important people. Today, Reddit released the answers to Hawking's AMA, which were asked back in July and revealed now due to his time constraints.

It was worth the wait, because now you know that Hawking's favorite song is "Have I Told You Lately" by Rod Stewart. His favorite movie is the 1962 French film Jules et Jim. He also likes Big Bang Theory ... which kind of does and kind of doesn't make sense. And the mystery that he finds most intriguing: "Women. My PA reminds me that although I have a PhD in physics women should remain a mystery."

But more importantly, does he remember this situation?

Professor Hawking, in 1995 I was at a video rental store in Cambridge. My parents left myself and my brother sitting on a bench watching a TV playing Wayne's World 2. (We were on vacation from Canada.) Your nurse wheeled you up and we all watched about 5 minutes of that movie together. My father, seeing this, insisted on renting the movie since if it was good enough for you it must be good enough for us. Any chance you remember seeing Wayne's World 2? Answer: NO

Obviously, he also had a lot of really smart things to say about artificial intelligence. Wrap your head around this one:


And if the robots don't squash us like bugs, Hawking thinks they will bump us to the unemployment lines. This is not how an episode of Big Bang Theory would end.


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