Job Destruction, Human Extinction and Stephen Hawking’s AI Doomsday Prophecy

The world lost one of its brightest and most intelligent minds of the 21st century when renowned physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, passed away on 14th March, 2018. While his death has left a vacuum difficult to fill, he will continue to stay alive in the numerous theories and beliefs he propounded during his lifetime of 76 years. Its time to revisit one of his pertinent beliefs owing to its great relevance today, the belief that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will lead to job destructions and may ultimately replace humans.

One of the biggest debates today in scientific, industrial and business communities as well as among world governments is AI’s implications for them and the world at large. AI’s promises to revolutionize and bring multiple benefits to both economy and society notwithstanding, the clamor around its risks is continuing to grow louder. The voices of dissent gained all the more credibility when Stephen Hawking chose to side with a potential doomsday theory around AI.

Here are some of the views around AI that the renowned scientist has expressed on multiple occasions.

In an interview to BBC in 2014:




At the launch of Centre for the Future of Intelligence in 2016:


That, he said, could lead to the eradication of disease and poverty and the conquest of climate change. But it could also bring us all sorts of things we didn’t like – autonomous weapons, economic disruption and machines that developed a will of their own, in conflict with humanity.


In a Column in The Guardian:



In an interview to Wired magazine in 2017:


At Web Summit Technology Conference in 2017:




Though Hawking has fleetingly expressed hope over AI’s benefits with proper management and governance, his AI doomsday prophecy is a warning capable of coming true considering the continuous advancements in the development of a truly intelligent AI that’s smart enough to think and do better than human beings.

Interestingly Hawking, who was suffering from ALS, used a form of AI and Machine Learning technology that learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next. Ironically, the scientist was wary of the very technology that allowed him to communicate.

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