This Is What Stephen Hawking Claims Could ‘Wipe out Humanity’

By Andrew Griffin. Stephen Hawking has warned that artificially intelligent machines could kill us because they are too clever.

Such computers could become so competent that they kill us by accident, Hawking has warned in his first Ask Me Anything session on Reddit.

A questioner noted that Professor Hawking’s ideas about artificial intelligence are seen as “a belief in Terminator-style ‘Evil AI’”, and asked how he would present his own beliefs.

“The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence,” Professor Hawking said. “A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.

“You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.” (Read more from “This Is What Stephen Hawking Claims Could ‘Wipe out Humanity'” HERE)

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‘Psychic Robot’ System Guesses Intentions From Your Movements

By Devin Coldewey. If we are to have artificial intelligence assisting us in driving, working and walking around, it will need to understand not just what we’re doing but what we mean to do.Researchers, at the University of Illinois at Chicago have created a system that does just that, albeit on a limited scale.

By carefully watching the motion of a person’s arm, the system determines what the intention of that arm is — to pick up an object, for example — and can tell when that intention has changed or been disturbed.

“We call it a psychic robot,” said lead author Justin Horowitz in a news release. “If you know how someone is moving and what the disturbance is, you can tell the underlying intent — which means we could use this algorithm to design machines that could correct the course of a swerving car or help a stroke patient with spasticity.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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