The Shocking Truth Behind Stephen Hawking’s Final Warning: Are We Already Living It?
So, Stephen Hawking dropped a doozy before he left us – warning that AI could one day snuff out the entire human race. Sounds like the plot of a sci-fi thriller, right? But here’s the kicker: since the legendary physicist’s passing in 2018, artificial intelligence hasn’t just settled for doing our homework or captioning dog videos on the internet. Nope, it’s charging ahead, redesigning itself faster than you can say “algorithm,” potentially leaving us mere mortals in the dust. The question is—are we on the brink of being outpaced by our silicon successors, or is this just another tech fear blown out of proportion? Either way, as AI speeds toward superintelligence, our future might be less “Tomorrowland” and more “The Terminator.” Intrigued?
Stephen Hawking warned shortly before his death that artificial intelligence had the capability to ‘end the human race’ – so how close to this scenario are we?
Artificial intelligence has come a long way since the theoretical astrophysicist passed away in 2018, with a simple Google search now bringing up computer-generated overviews before websites written by actual people and AI-generated videos of dogs riding bicycles infesting our social media feeds.
However, the 76-year-old believed that AI would go much further than being a help (or hindrance) to modern life, telling the BBC that ‘the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race’.
“It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate,” he said.
“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”
Stephen Hawking gave numerous warnings about AI before his death in 2018 (David Silverman/Getty Images)
This isn’t the only bleak warning Hawking gave about AI before he passed away, telling Wired magazine a year before he died that he believed AI would ‘replace humans altogether’.
Hawking’s warnings about unchecked AI development resurfaced following Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigning from his role at the company, claiming the ‘people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade’.
Sharing the reason behind his resignation in a series of posts on X, Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, alleged that ‘neither company is acting responsibly’ when it came to developing the technology.
“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” he wrote.
“Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” Coxon continued.
“We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Speaking further about his departure, Coxon told the Wall Street Journal that he believed we could be facing out-of-control AI models by ‘the end of next year’.
Coxon’s decision to resign from Anthropic came just months after OpenAI revealed that one of its models was able to ‘escape’ and hack into external databases in an ‘unprecedented cyber incident’.
Jacob Coxon publicly resigned from Anthtropic over his AI concerns (X)
Meanwhile, there are also fears that advancements towards AGI (artificial general intelligence) will wipe out the vast majority of jobs, as the speed of the machines evolves to rapidly outpace humans.
Which means we’ll either be jobless and struggling to survive or living in an AI-supported utopia – depending on which way things go. Incidentally, Hawking also foresaw this scenario as well, saying that AI would either be ‘the best or worst thing to happen to humanity’.
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