I laughed when I saw a full-page ad with just these words in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago. (The following page talked about the company paying for the ad, but I had never heard of it.) And I laughed again when Stephen Hawking recently warned
- Humans will make the earth uninhabitable for themselves within a thousand years (that long?) so we will have to start colonizing space if we want to survive; and
- Computers with artificial intelligence will overtake humans sometime in the next hundred years, and humans won’t survive if the computers’ goals aren’t aligned with ours.
Apparently Hawking agrees with the ad — technology will save us if it doesn’t kill us first. I can’t get too upset about it because (1) predictions about the distant future are notorious for being wrong, and (2) I won’t be around nearly long enough to see what happens. So the best thing to do is laugh.
What do you think?
May 21, 2015
Throughout history there have been predictions that some new development will be disastrous, will kill us all off etc. The industrial revolution, cars, urban living, drugs, the millenium bug, AIDS, climate change, you name it. Most of the predictions have turned out to be nonsense, and I daresay Stephen Hawking’s are equally doubtful. Like you, I think along the lines of (1) and (2).
My guess is there will be a lot of upheaval and suffering but all humans won’t be killed.
Technology has not killed me yet and if it has to, I am ready to go. I have seen the pre technology days and the present and have no particular reason not to be ready.
You and I have been very lucky. As you say, we’re living on “bonus time.” No need to worry about the distant future.
I think there’s more concern about Stephen Hawking’s #1 prediction
than his #2.
#1 will probably do this world in before #2
Either way, I doubt I will be alive to worry about it.
🙂
I agree. It’s unlikely to affect us personally. I still like the phrase, though. 🙂