In it, Hawking makes a number of bold claims about the future of gene editing, artificial intelligence,<\/strong> and even religion. Here’s how experts evaluate his predictions.<\/p> Hawking raised eyebrows when he claimed<\/a> that powerful people will hack their genes to become smarter, stronger,<\/strong> and longer-lived. Eventually, he writes in his new book, the rest of us will “die out, or become unimportant.”<\/p> Many geneticists already see this as inevitable. Some fear that people will use CRISPR<\/a> to edit their genes before the technology is deemed safe, so they advocate new laws to protect non-augmented humans.<\/p> “We’re probably going to need new international oversight structures, so that we don’t realize these dystopian ‘Brave New World’ examples,” said George Daley<\/a>, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, at the International Summit on Human Genome Editing in 2015.<\/p> During his lifetime, Hawking was vocal about his fear of powerful AI. He reiterates his reservations in this book, writing that ignoring the threat<\/a> of super-powerful AI could be humanity’s “worst mistake ever.” It could destroy us with weapons “we cannot even understand,” he wrote.<\/p> There’s some debate on this point. Many technologists, including eccentric billionaire Elon Musk<\/a>, agree that advanced AI could pose an existential threat to humanity<\/a>.<\/p> But others play it down. “[There’s] no reason right now to be worried about self-conscious AI algorithms that set their own goals and go crazy,” Stanford machine learning lecturer Richard Socher told <\/a>Fortune. <\/em>And a poll of AI researchers<\/a> found that most believe it will take at least 25 years to create an AI superintelligence — so at least we have a little time to prepare.<\/p> Hawking also came out swinging at religion in the book. “Belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking,” he writes<\/a>, adding that there’s “no possibility” of God.<\/p> Many scientists certainly agree with Hawking on this claim, though not all. A 2015 survey<\/a> found that many researchers around the world are religious, but in most countries, scientists are by and large less religious than non-scientists.<\/p> READ MORE:<\/strong> Stephen Hawking’s Final Book: ‘There Is No God’<\/a> [Esquire<\/em>]<\/p> More on Stephen Hawking: Stephen Hawking’s Most Dire Predictions for the Future<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p> Continue reading here: Hawking Claims Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away earlier this year, but his final book , \u201cBrief Answers to the Big Questions , \u201d only came out this week . In it, Hawking makes a number of bold claims about the future of gene editing, artificial intelligence , and even religion. Continue reading Superhuman Overlords<\/h2>
Killer AI<\/h2>
No Gods, No Masters<\/h2>
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Here’s What Experts Think of Stephen Hawking’s Posthumous Predictions About AI, Gene Hacking, and Religion<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"