Microsoft President Warns of Orwell's 1984 'Coming to Pass' in 2024

The surveillance-state dystopia portrayed in George Orwell's 1984 could "come to pass in 2024" if governments don't do enough to protect the public against artificial intelligence (AI), Microsoft president Brad Smith warned in an interview for the BBC's investigative documentary series Panorama. During the interview, Smith warned of China's increasing AI prowess and the fact that we may be caught up in a losing race with the technology itself. "If we don't enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead, and it's going to be very difficult to catch up," Smith stated. Many of the world's brightest minds have warned of the perils of artificial intelligence. In 2017, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking stated his fear that "AI may replace humans altogether."