Artificial Intelligence can end civilisation: Stephen Hawking

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the power to eradicate poverty and disease or hasten the end of human civilisation as we know it, celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking told an audience in Cambridge on Wednesday evening. Speaking at the launch of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), Hawking said the rise of AI would transform every aspect of our lives and amounted to a global event at a par with the industrial revolution. CFI brings together four of the world's leading universities – Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and Imperial College, London – to explore the implications of AI for human civilisation. Hawking said: "Success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. But it could also be the last – unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers like powerful autonomous weapons or new ways for the few to oppress the many. "We cannot predict what we might achieve when our own minds are amplified by AI.