AI could see end of humans: Hawking

Professor Stephen Hawking has said the rise of artificial intelligence could see the human race become extinct.

The scientist spoke after showing off a new communications system that will enable the famous scientist and author to converse and work better than ever.

Prof Hawking told the BBC: “The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

He added that the technology would eventually become self-aware and “supersede” humanity as it developed faster than biological evolution. His warning echoes a similar one made by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, who called the rise of AI “our biggest existential threat”.

Honda has already developed a robot, called ASIMO, that is designed to help the less-able with tasks around the home, and Google is also said to be experimenting with robotics.

Prof Hawking was speaking at a press conference, detailing the latest stage of a partnership with Intel that has now lasted more than 25 years, and the tech giant has created a new interface for Professor Hawking’s monitor.

This, combined with his speech synthesiser, has doubled the scientist’s speech rate and improved his productivity 10 times over, said the technology giant.

Professor Hawking said: “We are here to talk about how science and technology is improving the lives of people with disabilities.

“W e are pushing the boundaries of what is possible through technology – without it I would not be able to speak to you today. Intel’s research and development is bringing about changes in the world and in the way that disabled people can communicate.

“The Intel team and I have been working together for almost three years on upgrading my communication system.

“My old system is more than 20 years old and I was finding difficult to continue to communicate effectively, and to do the things I love to do.

“With the improvements made, I am now able to write much faster, and it means that I can continue to give lectures, write papers and books and, of course, speak with my family and friends more easily. This new system is life changing for me, and I hope it will serve me well for the next 20 years .

Intel also announced that the software it has created will be open source, and therefore available for developers and others to work on and improve themselves.

Prof Hawking said: “By making this technology freely available it has the potential to greatly improve the lives of disabled people all over the world.”

The new system, known as Assistive Context Aware Toolkit (Acat) was also partnered on by UK company SwiftKey, which develops predictive language software and has keyboard apps on both iOS and Android mobile platforms.

Their software learns the words and phrases used by Prof Hawking, enabling him to type and speak quicker using the infra-red sensor on his glasses and the movement of his cheek.

Lama Nachman, principal engineer of the project at Intel, said: “Technology for the disabled is often a proving ground for the technology of the future. From communications to genetic research, technology is beginning to open doors to possibilities that can only be imagined.”

Ms Nachman confirmed that Acat would become available by open source in January next year, with the aim of giving more developers the chance to work on and improve the software.

“This software has the ability to help many, many people, so to make that happen we have decided to open source the software and offer it for free to people in January of this coming year.

“Our hope is that by actually by putting this out there with the open source community we’re actually enabling a lot of researchers and developers to build on the three years of work that we’ve put into the system.”

Joe Osbourne from Swift Key said that as a result of the improvements to the system, Prof Hawking needs to type less.

“Under this new system, Stephen only has to type around 15% to 20% of those characters, the rest will actually all be predicted. The result of this is that we’ve roughly doubled his speech quickness.

“The great thing is this will continue to learn and continue to adapt the more it’s used, so we’re confident that with all of that we can really make a difference to him.”

Mr Osbourne said that as part of the project, Swift Key has studied large amounts of Prof Hawking’s works to create a bespoke language software for him which would accurately predict his speech.

As well as using Swift Key’s predictive text technology, Intel demonstrated how it has created new short cuts on Prof Hawking’s bespoke keyboard which enable him to more easily switch between typing and open a web page, or make notes in a document.

“Medicine has not been able to cure me, so I rely on technology to help me communicate and live,” said Prof Hawking.

“Intel has been supporting me for over 20 years, allowing me to do what I love every day. The development of this system has the potential to improve the lives of disabled people around the world and is leading the way in terms of human interaction.”

Prof Hawking suffers from a form of motor neurone disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis which has left him almost entirely paralysed and relying on technology to communicate. He has used speech technology to continue giving lectures at universities as well as write books as his condition worsened.

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AI could see end of humans: Hawking