STEPHEN HAWKINGS AND AI: A BRIEF PERSPECTIVE
Not long after his death last year, Stephen Hawking’s final literary contribution was published under the title ‘BRIEF ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS’. In chapter 9, he returned to a subject that had much vexed him in his later years, namely ‘Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?’ Hawking was known to harbour deep reservations about some aspects of artificial intelligence (AI), although it is also fair to say that he greatly welcomed the potential benefits to humanity that he and many commentators…