Stephen Hawking: Beware smart machines

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Dismissing the implications of highly intelligent machines could be humankind's "worst mistake in history", write astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, computer scientist Stuart Russell, and physicists Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek in the Independent.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27260080

[endfire79]

Sci fi writers were writing this up for years, what took hawking so long to figure that out?  ???

[Staggerwing]

His chair and vocal processor had conflicting loyalties.

[GDS_Starfury]

Mirth for one welcomes our new Trojan Twister overlords!!!

[MikeGER]

maybe its just the next natural step in evolution...

machines can survive and survey in much harsher conditions, can draw energy from more kind of resource, and so predestinated to explore and 'use' ....the solar system, the nearby by stars, the galaxy,....
travel time is also not so much of a problem if there is enuf redundancy build into the system, a sleep mode, and some shielding against the hard cosmic rays for the most sensitive parts (CPU and 'storage' of the consciousness)  even our probes survive some month in space showered by hard Gama rays and solar wind particle stream and still rendezvous with a comet, or drop a subsystem-probe on Titan and such.... transferring (store) a human's consciousness in a maschine is also a option the evaluational ladder may give us to climb.
(keeping a brain alive withpout a biological body and giving it electrical input into the nerve endings from 'the sensor package' it expects is a crude way.... more elegant if the maschines develop there own consciousness )       

[endfire79]

For good or bad - it will probably happen one day.

I just hope they'll still have a use for morals and compassion when that comes.

Sorry - I couldn't find a better picture.   Mr Burns still had feelings for Bobo in 1 000 000 AD :)