Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Terrifying prospects ... Professor Stephen Hawking says self-learning artificial intelligence poses a risk to the survival of humanity. Picture: AFP Photo / Justin Tallis Source: AFP

The wheelchair-ridden thinker told the BBC: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

His comment came unexpectedly.

He had been asked to express his thoughts on a recent revamp of his computer-assisted speech system by Intel and machine-learning software company Swiftkey.

Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). For decades he has been scrolling a cursor through the alphabet, laboriously building words through twitching his cheek.

Among other things, Hawking had been working with Intel to integrate new features such as predictive text with his existing suite of sensors to help the physically impaired physicist “speak” through a voice synthesiser.

Experiments with EEG sensors to “read” Hawking’s brainwaves failed to produce reliable results. His drooping eyes weren’t clear enough for gaze sensors.

And when it comes to predictive test, nothing more than a souped-up “learning” version of what your average smartphone user would expect, Hawking himself initially preferred his time-tested pick-and-choose method. But the electronic “shortcut” soon grew on him.

It’s not that he’s a technophobe: Hawking has embraced a wide range of technologies in his quest to communicate, research and extrapolate.

But the ability of the software to “learn” and “predict” his preference in words spooked the astrophysicist.

He says such primitive forms of artificial intelligence have proven very useful.

But he went on to say he feared the consequences of creating something smarter than us.

“It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate,” he said.

“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

He’s not the only one to recently express such fears.

It’s been very much on the mind of technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, now chief executive of rocket-maker Space X.

He’s been even more evocative in his language.

“Summoning the demon” of self-learning artificial intelligence would be “potentially more dangerous than nukes”, he says.

“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that ... With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”

It’s a threat which has caused the formation of ethics panels and UN investigations, university reviews and consumer protection reports.

All up, it seems the potential for such a threat is there: But it’s not a clear and present danger.

In the meantime, the much more immediate fear is that thinking machines will rapidly displace humans in the workforce: Sleepless, never tiring, performing repetitive but complex task in an indefatigable manner.