This opinion piece was prompted by the recent publication of Stephen Hawking’s last writings, where he mentioned some ideas on superintelligence. Although I have the most utter respect for his work and vision, I am afraid some of it may be read in a very misleading way. I’ve been pondering whether or not I should write on the topic of the current “AI anxiety” for a while, but always concluded there would be no reason to, since I don’t have any strong opinion to convey about it. Nevertheless, there is just a number of myths I believe are easy to debunk. This is what I’ll try to do here. So off we go, let’s talk about AI, transhumanism, the evolution of intelligence, and self-reflective AI. (This piece was originally posted here.)
By Olaf Witkowski