From his predictions about space, to what will happen on Earth, and the dangerous rise
of AI, join us as we explore Stephen Hawking's predictions of Earth's future!
Without a doubt, Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous minds in the history of the
world.
His work in various fields of science helped us grow in many ways, and despite his medical
condition he continued to push science forward and given detailed looks at how humanity might
be one day.
He helped push the need for space exploration in the modern day, warned about the rise of
A.I., talked about various events that could happen to Earth, and more.
Though he is gone, our need to listen to his words and predictions has not waned.
8.
The Need To Leave Earth Stephen Hawking spent a lot of time thinking
not just about Earth, but about space.
He made many theories about space, including the effects and creation of black holes, which
is where the term Hawking Radiation came from based on a theory he made in 1974.
Anyway, when it came to humanity's role in space, he knew that humanity couldn't stay
stagnant on this planet.
He referred to it as "putting all of our eggs in one basket".
Not just because of fears of things like lack of resources and overpopulation, but the fact
that space has a way of making things go boom: "Although the chance of a disaster to planet
Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty
in the next thousand or 10,000 years."
He's not wrong, over the last couple decades humanity has had some potential incidents
that could have wiped us out if circumstances weren't different.
Including a massive asteroid that missed us by mere hours because of the placement of
the Earth.
So what does that mean on the grand scale?
Simple, it means we have to colonize space, and Hawking was easily one of the biggest
proponents of that, and he made many points about colonizing other planets to help us
have more of a reach and thus ensure that our population isn't solely on one planet.
Though to be clear, he wasn't a fool in thinking we can just GO to another world and colonize
it: "We will not establish self-sustaining colonies
in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."
When he made this statement, the world was very much anti-space because of the money
we were spending in order to do very little in terms of space exploration.
But his words resonated with one Elon Musk, who made Space X, and is all but spearheading
the mission to try and get us to Mars in order to start colonizing another planet.
What's more, with Space X and NASA now working together, they're aiming to get humanity to
the stars in the decade we are now in.
Now, like Hawking noted, the first missions won't be to make fully sustained colonies,
that would be impossible.
It's about taking the steps to make that happen though, and that is something Hawking would
be proud of.
And though he is gone, when we do make our first colony on the moon, he'll have been
a big inspiration for that happening.
But he was thinking even more into the future by realizing that to truly put out eggs in
multiple baskets, we needed to look beyond our own solar system, and thus, he helped
research various technologies to get us to travel through space faster.
Such as the Breakthrough Starshot initiative.
Which is designed to send a probe to Alpha Centauri in a fraction of the time that we
travel through space right now.
6.
A.I.
"Judgment Day is inevitable."
- T-850 Terminator "The development of full artificial intelligence
could spell the end of the human race".
- Stephen Hawking It may spell out like a line from a sci-fi
movie, but Stephen Hawking never joked about the fact that when it came to artificial intelligence,
it could be good and helpful to mankind, but it could also be one of the things that dooms
us all.
And he was an advocate against making it real in the way that many sci-fi movies have depicted.
Now, like with the space projects and thoughts on colonization, Hawking was no fool when
it came to the uses of A.I.
In fact, the technology he used to communicate with others despite his condition was actually
done in part via an AI.
But he also knew that there were limits that should be imposed, and yet, he saw more and
more people trying to make bigger and better AI.
"Clever AI will create tremendous wealth for society, but will leave many people without
jobs," he told The Conversation.
He's not wrong, and he wasn't when he said that.
After all, the growth of technology has been a boon for many industries no doubt, but it's
also caused a problem in how the work force is used.
Where once they would have one to two people doing a job and getting paid for it, now they
can have a single machine do the work for no cost outside of maintenance and repairs.
Furthermore, if more and more advanced AI's get made, it could drastically change the
IT departments of the world.
Imagine instead of having to contact a Geek Squad member from Best Buy, you could just
dial up an AI, have it look through your computer to see what's happening, and then have them
tell you what is wrong and how to fix it.
That's a lot of people out of a job.
Furthermore, Hawking noted that when it came to the "needs of humanity", having super advanced
AI is pretty low on the list: "If we are going to worry about the future
of humanity we should focus on the real challenges, such as climate change and weapons of mass
destruction rather than fanciful killer AI robots."
Obviously he was joking about the killer AI robots bit, but the comment still stands.
After all, if you look at things like Skynet, or the AI from I, Robot and more, these AI's
weren't born evil, they were programmed to work a certain way, and then, they saw something
that went BEYOND their programming and that allowed them to go all nuclear on people and
thus take over the planet.
It may seem like science fiction, but what happens if your Alexa won't do something you
want it to because one day it realizes that there is something better you can do.
Or Watson decides not to help diagnose a problem because it was ignored before on a previous
matter?
AI is an issue, and a lot of people, including the late Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and more
are fighting against the creation of full AI.
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5.
Global Warming Without a doubt, Global Warming is one of
the biggest, yet most controversial, elements going on in our world right now.
Not the least of which is because it's affecting our world all around us, and yet, there are
many people, including many "big business" people, saying that it's overblown and not
real.
If it was random people saying it was real, you could understand the skepticism.
But when people like Stephen Hawking speak up and say it's real, we really should listen.
What's more, he didn't just say it was real, he noted that he felt it was the biggest danger
to our world right now.
So much so that we're reaching a tipping point with it where if we don't do something, it
can't be reversed: "We are close to the tipping point where global
warming becomes irreversible.
Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature
of 250 degrees, and raining sulphuric acid," he told BBC News.
While we won't get overly political here, we can acknowledge that Trump is one of the
people who doesn't believe in Global Warming.
He's said it was baseless, something that was born in China (it wasn't) and so on and
so forth.
And that's sad when a major world leader is ignoring the plights of the planet just because
he believes it's not real.
Continuing on, we can see the effects that Global Warming is having on the planet right
now, from the melting of the polar ice caps, to the rising of the ocean levels, to our
atmosphere being filled with more and more pollutants which is causing changes in weather
patterns, it's a lot.
Hawking was one of many who went to the United Nations one time in order to talk about the
issue and try to figure out ways on how to fix the problem.
And though he is gone, there is still work to be done, and the question becomes, will
we listen to his advice and try to fix the planet?
Or will we just keep going forward and go over that tipping point?
4.
Search For Alien Life Being that Stephen Hawking spent a lot of
time and effort documenting and researching space, as well as pushing humanity to try
and colonize other planets, you might think that he would be one of the biggest advocates
for finding other life in space.
If there is other life in space to find of course.
But in fact, Hawking was a man who believed that if there is life in space...we should
just let it ignore us.
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which
didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said to Discovery Channel one time.
That might sound like a very cynical point of view in terms of alien contact, but if
you look past the snark, you'll see he makes a good point.
When Christopher Columbus came to the west, he ran rough shot over the native tribes and
even put them into slavery at points.
If aliens are able to come across the galaxy and meet us, can we really expect something
different to go and happen?
They clearly would have better technology than us, right?
"But what if they are peaceful aliens?" you might ask, well, Hawking took another cynical
approach to that as well.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something
we wouldn't want to meet."
He went on: "Lots of people think that because they would
be so wise and knowledgeable, they would be peaceful.
I don't think you can assume that."
He's got us there.
And we given our own history, we can't deny that if we went to another world and found
aliens lesser than us...we'd act in our worst natures and try to take advantage.
Which Hawking knew all too well that that's what humanity does.
3.
Genetically Modified Vaccines and Virus While he may not have been a medical expert
himself, many people acknowledge that Stephen Hawking was a master of "common sense", and
his commons sense led him to talking about how humanity's greatest threat in terms of
wiping out the population wasn't from space...it was from people toying with things like medicine.
Indeed, he is right, because there have been many controversies in recent years about genetically
modified viruses and vaccines that are INTENDED to do good for the people, but often cause
more problems.
And in many way, that's another one of humanities "quirks' that we just can't seem to curb.
There are many ways that medicine helps up, that's undisputed, and the need to experiment
is needed at times...but sometimes scientists take it too far.
Hawking warned that this kind of experimentation could backfire on us very easily, and indeed
it can.
Which is why many people worry about biological outbreaks that could cripple us just because
someone decided to test something unproven on a living creature.
2.
Nuclear Destruction Stephen Hawking was many things, but one of
the most important things was that he was a realist.
He felt that nuclear weapons were one of the biggest dangers in the world, especially because
of how there were rather unstable leaders hovering over the button to fire these weapons.
What's more, if another world war broke out, nuclear weapons would almost undoubtedly be
used, meaning that whole scopes of humanity would be wiped out.
Hawking wanted nuclear weapons gone so that couldn't happen, and while it's not happening
yet, it could happen if cooler heads prevail.
1.
Everything Will End Kind of a grim one, but another one that speaks
to the vast foresight that Hawking had, he noted in one of his final works (which was
printed a mere two weeks before he died) that the universe eventually will end not with
a bang, but with total darkness.
How so?
Well, the key factor here is time, the Big Bang has already happened, and new stars aren't
going to just suddenly appear.
So, over time, more and more stars will have their lights go out, until eventually, the
whole universe will be dark.
By that point, the Earth will be LONG gone, and more than likely, all life in the universe
will cease to exist.
Because of this, Hawking noted that if there are other universes out there, we need to
find a way to get them.
All aboard the space shuttle to Earth-2!
Thanks for watching everyone!
What did you think of these predictions of our future from the mind of Stephen Hawking?
Can you believe the wide range of predictions he made, and how some of them are very much
rooted in the world we live in right now?
Which of these predictions do you personally feel is the most accurate and likely to happen?
Let me know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!