(Image credit: Pixabay)
Stephan Hawking shed his mortal coil back in March of this year, but the theoretical physicist’s breakthrough work with black holes, relativity, and quantum mechanics will live on. He published several books about his work throughout the years, including the bestsellers “A Brief History of Time,” and “The Universe in a Nutshell.” His final publication, “Brief Answers to Big Questions” was released a few days ago (Oct. 16), and features ten essays on a variety of topics ranging from God’s existence to colonizing space.
In Hawking’s new book, rich super-humans may be created through gene engineering; although rogue AI might be the death of us all. (Image credit: Amazon)
His predictions for the future, at least a portion of it for human civilization, looks unsettling as well. The UK’s Sunday Times revealed that at some point in the future, the super-rich would be able to afford to manipulate and edit their genes through tech like CRISPR in order to make themselves stronger, smarter, and more resistant to diseases. Of course, this will lead to the decline of poor people, or ‘unimproved humans,’ which will either die-out or become unimportant. He also stated that if those rich super-humans can ‘redesign’ themselves, they would probably colonize other planets.
Then again, they may not head anywhere at all, and perhaps become extinct themselves if AI becomes advanced enough and ultimately uncontrollable. That’s if environmental calamities or nuclear war doesn’t end us in the next thousand years. Other notable topics of interest include the possibility of traveling back in time, exploring the solar system within the next 100 years, whether we will be able to predict the future, and the existence of intelligent life in the universe.
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