Synthetic Super Intelligence and the Transmutation of Humankind

Synthetic Super Intelligence and the Transmutation of Humankind
Hawking and a group of colleagues of seventeen of the most brilliant
scientists from Cambridge University have formed an organization called
Cambridge Center of the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), and its purpose is
to recognize threats that can wipe out humanity if they went unnoticed,
according to an article in the Daily Mail on September 12, 2013. 111 It is these
scientists’ task to put their thinking caps on. Then, with a joint effort, they
will, hopefully, come up with ideas to safeguard the human race and solve
problems on the horizon on our behalf. The article compares these brilliant
minds with “superheroes.”
Many people might think because Dr. Hawking is involved that some
of these threats might be asteroid attacks from space, the existence of black
holes in Earth’s vicinity, or something else threatening us from space,
keeping in mind that Hawking is a cosmologist in most people’s mind.
However, according to CSER, the worst threat is not coming from
outer space but from us humans. Hence, the group members are now, by
and large, taking their eyes away from the sky and directing them toward
us, their fellow human beings, or rather, those who have plans for us.
The manifesto of CSER reads as follows:
Many scientists are concerned that developments in human technology may
soon pose new, extinction-level risks to our species as a whole.
Our goal is to steer a small fraction of Cambridge's great intellectual
resources and of the reputation built on its past and present scientific preeminence,
to the task of ensuring that our own species has a long-term
future.
In the process, we hope to make it a little more certain that we humans will
be around to celebrate the University's own millennium, now less than two
centuries hence. 112
This makes it quite clear that their motto is to save us from ourselves.
These scientists are apparently very concerned about what is happening on
the technological arena, including, but not restricted to, super computers,
111
Daily Mail, September 12, 2013, “Killer robots and crippling cyber-attacks: How the world is going to
end - according to super brains such as Stephen Hawking”
112
Ibid.
86