Stephen Hawking is at it again, saying it’s a “near certainty” that a self-inflicted disaster will befall humanity within the next thousand years or so. It’s not the first time the world’s most famous physicist has raised the alarm on the apocalypse, and he’s starting to become a real downer. Here are some of the other times Hawking has said the end is nigh—and why he needs to start changing his message.

Speaking to the Radio Times recently ahead of his BBC Reith Lecture, Hawking said that ongoing developments in science and technology are poised to create “new ways things can go wrong.” The scientist pointed to nuclear war, global warming, and genetically-engineering viruses as some of the most serious culprits.



Hawking is starting to sound like a broken record. Sure, he claims to be an optimist about humanity’s ingenuity in coming up with ways to control the dangers. But he has no problem coming up with all these ominously specific, horrible things that could happen to us in the future. He’s not wrong to highlight these risks—but in terms of what we’re actually supposed to do about, his answers are frustratingly simplistic and opaque, in sharp contrast to his predictions of doom.






Some of Hawking’s biggest concerns have to do with AI, which he says could be “our worst mistake in history.” In 2014, Hawking, along with physicists Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek, described the potential benefits of AI as being huge, but said we cannot predict what will happen once this power is magnified. As the scientists wrote:


Last year, Hawking pushed for responsible AI oversight, and he signed an open letter calling for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.”

But not all of the dangers cited by Hawking are home grown. In addition to asteroids and giant comets, Hawking has said we also need to worry about an alien invasion. As he told the London’s Sunday Times back in 2010:





And as Hawking likes to stress, we need to flee the sinking ship. To guarantee our long term prospects, he has argued time and time again that we need to get off this planet and start colonizing other worlds, saying “we have no future if we don’t go into space.”


To be fair, Hawking is the world’s most famous scientist, so anything he says is bound to get extra media attention and scrutiny. And his ideas haven’t been emerging from a vacuum (or a black hole, for that matter). Over the past 15 years, an increasing number of European scientists—many of them based in the UK—have become concerned about so-called “existential risks.” While once the ruminations of alarmist Chicken Littles, the subject has now crept into academia and formal institutions.







So Hawking is clearly not alone. But he happens to occupy a unique position from where he can proclaim his warnings about the future and potentially influence our response. The problem is in having such a highly respected figure continually spout these grim proclamations without also offering viable solutions. By doing so, he’s perpetuating a defeatist attitude, and even a certain degree of misanthropy.

Clearly, it’s important to get the word out before it’s too late, but it’s not enough to just be the bearer of bad news. Moving forward, let’s hope he can use that big brain of his to come up with something more productive.

[Telegraph | BBC]



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