Hawking’s
book warns about superhumans
Humans
have no option but to leave the earth
Stephen
Hawking’s final work, which tackles issues from the existence of God to the
potential for time travel, was launched on Monday by his children, who helped
complete the book after the British astrophysics giant’s death.
Hawking was
forever being asked the same things and started work on Brief Answers to
the Big Questions last year — but did not finish it before he died in
March, aged 76.
The book has
been completed by the theoretical physicist’s family and academic colleagues,
with material drawn from his vast personal archive “He was regularly asked a
set of questions,” his daughter Lucy Hawking said at the Science Museum in
London.
The book was an
attempt to “bring together the most definitive, clearest, most authentic
answers that he gave. “We all just wish he has here to see it.”
In his book,
Hawking says humans have no option but to leave the earth, risking being
“annihilated” if they do not.
He says
computers will overtake humans in intelligence during the next 100 years, but
“we will need to ensure that the computers have goals aligned with ours”.
Hawking says the
human race has to improve its mental and physical qualities, but a
genetically-modified race of superhumans, say with greater memory and disease
resistance, would imperil the others.
He says that by
the time people realise what is happening with climate change, it may be too
late.
Hawking says the
simplest explanation is that God does not exist and there is no reliable
evidence for an afterlife, though people could live on through their influence
and genes.
He says that in
the next 50 years, we will come to understanding how life began and possibly
discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe.
“He was deeply
worried that at a time when the challenges are global, we were becoming increasingly
local in our thinking,” Lucy Hawking said.
“It’s a call to
unity, to humanity, to bring ourselves back together and really face up to the
challenges in front of us.”
In his final
academic paper, Hawking shed new light on black holes and the information
paradox, with new work calculating the entropy of black holes.
Turned into an
animation narrated by Hawking’s artificial voice, it was shown at the book
launch.
“It was very
emotional. I turned away because I had tears forming,” Ms. Lucy Hawking said on
hearing her father’s voice again.
“It feels
sometimes like he’s still here because we talk about him and hear his voice —
and then we have the reminder that he’s left us.”
