Stephen Hawking’s last predictions for humanity

From an AI apocalypse to nuclear war, Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist and genius who passed away March 14, has left us with these alarming predictions on what humanity’s greatest challenges will be moving forward.

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“We are close to the tipping point,” Hawking warned, “where global warming becomes irreversible.”

Fireball

Global warming, over-reliance on fossil fuels and overpopulation all risk our planet turning into an unhospitable fireball, Hawking outlined in November. “By the year 2600, the world’s population would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red-hot,” he hypothesized.

 

AI

Hawking has warned of the dangers that self-aware AI will pose to humanity. “This will be a new form of life that will outperform humans,” he predicted. In an interview with Wired magazine, Hawking forewarned, “We need to move forward on artificial intelligence development, but we also need to be mindful of its very real dangers.”

 

Extinction

Possibly the most pre-eminent of his warnings, Hawking proposed that, within the next 100 years, humans will either leave Earth to repopulate elsewhere in the universe, or face extinction. It was his belief that, unless we succeed in becoming a multi-planetary species, the human race is very likely to die out within the next century.