Dearest Gentle Readers,
Do you think artificial intelligence will outsmart us?
Well, I am not asking this question, but Stephen Hawking did long before the arrival of ChatGPT in his book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” Published in 2018.
Artificial intelligence is a work or a product of human intelligence. But what happens when our own creation becomes more intelligent than its creator? Years later, this question feels more relevant now.
This book starts with a brief introduction of the author, Stephen Hawking, by Eddie Redmayne. He himself played the author's character in the movie “The Theory of Everything.” Eddie wonderfully portrayed the great Professor Stephen Hawking. This book is a compilation of his answers to the big questions, which he was still working on at the time of his death.
Another introduction is written by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Kip S. Thorne, a renowned physicist and close friend of Hawking, who shared a tremendous experience of hawkings 1965s lecture wherein he argued that
“our universe must have been born at some finite time in the past. It cannot be infinitely old.”
Hawking was one of the brightest students, whom his batchmates used to call "Einstein". At the age of 21, He was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a disease that slowly affected his nerves and muscles. Over time, he lost the ability to walk, speak, and move most parts of his body. At first, doctors believed he had only a few years left to live.
Today, Stephen Hawking rests in Westminster Abbey, alongside great scientists, Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
THE BIG QUESTIONS?
Rather than telling readers what to believe, Hawking encourages us to ask better questions. These are:
Is there a God?
How did the universe begin?
Can we predict the future?
What lies inside a black hole?
Is time travel possible?
How do we shape the future?
Will humanity survive on Earth?
Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?
Should humans colonise space?
Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?
These are not merely scientific questions. They are philosophical, existential, and deeply human.
MY PERSONAL READING EXPERIENCE
As a reader, having completed studies from the humanities and research background, I found topics like black holes, thermodynamics, quantum physics, and gravitational waves very different from what I had studied before.
Even so, Stephen Hawking made these difficult ideas easy to understand. I personally like it when Stephen Hawking said that when we see space from the Earth, we see ourselves as a whole, not in divisions, but in total unity.
FINAL THOUGHTS!
Reading this book also made me ask myself a different question.
If you knew your life's clock was slowly ticking and if you knew your time was limited. So, how would you choose to spend the days you have left?
Movie Recommendations: The Theory of Everything 2014, Interstellar 2014 and Star Trek (for its imaginative exploration of space and humanity's future)
No comments:
Post a Comment