The astrophysicist passed away in 2018, but prior to his death, he cautioned us about how humanity could fall, including a warning against attempting to communicate with alien civilizations.

Long before most of us even knew what artificial intelligence was, Hawking was already a step ahead, trying to warn us about what a future with AI might hold.

In a 2014 interview with the BBC, Hawking suggested: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

Although the technology was just beginning to emerge, Hawking had the foresight to theorize how it could develop and affect our lives, especially if it were to surpass human intelligence.

He explained that it “would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate,” adding: “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”

In 2015, Hawking was one of approximately 100 experts who signed an open letter to the UN warning of the dangers of uncontrolled artificial intelligence development. Similarly, in 2017, one year before his death, he told Wired magazine: “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.”

In his book Brief Answers to the Big Questions, published a few months after his death, he delved even deeper into the threat, writing: “We could face an intelligence explosion that ultimately resulted in machines whose intelligence exceeded ours by a greater margin than ours exceeds that of snails.”

He concluded: “It is tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction, but this would be a mistake, and potentially the worst mistake in history.”