Stephen Hawking: Human Violence No Longer Benefits Humanity

Stephen Hawking, the prominent British cosmologist, has identified many threats to humanity and recently described "human violence" as a lethal factor against civilization. According to the Washington Post, last week Professor Hawking responded to the question of what he thinks is humanity's greatest shortcoming by saying, "Humans are still foolishly violent - while evolution has long since brought humanity to a stage of development where violent behavior is no longer beneficial." The genius of theoretical physics emphasized that "if it were up to me, I would most like to cure human violence. Perhaps this type of behavior was beneficial for the survival of humans in the time of cave dwellers, helping them find more food, larger territories, or better mates for reproduction, but under current conditions, this trait will only lead to destruction for all of us." Hawking stressed that nuclear weapons in some countries could "bring about the end of human civilization and possibly the end of humanity." He stated that human violence has not only lost its relevance but that technological advancements, such as nuclear weapons technology, have enabled a small group of people to inflict irreparable damage with minimal effort. Recently, Hawking's name has come back into the media spotlight due to the success of the film "The Theory of Everything," which depicts parts of his life, with Eddie Redmayne playing Hawking, a role that earned the young actor the Oscar for Best Actor a few days ago. Previously, Hawking had warned in two separate statements about any attempts to contact extraterrestrial beings, stating that such actions could be "catastrophic" for humanity. In a television interview for the Discovery Channel, he emphasized: "If extraterrestrial beings come to visit us, I think the outcome will be similar to the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. You know that the result of this journey was not very favorable for the Native Americans." This British cosmologist and author later expressed concern about "thinking machines" alongside figures like Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. At the same time, hundreds of researchers and university professors signed an open letter calling for mechanisms to prevent "the uncontrolled growth of [artificial] intelligence" to be prepared and implemented. Professor Hawking has been suffering from a type of neurological disease since 1963 that has gradually led to his general paralysis. In the 1980s, he could control a computer cursor to write complete sentences with slight movements of his thumb, but later, as his health deteriorated, he was forced to use a computer system that detects small movements of his cheek through a sensor embedded in his glasses.