What's happening?

Most animals that have ever lived on Earth have died out.

Now one scientist thinks we might be looking forward at our own extinctionCompletely dying out.. But it is not another creature that stands ready to take our place. It is our own creation: AIA computer programme that has been designed to think. .

Geoffrey Hinton knows what he is talking about. He is known as the "godfather of AI".

He fears that we may be just 20 years away from an AI that has the same intelligence as a human being.

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Some are very positive about AI. Even if we did develop a truly superintelligent AI, they say, there is no reason to think it would want to harm human beings.

But others are worried. They say that AI may one day be able to create even more AI without our help. Then there would be no stopping it.

The danger is that such an AI would know that we fear its power. It would know there was a chance we would want to switch it off. And then it might feel it had little choice but to make sure we could not do that.

Yes! The risks of AI are just too big. It is time to switch it off now before any of our fears can come true.

No! There are a lot of risks - but there are also a lot of great things about AI. We should not switch it off when it could help us so much.