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Last month, Unknown Country reported the views of technology heavyweights such as Elon Musk that artificial intelligence could be the most significant threat to the future of mankind. Now Stephen Hawking has added his voice to their ever-increasing concerns regarding the outcome of creating intelligent machines.

“The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have proved very useful, " said Hawking. but the I think the development of true artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

“Humans limited by slow biological evolution cannot compete and will be superseded.”
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Despite the disturbing warnings detailed in last week’s Unknown Country Weekender, which warned of the potential dangers posed to mankind from Artificial Intelligence (AI), further news of our continued but highly questionable faith in this form of technology has emerged.

In a recent article in the New York Times, a form of particularly chilling AI is described: it appears that man in his wisdom has now devolved the responsibility of whom to kill down to so-called "intelligent" bombs. The article reveals that last year, an Air Force B-1 bomber tested a new missile off the coast of Southern California, but this was a missile with a difference.
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A recent Unknown Country news article outlined the results of a poll in which representatives from the global population were canvassed for their opinions. The poll asked participants which from a list of dangers they considered to be the most likely to threaten continued human existence.

The options given in the poll ranged from nuclear weapons, religious and ethnic hatred, pollution and environmental disasters, economic crisis and disease. Yet, according to an Oxford philosophy professor who has performed extensive research in the field of all such existential threats, the biggest threat to mankind’s future may be "super-intelligence."
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Of all the mammals currently living on this planet, the human race comes in a variety of diverse forms: a myriad of differing faces, skin colors, body shapes, eye colors, hair colors, heights and weight variations, but all undeniably "human."

All of these identifying features have, until very recently, been a product of evolution and the kaleidoscope of genetic diversity.
Historically, many varieties of hominid have existed, being defined by their most predominant capabilities and gradually evolving into more capable and advanced species: Homo habilis who had basic abilities; Homo erectus who could walk upright and homo sapiens who could think.
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