I’ve just finished this book and throughly enjoyed it. Sure, the brief answers were not simple answers and you had to think about them for a while. This is a book that makes you think about the future and what we should be doing.
There is a chapter on artificial intelligence, which is a big topic at the moment with the rise of chat GPT. Like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking was concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence unless we put in place controls. Unlimited artificial intelligence could be extremely dangerous. At the moment, it seems full of potential, and it is, but we also have to be careful that the artificial intelligence doesn’t become more intelligent than us and decide we’re not needed.
Stephen Hawking is concerned that science more young people are not interested in science. Not that he wants more scientists but he wants people to understand science and be able to understand what’s going on in science. When I think of the flat Earth people, I realise that they don’t understand science and they dislike scientists. We shouldn’t have a world that is like that.
My favourite quote from the book is “try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. The curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unless your imagination. Shape the future.”