Oct 16, 2019carolwu96 rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Is there a god? Is time traveling possible? Will artificial intelligence outsmart us? These are some of the questions world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking raises and answers in this book.
The first chapters of Brief Answers are a little slow for me, as they include many scientific terms like cosmic strings and supertranslation as Hawking explains the current theories, which I had never heard of. He also talks about more familiar concepts like entropy and the Uncertainty Principle, which are high school materials that have since faded from my memory (oops).
But the book picked up after a few chapters, as Hawking discusses ideas such as black holes, space colonization and AI. I found myself nodding to many of his ideas, especially those around why further AI developments could be dangerous and possible candidates for space colonization.
Part of the reason his answers resonate so much is probably that his ideas have been so promulgated through his works, so that I have come across them repeatedly despite never having read his works.
Overall, I think Hawking has touched on some fascinating topics and am glad I powered through despite the weak beginning.
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Brief Answers to the Big Questions