Stephen Hawking to discuss AI in week-long Reddit AMA

The 73-year-old Hawking, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, will then continue answering questions over the following weeks at his own pace.

A lot of people are wondering why Professor Hawking has been allowed to have such a long “Ask Me Anything” – it is due to the amount of time that it takes for him to answer questions due to his slower communication method.

The AMA is a special Reddit subforum in which personalities or normal people partake in Q&A sessions with Reddit users, trying to answer all questions to the extent of their possibilities.

As reported by the Verge, the AMA is presented by Nokia and Wired on Reddit’s r/science. Naturally, the AMA session won’t be limited to questions on AI, so expect to see plenty of other scientific subjects in the mix. In this case, users can submit questions during the next week, starting Monday at 8 a.m. with the deadline being on Tuesday, 4 August.

Some questions may easily turn to extraterrestrials. Get ready for a thrilling, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the author of “A Brief History of Time” is taking to Reddit for a reworked AMA.

Hawking has requested to speak specifically about artificial intelligence (AI) in lieu of an open letter composed by the Future of Life Institute as a plea to refocus end goals in both innovation and research, and to “not only on [make] AI more capable, but also on [maximize] the societal benefit of AI”, a sentiment that Hawking endorses.

Previous Reddit AMAs have included a wide range of famous and controversial figures, including Julian Assange, Rev. Jesse Jackson and President Barack Obama. “It would be awesome”, one Redditor wrote at the time. Not too many people would be complaining about that.