Stephen Hawking fields questions on artificial intelligence

For the next nine days, Stephen Hawking will be taking the Internet’s queries about all things related to artificial intelligence (AI).

The session is due to run on continuously (sort of, anyway) until Tuesday, August 4, so you’ve got plenty of time to squeeze in a few questions, upvotes, and loosely related cat gifs.

It will apparently be the longest AMA (ask me anything) session in the history of the freeloading commentblurt site, which will no doubt appreciate the publicity boost from Hawking after a tough month for the message board.

If you’ve ever wanted to ask Stephen Hawking anything this is your chance.

Stephen Hawking has addressed this issue many times before, but he believes the debate should continue considering that this field has been through an unusual development in the past period. “I appreciate all of your understanding, and taking the time to ask me your questions”.

The longer AMA format is designed to compensate for Hawking’s delayed communications, with the world-renowned physicist suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), forcing Hawking to communicate using an Intel-powered assistive computer.

Stephen Hawking is a promoter of Artificial Intelligence, no doubt about it, but he still thinks limits should be imposed; otherwise the phenomenon could escape people’s control.

The AMA thread kicks off on 27 July, 8AM ET (1PM BST) and, naturally enough, posts will appear on Reddit‘s r/science section.

Hawking gave examples of primitive AI mechanisms in Apple’s Siri, or Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana as being proof that AI is becoming more and more present in our daily lives.

This will mark as the longest AMA ever in the entertainment, social networking, and news website Reddit which also serve as a haven for registered members who are fond of sharing ideas, viewpoints, know-hows, skills and opinions.

To him, as we make our growth and radical strides towards improving technology, it’s important that we remember why we do so: to improve humanity and our condition.