A group of researchers from Cambridge University have proposed to set up a new centre to study advanced technology which could have potential of making species including artificial intelligence.
As part of the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk (CSER), researchers will study the risks of new technology in artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, artificial life, nanotechnology and climate change to the future of mankind at the research centre.
The researchers jointly said: "The seriousness of these risks is difficult to assess, but that in itself seems a cause for concern, given how much is at stake."
Co-founded by Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price, osmology and astrophysics professor Martin Rees and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, the CSER project will take advises from policy, law, risk, computing and science to assist in with investigating the risks.
Bertrand Russell said: "At some point, this century or next, we may well be facing one of the major shifts in human history perhaps even cosmic history when intelligence escapes the constraints of biology."
According to researchers human technology developments may also create extinction-level risks to the existing species and they could also develop into a threat when computers direct resources to function on their own goal at the cost of human wishes.
