Hawking suffers from motor neurone disease and is only able to communicate using a small sensor that is controlled via a muscle in his cheek. He uses this sensor to type characters onto a keyboard and then what he types is converted into his famous synthesized voice.
Intel has been providing the technology to allow him to speak for 20 years. Now London-based SwiftKey has got involved. The Swiftkey involvement means that Hawking now only needs to type just 15-20% of the characters in order to string together full sentences. This has helped to double his speech rate.
Hawking can now write and speak with greater ease for longer periods while minimizing typos. This was achieved because SwiftKey built a personal language model just for Hawking, based on his extensive works.The software learns which words he tends to use and in which order, then suggests those words as he is typing.The system continues to learn as he uses it.
When asked about the revamp which uses a basic form of artificial intelligence (AI), the physicist said that the primitive forms of AI developed so far have proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can surpass humans.
"The development of full AI could spell the end of the human race," he warned. "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said.
"Humans, who are limited by slow evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
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