I should of course note that him being a physicist (theoretical or otherwise) doesn't mean we should completely dismiss everything he says outside that area. But it seems a bit remiss to publicize such statements so readily as if coming from an expert on the subject, if that makes any sense. Sort of like a famed Marine biologist saying something regarding quantum mechanics, then being quoted all over the media.
Prof Hawking said the action could put Earth onto a path that turns it into a hothouse planet like Venus.
I think Alarmist doomsaying like this does damage to efforts to change our industry and work towards cleaner energy sources, particularly when it's simply not true.
Consider where the Carbon emissions we are putting in the atmosphere are coming from. Oil and Coal, which come from plants and animals from millions of years ago who died before there was life that could digest and process things like cellulose. Those plants and animals took that CO2 out of the atmosphere to begin with, during a time of much warmer temperatures. So, realistically, even if we put it All back, we'd just be looking at the same habitable biosphere that was present millions of years ago.
The problem is that none of the current life on Earth would be suitable for those conditions, and the change wouldn't occur over millions of years, it is currently happening and has happened over the span of the last few centuries due to industrialization. It is why many ecosystems are already starting to face problems due to changing climates. Fearmongering with blatantly false, alarmist nonsense just isn't a good idea because either people decide "well, what's the point, it's futile" or they discover it's bollocks and dismiss the entire concept as some elaborate ruse.
An interesting sidebar- Both Venus and Mars are within the "Habitable zone" around the Sun. It is theorized, based on some of the surface formations that Venus may have had a biosphere similar to Earth a few billion years ago. It's closer proximity to the sun however made it far more susceptible to the Sun's aging process- As Stars age, they burn hotter- so eventually the heat Venus received from the sun was enough to cause a runaway greenhouse effect.
Earth is expected to suffer a similar fate to Venus eventually. Though it is expected to be a lifeless, dry desert planet for a few hundred million years before that happens. Current models put the start of the process which turns it into an arid wasteland at around 700 million years from now. Perhaps ironically, that process is started by the increasing solar energy increasing chemical reaction rates for forming carbonates fast enough to reduce CO2 levels to a level unable to sustain photosynthesis.
Back to the original topic, though- I'm more privvy to the model found in Asimov's Short story
The Feeling of Power. I don't think AI will realistically replace people except in the sense of doing more work- sort of in the sense that computers have replaced Human calculators, such as the employ of women who used to be required at observatories for crunching data- but rather instead of replacing people we will grow increasingly more dependent on them; something which, I'd argue, we are already seeing occur. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but as Carl Sagan pointed out, we are becoming increasingly more dependent on computers while on average people are becoming less familiar and aware of how they work. The short story is sort of a "end-game" to that thought process.
